Like every relationship it had its ups and downs. But now, after a lifetime of sharing common bonds and memories, they can't even bear to be in the same room with one another.
It's a divorce, but not between spouses. This is a Sibling Divorce -- the result of an estate dispute over a parent's will. Now siblings who grew up together refuse to call each other "brother" or "sister", instead referring to them as "my mother's other children". Generations of cousins will never know one another.
These fights can be just as emotional, mean-spirited and divisive as the nastiest divorce between spouses. Is it just about the money -- pure greed that drives a wedge between family members when parents die? Anyone who deals with these kinds of disputes on a daily basis knows otherwise.
At the heart of most estate disputes lies family dynamics and history.
A will is the last thing that a parent says to his or her children. Written in black and white, it creates a definitive, lasting record of the relationship between parent and child and among a child and his or her siblings. That reason alone explains why estate disputes are so hotly contested. Estate litigation is often about one sibling trying to correct that record while his or her sibling seeks to uphold it.
When parents die and children get a copy of the will, they look to see if the will confirms their own perception of their family and their role in it.
The simplest choices can have huge emotional impact. For example, choosing one child as the executor to the exclusion of the other may make perfect sense to the parent who does not think it to be the least bit controversial. But often such simple decisions can be the spark that ignites the powder-keg. The child chosen as the executor reads the will as confirming the trust Mom had in him throughout her life. To the other child, it confirms that Mom didn't trust him as much as his sibling.
Even in the closest of families, a will can stir up emotions and feelings that had been bubbling under the surface for many years. While alive, the parents are the lid which prevents those emotions from manifesting into pitched battle. But when they are gone, those childhood feelings and family dynamics can finally be focussed on something tangible-the parent's estate. The Estate becomes the lightening rod for the years of underlying emotion.
How do siblings justify fighting each other over their parent's estate? It is a rare occasion when a party will admit that he or she is fighting only for the money. Instead, when an estate dispute arises, children justify their involvement on two bases:
Mom's true wishes
Both sides will state that they are fighting to uphold mom's true wishes.
The challenger of the will justifies his challenge by alleging that the will does not reflect Mom's true wishes. The challenger does so, by alleging that Mom was not able to understand what was written in the will (in legal terms, lacking testamentary capacity) or was forced to write a will in that manner by the beneficiary ("undue influence"). On the other hand, the child who seeks to uphold the will, justify his position as defending mom's true wishes as expressed in his will. "I am just doing what mom wanted", he will say.
Fairness
"It's not fair!" Those words echo over and over in every estate litigator's office. The familial relationship continues for many years. Over its course, there are credits and debits for each child. The younger child may have received help from mom and dad for college, while the older one may have had to work four jobs to pay for his education. At the same time, the older one may have received the opportunity to work in the family business, while the younger one had to find his own career without mom and dad's help. The will is the last chance to even things up. If children don't feel that they have been treated fairly, this is their last chance to even the score.
The fact that the estate is large or small or that the estate plan is simple or complex does not matter. It is that family history that matters.
How do parents set the stage for divorce between the children they love? Often they do not recognize how the words in their will are going to resonate with their children. Anticipating how their children will feel when they read those last words in the will is crucial if parents want to leave the most important legacy for their children -- family peace.