{"id":237940,"date":"2025-10-24T16:14:11","date_gmt":"2025-10-24T16:14:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/237940\/"},"modified":"2025-10-24T16:14:11","modified_gmt":"2025-10-24T16:14:11","slug":"my-sister-and-i-disagree-about-our-dads-estate-dad-said-he-always-split-things-50-50-but-she-insists-he-gave-me-more-and-that-i-owe-her","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/237940\/","title":{"rendered":"My sister and I disagree about our dad’s estate. Dad said he always split things 50-50, but she insists he gave me more\u2014and that I owe her."},"content":{"rendered":"

Our advice columnists have heard it all over the years\u2014so we\u2019re diving into the Pay Dirt archives to share classic letters with our readers.\u00a0Submit your own questions about money here<\/a>. (It\u2019s anonymous!)\u00a0<\/p>\n

Dear Pay Dirt,<\/p>\n

My dad died this summer, leaving my sister and me a modest inheritance of his retirement savings and life insurance, that he specified in his will be split 50-50 (it amounted to about $80K each). He had given us money some years before he died\u2014me to help save a business I had, and her to buy a car and pay off some debt.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t live in my hometown anymore, so she has been great at taking care of things and wrapping up his estate and possessions (I helped some when I could go back home). She also cared for him while he was alive and up to his death, and she was amazing during that ordeal.<\/p>\n

She recently sent me a text that she was closing his final bank account (about $12K), and that I owed her $9,000, because he gave me more than her while he was alive. I was really taken aback by that. It\u2019s the first time we\u2019ve discussed that. My dad and I had discussed paying him back the money he sent me ($70,000), but the business failed, and he understood I wasn\u2019t in a position to do that.<\/p>\n

What do I do? I don\u2019t think I owe her money, but she has launched into a bunch of character assassination and saying awful things because I disagree. Am I obligated to pay her back?<\/p>\n

\u2014Blindsided by This<\/p>\n

Dear Blindsided,<\/p>\n

You don\u2019t owe her anything. I\u2019m floored at how many letters we get from people who invoice (either informally or literally) their siblings for things they didn\u2019t agree to pay for, once inheritance issues are closed out. If she feels that your dad should have given her more while he was alive, it\u2019s not your job to compensate for that. And the will explicitly states that the inheritance be split 50-50\u2014not that your lifetime allocation be 50-50, and that it\u2019s your responsibility to remedy any imbalances.<\/p>\n

So legally, she is obligated to give you half of that $12,000, and you can take her to court to get it if you want. But if you\u2019d prefer to avoid the conflict, that\u2019s understandable too. Is it worth letting her have the money just to avoid an all-out war over this, which it sounds like your sister is prepared to wage? That\u2019s a personal decision you have to make, but she is absolutely wrong about what you owe her.<\/p>\n

If she was unhappy about what you got when your dad was still alive, she should have taken it up with him when he was still around to discuss it. It\u2019s not OK for her to drop this on you when he\u2019s not around to object to what is obviously a violation of what he stated he wanted in his will.<\/p>\n

\u2014Elizabeth Spiers<\/p>\n

From: I\u2019m Really Concerned About My Daughter\u2019s Strange Financial Arrangement With Her Boyfriend<\/a>. (January 27th, 2022).<\/p>\n

\n Please keep questions short (<150 words), and don\u2018t submit the same question to multiple columns. We are unable to edit or remove questions after publication. Use pseudonyms to maintain anonymity. Your submission may be used in other Slate advice columns and may be edited for publication.\n <\/p>\n

Dear Pay Dirt,<\/p>\n

My wonderful fianc\u00e9 and I are in the very beginning stages of planning a wedding, with big dreams of a modern, black-tie-optional downtown wedding in the city where we currently live, and we are experiencing serious sticker shock. We should have realized the very expensive city we live in would also be one of the most expensive cities to get married in, but we thought that with the generous budget we have been given by my parents (around $65,000) the wedding we\u2019re picturing would be no problem. We\u2019re very quickly realizing that\u2019s not the case, and to get the wedding we\u2019re envisioning we could end up spending $35,000 over budget.<\/p>\n

To make things more complicated, my parents have some non-negotiables that are keeping this affair expensive: wedding should take place in a central location within walking distance to hotels and restaurants, must have a seated dinner and full open bar, and all members of my large family must be invited, so not much flex on guest count (even though many of them probably won\u2019t come).<\/p>\n

I am ready to high-tail our wedding to another city where we can stretch our budget even further, but then we have the added headache of planning from afar, and extra travel to get to that other city throughout the process. (All guests will be flying in from out of state no matter where the wedding is, so nothing would change for them.) Should we stay in our current expensive city, and almost certainly go way over budget, or pick a different city that will allow us to stay in budget, but will require some logistical headaches during the planning process?<\/p>\n

