Family feud and inheritance

Exactly. I don’t understand why the OP is confused about what to do.

He stopped talking to the sister. We don’t know about the relationship with the parents.

I would probably give my brother half, so we've been treated fairly/the same.

What was your fathers intention, was their anything in writing,did he change his will to reflect his intention.
I would get some legal advice .

You’re over complicating things. I assume your Dad had to sign something at the solicitor’s office when he gave you the £89,000? You wooden have just sent your ex £89,00c, there would have been paperwork, deed changes etc. You have to prove where sums of money that large come from and I imagine he signed to say it was a gift (check with the solicitor you used if you’re not sure) unless the will mentions this £89,000 it’s nothing to do with your brother. You need to forget all the other nonsense and concentrate on the legalities. It’s up to you what you think is morally correct.

If you want opinions on this from a moral point of view: you being non contact with your brother is irrelevant, if your brother continued contact with your parents then I think he deserves half of that money.

Hugely depends on context. If your parents were careful and efficient about updating their wills (i assume the wills predated the gift) then its less likely your brother is right that might have been your father's intention, if their wills are 30 years old then less so. I'd also take into account the nature of the new relationship - is this a real rapprochement or just did he can get the money and go back to his wife. In the end, sounds like legally its your call.

I wouldn't shaft a sibling like this, and would make it fair regardless of what the Will said.

In a similar vein, unless they had done something totally and utterly unforgiveable, if a parent cut my sibling out of their Will, I would cut them back in again via my share.

That opinion given because her behaviour was disgusting and he needed telling. She upset OP's parents on multiple occasions, was mean to her son and everyone was tiptoeing around her. What did he do when the behaviour was called out? He SIDED WITH HER. Sulked like a teenager and stopped talking to them.

If you adore your brother as you say, then what is stopping you giving him half of the £89k? Or maybe you don’t adore him that much 🤷‍♀️

Those saying that the father should have changed his will, he could easily have been in his 80s and in poor health. He might not have been able to change his will.

If OP only got divorced in 2022 and he passed away in 2023, the money could have changed hands very shortly before his death.

The OP claims she adores her brother, so much that she has to ask MN if he should be treated differently, all because of leaving out treats for Santa 33 years ago.

It was the OP expressing her opinion of the brother’s wife that caused the brother to stop speaking to her. We have no idea if the brother also cut off ontwct with the parents.
*contact

We were in an identical situation. My dad had to bail out my sister when her lousy husband walked out and she almost became homeless 10 years ago . We lost my dad a year ago. The estate is spilt equally and ignores the several 100,000 he gave her. It was what he wanted. His will was updated two years ago and there was no mention of the money he gave her before.
This is what he wanted and this is right. A Will is a legal document. You don’t owe your brother a thing like my sister doesn’t owe me a thing.
Tell him no and don’t get drawn into any kind of discussion.

"...my father gave me the shortfall, £89,000" [emphasis added]

As others have said, it all boils down to this, was it a gift or a loan? If it was a gift then that is no longer a part of his estate for the purposes of his will.

In contrast, if it was a loan then it would have remained a part of his estate and the brother would be entitled to half of it.

The value of the estate is relevant here. If OP effectively gets £139k v her brother's £50k, that's a very different split to £1,589k v £1,500k.

Tell him to stick his request up his arse.
He made his choice - his foul wife. He doesn't get to come crawling back now.

To be pedantic we also only have years. It’s an extreme example but the OP may have been given the money in December 2022 and her father may have died in January 2023.

We don’t know how her father died but it could have been that he didn’t get around to changing the will because he was in ill health and physically unable to.

We don’t even know if her father was open with her brother about the £89k.

It sounds as though the parents may have been tenants in common and each owned a separate 50% of the house.

In that case, it is quite usual for each parent to leave their share of the home to children with the surviving spouse having a life interest to remain living in the home until they die (or go into care etc).

Or it may simply be that the parents were divorced and the fact that the mother died shortly after is irrelevant to the situation with the father. The OP talks just her father's will and not the mother.

I also think the fact that the OP is questioning what she should do is enough to suggest that deep down she knows she should share it.

@MellowPinkBee Can I ask when the Will was written and when you were given the money?

I'm thinking that if the money was gifted before the Will was written, then he intended you to get the 50% on top of the money for the house otherwise he would have covered this off in his Will.

If the Will was written before he gave you the money, then legally you are entitled to the 50percent, but morally???

I agree with this.

Lots of people saying "he had a year to change his will". Actually a year isn't that long - unless he had a slow decline where he knew he was dying but still active enough to do admin then I don't think you can say that he didn't think he'd change it at some point - or expecting that Op would be in a better place and pay it back.
He may have been giving Op a bit of space before discussing it as I'd imagine she was not in the best frame of mind over the time of giving/lending it.

Unless the will was written between giving/lending it to her and him dying, or he had a conversation saying directly that this was a gift and he did not expect it to be taken into account in the will (and I'm sure that wasn't the case because Op would have mentioned that) then I think it's clear that it should be shared between them.

My dad gave me a large sum for a deposit in my 30s, but not DB as he is in social housing. We don't speak as he has a nightmare 'mate'. DB doesn't know about the sum. Morally I know I should probably give him some more if I were to inherit anything. Two things - I am going to make the decision that I can live with if/when the time comes. Second, it was a long time ago and my financial position is okay now which makes it an easier choice to give him half.

Cuddos for your brother standing up for his wife. Coming from a dysfunctional family does not make anyone bad person. If you did not like your SIL, you could cut her out of your life yourselves. Milk and cookies and a 3 years old drama and now inheritance. Hoch potch story. Does not deserve the airing it gets on here.

So many shameless, grabby people on here.

The wills were created with a 50/50 split between the siblings. I think it’s clear from that that the intention was to split the money 50/50.

The OP’s father died a few months after giving this money. I would have thought that if this was a separate gift just for the OP, the father would have explicitly mentioned this.

The OP is clearly not in rude financial health which suggests she may have reason to want to keep as much as she can rather than do the “right thing”.

£89k is a significant sum which was only given because the OP needed it. It wasn’t given in an envelope with a wink and a “don’t tell anyone”.

Everything in my view points towards the intention being a 50/50 split between the siblings. The OP seems to think she gets an extra 90k because she thought her brother’s wife was rude in the year 2000.

If it was your father’s intention then he could have changed his will to reflect the amount you received. He didn’t and therefore no legal grounds for your db to force you to split the money.
Morally you might want to, but that’s your decision.
The fact that you did not get on with db’s wife is not relevant imo.

It’s weird the DM didn’t inherit from her DH.