Ethics Question

Depends what's out for grabs I suppose. And a little back story on how much off the grid the other siblings had been.

Intuitively I think everyone feels the 1 sibling deserves the most of it, but lately I've started to question everything lol. And if they were wealthy, they should have spread the wealth before they die, to much go to waste if they don't I think.

Would need a lot more info, then learn some about all the siblings and their situation, then think for awhile, maybe have someone smart make some algorithms.

Top of my head I would toss out 70% to the one sibling, 15% for the other two just for lulz.

This is a pretty good question

Well they'll have to sit down and decide for themselves. If the cross country siblings want 1/3 then they should have 1/3. If the local sibling argues then he is way out of line and it would create a disgraceful situation. If the cross country siblings decide that the local sibling should get more then he should get more. I would think that if the cross country siblings are decent then they would suggest that the local sibling should get more, but it's their decision.

Depends on how well or not-well off the other 2 cross country guys are doing.

You said ethically, I'm not quite sure if ethics are even a definitive thing, but I would weight the inheritance towards the least talented.

That said I think the person who took care of the chores should be compensated.

Sounds weird to say "compensated" in an ethical question.

I would estimate how much the local sibling spent, substract this from the inheritance (give that part to the local), and split the rest equally

i think a helpful determination would be the quality of care the sibling provided, as well as the time and cost involved. There is also a question as to what the parents / mother likely would have wanted (suppose it was fairly well known the mother intended to donate her net assets to charity, etc).

I would think that a reasonable starting point in any negotiation would be for the local sibling to request reimbursement for the care, and then split fairly liquid assets evenly.

The local sibling who put time and money into the house should receive a greater share in the house, proportionate to the value added - or possibly inherit the house outright.

The two siblings living outside of the local could have good relationships with the parents, or there could have been a serious falling out. Those would be contributing factors to distribution, I think.

Most ethical way of dealing with it would be an agreement and concrete understanding between the siblings for money to go towards all the costs that need to be covered. Probably a % to cover "sacrifice" on part of local sibling, that's assuming he had to sacrifice some labor time towards care, which seems to be the case. And that's assuming siblings can reach agreements/understandings. "Rational" behavior ;d Which is the most important thing to get an "ethical" solution.

If it's about the % due to each person, then the specifics need to be defined into any agreement. Financial status of each, which i think is the most important. Keep the family "balanced". Factoring that whoever might be getting "more" is going to use it in a +EV manner. And, my observation is that alot of times, death of ones parents tends to make one more "responsible" and conscious of your future decisions. Not always the case, but can be.
Assuming in this case that local is the least financially successful, and that he took care of all the process of the death, legal work, real estate and all successfully , you can assume if he does get larger %, he probably will use it in a EV+ way.

Insufficient information.

33% a peice is the only fair payout IMO. I feel this is similar to when business owners try to sell their business ex. Someone puts in 80h a week for 2 years, and 300k of their own money into a starting a business which now generates 70k a year. Now they are tired of doing it and try to sell, everyone offers them 140-150k, this person is insulted and feels they should be compensated (who gives a fuck).
Taking care of your parents is not a paying job, just like they were not being payed to raise you. It's a descion people make based of the goodness of their hearts. If they took care of you and nurtured you when you were unable to do it for yourself (age 0-18) hopefully you return it to them in the last few years of their life. Putting a price on your time while taking care of family members is pretty awful.

What does the will cover anyways?
The gov gets 50% off top of all assets then give 2 weeks notice that division of remaining property etc will be handled. See if 3 siblings have agreement to terms handling remaining 50%. If disputes arise split value and give government any remaining unequal portion in which gov can sell to highest bidder

There should be a rough estimate of what the local sibling spent on the bills and the house, etc. Time spent and emotions spent on the parents are not included, since you can't put a price on that, unless you're a business that already lays out those types of things before going into business with someone else.

After you get a rough estimate of what was spent on bills and such, then it gets tricky. There's probably 1 sibling who has control over the will, which means that person will have more power than the other two. This sibling is probably the one who was taking care of all the bills and stuff you listed.

If the 1 sibling who took care of everything has control over the will, I'd expect that person to take at least 50% of the total inheritance for themselves, which includes 25% of the cut plus an additional 25% of the cut that is for all of the time and stuff spent on the parents, and then divide the other 50% between the two other siblings. So, 50/25/25.

