Your parents’ wishes seem clear — so let your brother sue
I read with interest your article titled “Wills can treat children differently.” I am one of those children. My parents put my name on all their bank accounts a few years before they died. I believe they wanted to leave the bulk of their assets to me; I was the child who cared for them as they aged.
I have a brother in Australia who left Canada 30 years ago. He’s a good person and very well off. He now wants to sue for the assets my parents left to me. The bank has advised that the money is mine. I am torn as to whether I should go to court or just give him half and be done with it. What would you advise? You don’t specify whether your parents left a will, but because of the way you phrase your question, it sounds like they didn’t. With a will, there should be no issue. But their strategy, it seems, was to simply put their money into joint bank accounts, with you as signatory, on the assumption that everything would flow to you after their death. From an ethical, as well as legal point of view, that’s a poor strategy.
It leaves both you and your brother making assumptions about how assets should be divided; clearly those assumptions aren’t the same.
I’m having a hard time putting together your description of your brother as a “good person,” with his intention to sue you for what he deems his share. But it’s pretty clear how he became “well off!”
Whether or not there was a will, your parents’ intentions seem evident. It’s remotely possible, I suppose, that they put assets in joint accounts so you could care for them while they were alive, with the unspoken assumption that you would divide the cash equally at the end. But if that were the case, they were negligent in not making that assumption legally binding, or at the very least verbally clear.
Absent such clarity, it’s valid to conclude that they put money into accounts in your name so the money would flow easily, without the legal impediments that can tie up an estate at death.
From an ethical point of view, your brother has no claim whatsoever to your parents’ money.
He moved to Oz three decades ago and made his own life; there’s nothing wrong with that, but it means he did not participate in your parents’ care at the end of their lives.
He left that to you; again, fair enough, but you can’t opt out of peoples’ lives for 30 years and then expect, at the final reckoning, you’ll jump back in and grab a share of the loot. It doesn’t work that way, nor should it.
If your brother wants to take you to court, let him. Sadly, that’s what courts are for. Your responsibility now is the same as it’s been for the last many years — to look after your parents’ interests and make sure their wishes are fulfilled.
Unless your brother produces concrete evidence to the contrary, their wish was that the money in those joint accounts is yours. No “good person,” well off or not, would think otherwise.
Send your questions to star.ethics@yahoo.ca.