\u2014I Can\u2019t Believe These Prices<\/p>\n

Dear I Can\u2019t Believe These Prices,<\/p>\n

There are ways to cut costs without ruining your wedding, but before we get into them, I want to address the issue of your parents\u2019 non-negotiables. They may be paying for the wedding, but it is not their wedding. It is\u00a0your\u00a0wedding. The only people who should have non-negotiable mandates for your wedding are you and your fianc\u00e9. There are some ways to accommodate what they want if\u00a0you\u00a0want to do it, but first you need to set some boundaries with them. If it\u2019s important to you to please them, or you feel obligated because they\u2019re paying for the wedding, then at least make it clear to them that some of the things they\u2019re requesting are precisely the things that will drive the wedding over budget. A seated dinner, in particular, can be incredibly expensive, and you will likely pay per person, so every time you add a guest (plus any significant others), your cost will go up.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not going to advise you to go to City Hall and have canapes in your backyard because that\u2019s not what you want, and if having a fancy glamorous affair is important to you and your fianc\u00e9, let\u2019s work with that. First, what needs to be expensive, and what doesn\u2019t? You don\u2019t mention which expensive city you live in, but you want the wedding to be \u201cdowntown,\u201d wherever that is. I assume it\u2019s trendy and pricey. Consider other parts of your city that might not be right in the center of things, but do check some other box: nearby hotels and restaurants, etc. Once you\u2019re in the venue, what part of town you\u2019re in won\u2019t matter. Food and drink can easily end up being the most expensive part of your wedding. So consider what \u201cseated dinner\u201d means, if that\u2019s important to you. A buffet option might not feel as grand as a five-course dinner with wait service, but it is still a seated dinner.<\/p>\n

Consider, generally, what\u2019s important to you. As you\u2019ve probably already heard from your married friends, you won\u2019t remember most of what you cared about in the planning process after the big day. When my husband and I got married (also in a big expensive city, but mostly because ninety percent of our guests live here) we decided that we cared about making it accessible to our friends financially (not everybody can afford to travel), having good food, and hiring a very specific Bulgarian DJ who normally sneers at weddings, but very nicely made an exception, this one time, but only this one time. Prioritizing allowed us to figure out what we didn\u2019t need to spend money on: insanely expensive floral arrangements, separate venues for the wedding and reception, random decorative objects that everyone would forget.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Help! My Sister-in-Law Always Spoils My Holiday Plan the Same Way. This Year Is Going to Be Different.
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<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve Been Covering for My Sick Colleague for Years. Then One Night, He Drunkenly Confessed the Truth.
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<\/p>\n

I\u2019m Getting a Big Inheritance. I Hate It.
\n <\/a><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

My Girlfriend Begs Me to Have Sex Every Time I Come Home From a Certain Activity. There\u2019s No Way Anyone Is Actually Into This.
\n <\/a><\/p>\n

We got married outdoors, next to the building that housed the reception, and hired a music school student to play the guitar as we walked down the aisle. I don\u2019t remember what he played and I don\u2019t care, because none of my memories are about those kind of details. I remember that I danced with my dad to a Hank Williams Sr song and he was laughing and tearing up at the same time. I remember that everyone had fun, and that the people I cared about were there. Everything else was icing on the wedding cake, so to speak. Decide what your two or three most important things are, and budget for that. Consider everything else \u201cnice to have.\u201d<\/p>\n

Think about the big-ticket items in particular and how much they matter. I bought my wedding dress on eBay for a quarter of the price of the absolute cheapest wedding dress I found in the bridal boutiques I visited. It was a lightly worn vintage Versace gown and it was awesome. And it was red. You do not have to follow a script here: pick things you like, that will mean something to you, not just what matches up with the vision in your head of what a \u201cmodern\u201d wedding is supposed to look like.<\/p>\n

Most importantly of all, do not go into debt to fund your wedding. There is no add-on or extra expense over your parents\u2019 budget that will make the difference between \u201cgreat wedding\u201d and \u201cterrible wedding.\u201d After a point, there\u2019s a diminishing return to spending more money just to get one more little detail perfect.<\/p>\n

\u2014E.S.<\/p>\n

From: I\u2019m Worried The Government Will Force Me To Pay For My Stepkids\u2019 College<\/a>. (February 10th, 2022).<\/p>\n

More Money Advice From Slate<\/p>\n

I was able to work remotely for a year and absolutely loved it. Now I\u2019m back in my windowless office, driving eight hours a week and dreaming of how I can get back to a work-from-home job (remote work at my current job is a nonstarter; my workplace is run by a rising star in the Republican Party and he is fully entrenched in the culture wars). I have been looking for remote work in my field, but so far, no interviews. I stumbled across an advertisement for a call center job that stated it\u2019s remote-work-eligible and starts at $27,000 a year\u2014a $20,000 pay cut. <\/a><\/p>\n

Get the latest from Prudie and our columnists in your inbox each weekday, plus special bonus letters on Saturdays.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Our advice columnists have heard it all over the years\u2014so we\u2019re diving into the Pay Dirt archives to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":101909,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[8786,64,63,99,2582,186,184,185],"class_list":{"0":"post-237940","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-personal-finance","8":"tag-advice","9":"tag-au","10":"tag-australia","11":"tag-business","12":"tag-family","13":"tag-finance","14":"tag-personal-finance","15":"tag-personalfinance"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237940","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=237940"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237940\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/101909"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=237940"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=237940"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=237940"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}