To not want to go & see my sisters new house?

[Spoldge45]

Hello ladies, I am actually writing this on behalf of my DH as I thought it would get a wider audience than Dadsnet.

My sister who is 47 has lived in our family's original family home all her, thru 2 marriages & a child.

4 years ago our mother, who also lived in the house died. In her will she left the house worth £650k to my sister & her 12 year old son & £50k to myself & my young daughter, who at the time was 2.

Undeniably this was very hard to take, it felt as tho my mother didn't care about me & my family as much, despite me always being a very loving/caring son.

Eventually over time I came to terms with the hurt this caused, although it's still something I think about nearly every day. I paid a lump sum of our mortgage & got on with my life, still maintaining a very good relationship with my sister & her son.

2 months ago, my sister sold our family home & her and her 12 year old son downsized to a smaller property, worth £350k.

This I have found a lot harder to take...my sister now has a very nice house, with no mortgage & has in excess of £200k in the bank. While I have to carry on working & paying a mortgage until I am 75.

Since moving my sister has said absolutely nothing about the money situation, she has asked myself & my wife to go to her new house, but to be honest, neither of us feel that we want to.

Sorry I am not very good with emoticons!

only1scoop I am reminded of ?? ?? a little.

I getcha. Totally. My MIL bought SIL a house (and a car, and a pony and she gives her money every month. Lets not mention the disney world holidays she took SIL and DNieces on. Twice. Oh I did) SIL still owns her own house as she never sold it, so she also get the rent from that.
We got 15k. Which was marvellous I cannot deny it and paid for us do get a new boiler and get the garden sorted. But its not a 235k house.

To me it's too late to mention it without picking at an old wound and causing distress.

It sounds like your sister has devoted her life to your mum. No doubt the relationship has been beneficial to both of them but it has still resulted in a fair bit of self sacrifice on your sisters part.

I too wonder how much the living arrangements contributed to the breakdown of your sisters marriages.

She's probably relieved that her life is sorted. House paid for and some money in the bank and some peace of mind, presumably she's still a woman on her own although it may change, shes still a young woman.

Don't begrudge her her good fortune. You have each other and a £50k fortune.

Be happy.

It is possible that the sister has devoted herself to her mother. It is also possible that she has been living cheap on mum's assets for her whole life, and that her brother's reward for moving out and taking care of himself is to see his sister set up for life by mum & dad while he struggles on.

You have to treat children as equally as possible if you want to avoid siblings resenting each other. This continues into adulthood, and applies to how you split the moneg when you die. OP's mother made a poor decision if she wanted her children to continue having a close and loving relationship. And his sister has not rectified her mum's unfairness.

Completely off topic, but this thread has reminded me of a sitcom I used to watch a long time ago about a woman who lived in one half of a house, her mother in a flat above - they were both either widowed or divorced..
A remember the mother in this comedy was always "popping in" to see the daughter, advantages and disadvantages to be had in such close living..

For what it's worth, if your sister had any kind of decency in her she'd be splitting the money with you so no YANBU at all.

I have experience of this kind of situation but I was the one who got the inheritance. It has worked for our family but I think that was down to the way it was done.
My parents are still very much alive and well but 6 years ago my father decided to retire and managed to 'advance' me my inheritance.

For a number of years before that it had become clear that I was the son who was going to carry on the family estate, comprising farm and other property / associated businesses. There was a very frank family meeting with parents, myself and my 2 siblings where we were told that splitting things up wasn't an option for various reasons. We either had to all run it together as 3 equal partners or it went to one of us.

There was some negotiating in a very open and frank manner as we all wanted something but in the end we settled on an arrangement that if I were to sell any assets for any purpose other than reinvesting the cash in the business then I have to split the money three ways. I also paid off dbro's mortgage and bought a property in London for dsis.

My siblings both have successful careers in their own right and live in London and New York, they have no interest in farming so the upshot was that about £7.5million went to me. On the flip side I now have my parents living in one of the estate's houses (a nice old mill) and DW and I will happily do for them what they did for my grandparents - look after them as they get old.

The best thing to do would to have all sat down while your mother was alive and discuss it openly. You can bring it up with your sister now I guess but you'll just have to be prepared for the possibility of a negative reaction.

I see where you are coming from, but also where your SIL is coming from.

When you say your MIL "sold" her the downstairs, was that actually done legally? Or was it "Oh, give me £30k to cover the cost of the building work & we'll call it quits"? So she left the separate, upstairs property to your SIL on her death? In that case, it is v. off of your SIL to not split that cost with her brother.

In a different situation in my own family, one of my uncles ended up living with my grandmother and being her carer for a VERY long time. It was agreed between my grandmother and all the siblings that he should be left the house, and that she would divide her savings among the other siblings before her death so that there would be no grousing over the will. One of my aunts was a bit annoyed about it, but at the same time, nobody saw her volunteering to have her mother come and live with her instead! Everybody (almost everybody!) saw it as a very fair deal. He had to put up with that dreadful woman, and got financial security for the rest of his life in return.

Brandy, was it Rhoda?

Ooh, I forgot about Rhoda, that was a good one. Mine was British though, did some googling and found it was called "After Henry" and had Prunella Scales in it - daughter lived in basement, mum on ground floor and gran upstairs!

I'm not entirely sure why someone cannot distribute their money any way they see fit with out having to justify it.

It's pretty underhand to go against someone's expressed wished about their own money especially by putting emotional pressure on the person who got left it.

YANBU.

As someone pointed out up-thread, it's entirely possible that, given the 30K cost of your sister's flat and depending on when the will was made, your MIL thought that the other flat to her and 50K to you was an equitable split.

I'm not convinced your sister has an obligation to even things up; it would be nice of her to do that, but it isn't her duty.