My dad died suddenly earlier this year, with no will, and I am unsure as to how I should distribute the estate. We are talking about very modest sums of money \u2013 about \u00a35,000 (US$6,750, A$9,500) in total.<\/p>\n
My dad was a very ethical person. While his death was unexpected, he had a sense it was coming. About six months before he died, he arranged for the disposal of many personal effects. The lack of a will, given his self-discipline and preferences for forward planning, is odd.<\/p>\n
My dad has two daughters from a previous relationship, who he was not in contact with until I was in my mid-30s. Their mum had remarried after separating from our dad, and her new husband had formally adopted both her girls. My dad was delighted to resume contact with one half-sister. Another, two years younger, wanted nothing to do with him and firmly disapproved of her sister\u2019s choice to re-establish contact.<\/p>\n
Some 10 years ago, I started my own family, relocated to remove myself from domestic abuse, and joined the league of parents of children with additional needs. My dad mentioned that he had a little money put aside that could go towards legal costs, should courts ever become involved in arrangements for my son.<\/p>\n
Before it became apparent that there was no will, my initial expectation was that my dad would have split his estate three ways. But that lack of clear direction introduces uncertainty. Did my dad deliberately leave no will, with knowledge that under intestacy laws, biological children that have been adopted have no claim? Did he intend me to distribute his estate in the way we initially assumed? If so, why not make that clear? Do I have a moral obligation to share the estate with my half-siblings? And does the presumption that their legal dad intends to provide for his children equally, and significantly more generously, have any bearing on this?<\/p>\n
Eleanor says: It sounds like the process of making this decision has as much significance as the outcome. Partly, deciding ethically is a way of honouring your dad: it\u2019s clearly important to you that he was a profoundly moral man.<\/p>\n
And partly, as long as we\u2019re thinking through the estate, it\u2019s not over. We have unfinished business with the person we\u2019ve lost. There\u2019s one more interaction to be had, we\u2019re still in conversation with them; it\u2019s not done. I think that\u2019s part of why estate disputes can get so bloody. Fighting for years over where Mum would have wanted the teaspoons to go can somehow feel preferable to having nothing left to figure out or say about her. Figuring out the details of the estate can, as much as anything else, be a way of keeping the person you loved alive.<\/p>\n
I can\u2019t know with total certainty what your dad intended. It\u2019s too particular. How much did he know about estate law? The only possible answer is, \u201cI\u2019m not sure.\u201d But we can know something else: he had the opportunity to find out. He knew they\u2019d been adopted; he wasn\u2019t totally unable to plan for death. If it was very important to him that your sisters receive part of his estate, he could have taken steps to make sure of that.<\/p>\n
It sounds as if you won\u2019t feel OK about inheriting more if it feels like your decision. (You are your father\u2019s daughter, when it comes to ethics.) You receiving more needs to feel like honouring his wishes, not just you deciding what\u2019s fair alone. He could have done more to make his wishes explicit, you\u2019re right \u2013 but it\u2019s absolutely possible that this was his preference.<\/p>\n
He raised you alone, your child has additional needs, your sisters have material resources elsewhere, and there\u2019s the complication that one sister didn\u2019t have a relationship with him, and if you leave some to one sister, you have to leave some to the other. The way he left things produces the result that it all goes to you, without him saying out loud that that\u2019s his wish. If he wanted to rule out that possibility, he could have.<\/p>\n
Whatever you decide to do about the estate, it\u2019s worth \u2013 as much as you can \u2013 trying not to let any possible relationship tensions with your sister play out through money. She has another father figure. You\u2019ve just lost your only one. She has other material inheritance. You\u2019re thinking through your only one. That\u2019s bound to cause some tension, and themes about relative advantage in the rest of life are wont to play out through money. But money isn\u2019t a good proxy for interpersonal issues: it will exacerbate them instead of providing symbolic resolution.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s very kind of you to ask whether you should change the way things were left. But another way of looking at it is that the decision\u2019s been made: the law says what happens to people\u2019s estates when they die intestate, and you don\u2019t have clear evidence that he wanted something else instead.<\/p>\n
This letter has been edited.<\/p>\n
Ask Eleanor a question<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"My dad died suddenly earlier this year, with no will, and I am unsure as to how I…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":879055,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[64,63,134],"class_list":["post-879054","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/879054","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=879054"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/879054\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/879055"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=879054"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=879054"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=879054"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}