Should an unpaid family loan be deducted from my brother's inheritance?

[Triflemuncher]

Hi everyone.

Mum passed away semi- unexpectedly. A horrible sad time for us all.

my brother and I have started the process of unpicking her finances. About a year before mum died she lent my brother 10k. At the time of her death there was about £8k left to pay. There was no written loan agreement which I can understand to some degree.

my view is the 8k remaining debt needs to be deducted from brothers share of mums estate. He disagrees and thinks that it was an Informal arrangement between him and mum with no terms and conditions, or any link to her estate.

Where do we stand on this? Is there anything I can do or is this £8k just written off?

Her corner? It’s not the DDs money to fight for, it never was her money when it was lent and it isn’t her money to reclaim now her mum has died

If she has that in writing then she could pursue it.

Yes this.

I would proceed as it it were a loan and going to be paid back. Messages confirming money sent to him would be adjusted with this in mind.

Make it for HIM to complain about so it HIM making a fuss and making things 'difficult'

If he does push back then you have the evidence as above. The repayment as evidence too.

I doubt I would take a dispute any further though as it's not worth it and would likely cave at this point for family harmony (and stop buying him gifts)

It seems pointless and unnecessary to me to even look at this. As a parent I would want any debts my children had due to me forgotten. I think most parents wouldn’t want their children fighting either. I’m sorry op x

If your brother doesn’t want to repay and there’s nothing documented there is nothing that you can do. They could have verbally agreed that the Laos was written off on death so the fact that he was repaying it proves nothing.

If there’s 8k left to pay and there’s two of you then 4k of it would be his anyway? But if he doesn’t agree to it then he’s basically ripping you off by 4k. I agree I don’t think there’s much you can do legally if no written agreement.

but if he isn’t wanting to sort it out to be honest I’d happily fall out with him on the principle. It’s scummy behaviour. Not surprised he doesn’t think he should have to pay it back. He has no principles and would happily do his own sister out of money.

Me too
any debt my children owe me die along with me!

It should be £4k. If he'd repaid it the amount would be part of the estate and you'd get half.

Even if he claims that it now becomes a gift rather than a loan, there is still something OP can do about that. We just need more information from OP, particularly as to who the executor is. Is it OP, is it her brother, is it someone else?

He disagrees and thinks that it was an Informal arrangement between him and mum with no terms and conditions, or any link to her estate.

We need OP to confirm if any of this disagreement is in writing.

If he has repaid 2k then there would be evidence to support it being a loan rather than a gift. However, if he is going to contest this then I expect legal fees will be greater than the outstanding balance.

I’m sorry for your loss

If he has any integrity he will pay it back/have his portion of inheritance adjusted accordingly

is it just the 2 of you & is the estate sizeable that it’s a small portion if the money? Either way I like people to do the right thing

But why?

If you lent one child say £100k for some reason or other, why would you want your other child to effectively 'lose' 50k because of this?

OK maybe if there is no inheritance so repaying is impossible, but if there is inheritance why should you want the other sibling lose out.

No because technically he still owes the estate 8k and means hes getting 8k more than you. Its a question of morals really.

Even if it was a gift, there is still a legal route which doesn't have to cost OP or her brother anything.

Your brother owes a debt of £8k to the estate and it's the job of the executors to chase the debt. Who are the executors?

The OP’s brother has already had £8,000 of his mums estate so if he had any decency about him he should be offering to give her that amount from his half of the estate when everything is sorted.
He received a loan, that if I understand the OP correctly he was already paying back so presumably mum lent it to him with the expectation that it would be repaid.
I can’t understand comments like the one made by leli above and would love to know why anyone would think it acceptable for the brother should receive more than her just because he hadn’t repaid what he was lent by the time his mum sadly died unexpectedly.
To me this is about family fairness and if the mum was splitting her estate equally between her children than her wishes are not being met. We are all different I know but if I were the brother here I would want to be fair to my sister and not waste my time arguing that it was an informal agreement which should not be considered as part of the estate. In my view he’s just being grabby.

sorry for your loss.

As there are only two beneficiaries, him and you, in theory you are due £4k from him. The other £4k is what is owed to him and he’s already had it.

why does he think it’s ok to just keep money that isn’t his. he knows hes to pay it back. sureky he can be so greedy as to thibk he can just keep it?! it’s your mums. it was not a gift.

If that had been important to me - I’d have had a legal agreement drawn up and reflected in my will.

A loan doesn't need to be mentioned in a will, it is a debt to the estate.

Maybe the Mum trusted their child to do the right thing and repay and not to effectively steal from their sibling?

What you would need to mention in a will is a gift to one sibling, eg to buy a house, that you intended to even up by doing the same to the sibling when the time was right. In which case it would be 'the first 400k of the residue of my estate to go to ChildB if I have not yet gifted them a house, to even up the gift I made to ChildA'.

I never said it did
I said if it was important to ME that my child repaid my loan in full.

And there’s another option

Maybe the mum didn’t expect her son to repay
back her loan when she died.

anyway - the ball is in his court.

Morally, he is wrong. Anything you try to do legally, will most likely cost more than it's worth though. Just write it off.

I wonder if @Triflemuncher will be back?

is he saying that his mum didn’t want him to pay it back @Triflemuncher ? Who told you about the loan?

deduct.

How much is the inheritance worth? Technically yes 8k should be deducted from your brother. But I wouldn't bother if it will upset him. Although I have just sold my parents house for £385,000 plus lots of other money from stamp sales, so quibbling about 8k seems more effort than it's worth, but I think I might feel differently if my whole inheritance was only 50,000 or even 100,000.