Pexels/Reddit
Inheritance can get complicated when it’s wrapped up in a shared home.
So, what would you do if you and your sister were left a home by your grandfather, but she moved in and took it over, and rather than buying you out, she just continues to live there?
Would you let her keep living there? Or would you force her hand legally?
In the following story, one husband explains that he and his wife are currently in this situation. Here’s what’s going on.
My wife and I recently got married. We are both financially frugal people with decent-paying jobs. We save our money religiously and use it to meet our financial goals, especially those for the future, when we have kids.
My wife is DEEP in college debt. To the tune of about $200,000. She is starting her residency, and we just got a bill in the mail for her private student loans. It’s ALOT.
Here’s the saving grace. When her grandfather passed away, he gave half of his home to my wife and her sister.
After marriage, they made a decision about the home.
Her sister is older and has essentially been making unilateral decisions about the home since she inherited her half. She did things like renovate a kitchen, replace appliances, take over a room downstairs to be a work-from-home office, claim the master bedroom, and use the frog above the garage as her own personal storage space.
She did most of this while my wife was away in college, 3 hours away. When my wife moved in, she was not given 50% or even 20% of the home to use for herself. She was relegated to a child’s bedroom and the shared upstairs bathroom.
When I met my wife, I noticed this immediately. We discussed finances before getting married and decided that, since she would be moving out to live with me, it would be prudent for her sister to buy her out of the remaining equity in the house.
They are 100% on the same page.
We notified her sister last June. We explicitly told her that she had the entire summer to figure out the finances. She said she would need a few months and would update us.
Within two months of that conversation, they decided to buy a newish car for her husband… who had a work truck already. Sister works from home so they have a car just sitting in the garage.
It’s been six months. And now that the student loan payments are coming in, we reached out to her sister once again, and informed her that she would have to buy her out, and we needed to get the process started NOW.
Her sister is now trying to encourage my wife to just have a conversation “Between the two of them” because “It’s their business and not their husbands”.
I call crap. This affects both of us just as much. My wife feels exactly the same.
We are a 100% unified front on this.
Now, they’re considering legal action.
I won’t go into specifics, but her manner of texting has led us to consider just giving her the 30 days required by our state, and then, if she doesn’t have her stuff together by then, forcing a sale through a partition suit.
If we are forced to do so, we will pursue rental income owed under exclusive-use case law regarding shared homes. Which would give us approximately $ 15,000- $ 20,000 more in equity. That’s substantial, and would essentially pay off our only car loan on top of wiping out my wife’s private loans entirely.
We aren’t trying to uproot their lives. But we have decided that it is in the cards if they don’t show some real progress towards rectifying this situation.
AITA?
Yikes! That sounds like a very tough situation.
Let’s see what sort of advice the fine folks over at Reddit have to offer.
This person thinks they need an attorney.
He should think about this.
Here’s someone who gets it.
According to this reader, it won’t end well.
It’s time for legal guidance. Her sister has had plenty of time to make a decision and is dragging her feet on purpose.
If you liked that story, check out this post about an oblivious CEO who tells a web developer to “act his wage”… and it results in 30% of the workforce being laid off.