This all gets tricky, cuz we, the LP community, don't know shit about who has control over the will and how much the other 2 siblings stayed in contact + went to see the parents + how much of a scumbag they are, etc.

To sum this up, it all comes down to who has control over the will. From there, it comes down to how generous they are. If the sibling who took care of everything for the parents does not have control over the will, expect* that sibling to get much less than what they deserve, followed by feeling cheated.

Well all the comprobable big things could simply be deducted from the total inheritance, things like hospital bills etc, but a compensation only because he cared more about his parents its not fair and one cannot expect to be compensated for it.

On April 03 2013 23:41 barbieman wrote: Insufficient information.

The whole point of a will is to determine how to dispose of a person's assets after death. If this will doesn't cover that, it must be the shortest will in the world. If there isn't a will, an estate gets split equally to all children.

Also, the government only gets a portion of the estate in estate tax if the net taxable estate is over a certain value (currently $5.25 million).

Finally, there would be a way for the child that is handling the affairs the estate to get more money than his siblings. This is by taking an executor's commission. In other words, the executor can get paid a fee for handling the matters of the estate. If the will does not name an executor (again, if it doesn't, worst will in the world), the child handling the affairs can get the court to assign him executor status.

1/3 for each? One would be a douchebag if he takes care of his parents and then expects a bigger % of the will because of that . Probably just deduct the hospital bills before splitting it.

TT summed it up pretty well imo

TT absolutely nailed this one.

On April 04 2013 08:04 Spitfiree wrote: 1/3 for each? One would be a douchebag if he takes care of his parents and then expects a bigger % of the will because of that . Probably just deduct the hospital bills before splitting it. TT summed it up pretty well imo

The real Douchebag(s) are the sibling(s) that didn't do anything during the process and expect a to receive the same %. The person who took charge shouldn't even have to bring up the subject, should be the others who would propose him to be compensated while the others were using the time for paid labor. One misconception is that often, people don't see much of a value in non-paid labor work comparatively with paid labor.
Dunno how many of you actually have been in such a situation, i haven't, but i know someone close who had, and "taking care of your parents" in such situations, is alot more complicated then it might look. And the real douchebags, are the ones that don't help out with the process, usually because it drains an enormous amount of their own time for any given reason (actually paid work, family etc). Which really doesn't make them douchebags because they should realize at that point that it does take alot of work, and that they didn't do it themselves for that reason, and should compensate their sibling who did commit to the duties.

We are not talking about a +10% share, more like a fee, a 1-2% type thing, "compensation", which is only fair.

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On April 04 2013 09:04 uiCk wrote: The real Douchebag(s) are the sibling(s) that didn't do anything during the process and expect a to receive the same %. The person who took charge shouldn't even have to bring up the subject

With the little info given I gotta say this sounds about right.

Compensate the expenses to whomever, devide the rest equally between the kids.

Ps: Boys should get twice as much as girls. #islam

On April 04 2013 10:23 2c0ntent wrote: Show nested quote + On April 03 2013 21:17 RiKD wrote: Hey LP, Don't think I've really posted in a while but wanted some input. Ethics Questions: 3 siblings. Father passed away years ago. Mother recently passed away. 1 sibling is local. The other 2 are cross country. The local sibling has been responsible for just about everything: dealt with everything leading up to the unfortunate inevitable and afterwards, care, paying bills, restoring/selling the house, etc. The will does not cover inheritance. What is the fair way to handle inheritance and why? Fair is bullshit and searching directly for what is "fair" will only lead to an unhealthy compromise that hurts familial relationships. Best thing is to use a simple rule of thumb: divide the inheritance equally

Your basically using a more popular and wildly solution to what is "fair", a rule of thumb (equal split ignoring all parameters). i don't see how that leads to avoiding unhealthy compromises, i see the contrary.

Also, i see "fair" more less like "optimize". Obviously "Fair" is absolute, and searching for absolutes is bullshit, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try to "optimize" every situation; like this one.

in a situation where Kids wealth > parents wealth by alot (lets say all 3 have 100k in the banks each with 70k yearly income, and parents leave 30k behind ) i would say split even, since the amount will most likely not impact each kid. But switch situations around, and i would say it would be important to "optimize" the split because the amounts will impact the kids, and should be dealt with right away, since if not it WILL impact the relationship of the kids.
Depends on the situations and lack of details, but in this case probably assume that the amount will impact someone in the family in a way that oit should be dealt now (wethere local kid feels that he deserves more, or that other sibling has financial problems, which might be reason why he couldn't help out etc. etc.)

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Not enough info too, are any of the kids hobos? in need for the money? I would say what matters the most is if one of the siblings is actually in need of the money, if no one really needs it then I would expect all the siblings (not only the ones in charge of the parents) to have been giving from their own pockets to help the siblings that were taking care of them parents pay the medical bills and whatnot, if this isn't the case then the cross country children are assholes and I wouldn't share shit with them.

I wouldn't think much about "compensating" the siblings that decided to stay and take care of the parents because that was their own choice.

Although I will say that caring for old folks is like caring for a baby only they aren't amusing, complain more, smell much worse, weight a ton and you aren't really expecting nothing from them but to die, I know because I've cared for both babies and an old lady. So basically you end up with no life and I would keep that in mind if I was a cross country sibling.

Kill the other two
???
Profit

I agree with others about not enough information. We'd need to the full and complete story to make any kind of fair assesment.

33 33 33, as a rule of thumb, is bullshit

in most cases, the kid taking care of the parents is doing so because the other kids are scum and refuse to handle what most would believe is a shared responsibility. the kid getting stuck with the extra responsibility deserves a bigger cut. the argument that "well it was their choice, they shouldnt expect more money" is generally just the shitty kids continuing to be shitty. they deserve less money. if you want a rule of thumb, the kids taking on responsibilities should get double the other kids. 50, 25, 25. if 4 kids, 33,33,17,17, etc.

obv plenty of exceptions exist. and we need more information to determine a more reasonable split. and its also bullshit that the parents didnt make a basic will.

opinion doesn't matter this is a question based in law yeah? so who knows the law, that is your answer. im guessing it's 1/3 each unless otherwise agreed upon.




ethically the answer is obvious, we all know what it is

What if the kids taking care of the parents did so because they just couldn't afford to live on their own, or didn't have any significant future elsewhere so they just decided to stay at home. Are you telling me the parents own money were never used to take care of them? or that the parents didn't have any money for retirement? Plenty of info missing anyway.

On April 03 2013 21:17 RiKD wrote: Hey LP, Don't think I've really posted in a while but wanted some input. Ethics Questions: 3 siblings. Father passed away years ago. Mother recently passed away. 1 sibling is local. The other 2 are cross country. The local sibling has been responsible for just about everything: dealt with everything leading up to the unfortunate inevitable and afterwards, care, paying bills, restoring/selling the house, etc. The will does not cover inheritance. What is the fair way to handle inheritance and why?

Fair would be giving the sibling who helped the most a higher %. It's really not even debatable. It does not have to be a drastic % higher, just enough to cover time and money spent.

On April 04 2013 16:43 asdf2000 wrote: opinion doesn't matter this is a question based in law yeah? so who knows the law, that is your answer. im guessing it's 1/3 each unless otherwise agreed upon. ethically the answer is obvious, we all know what it is

Would depend on the state's probate laws.

if the child was paying for the health care, i cant imagine the inheritance is that much.

but obviously, decide on some compensation for money put in to care, then split equally

On April 04 2013 16:43 asdf2000 wrote: opinion doesn't matter this is a question based in law yeah? so who knows the law, that is your answer. im guessing it's 1/3 each unless otherwise agreed upon. ethically the answer is obvious, we all know what it is

ethics should override law, since law should be based on ethics, and much of it isn't.

On April 04 2013 13:25 2c0ntent wrote: Show nested quote + On April 04 2013 11:28 uiCk wrote:   On April 04 2013 10:23 2c0ntent wrote:   On April 03 2013 21:17 RiKD wrote: Hey LP, Don't think I've really posted in a while but wanted some input. Ethics Questions: 3 siblings. Father passed away years ago. Mother recently passed away. 1 sibling is local. The other 2 are cross country. The local sibling has been responsible for just about everything: dealt with everything leading up to the unfortunate inevitable and afterwards, care, paying bills, restoring/selling the house, etc. The will does not cover inheritance. What is the fair way to handle inheritance and why? Fair is bullshit and searching directly for what is "fair" will only lead to an unhealthy compromise that hurts familial relationships. Best thing is to use a simple rule of thumb: divide the inheritance equally Your basically using a more popular and wildly solution to what is "fair", a rule of thumb (equal split ignoring all parameters). i don't see how that leads to avoiding unhealthy compromises, i see the contrary. Also, i see "fair" more less like "optimize". Obviously "Fair" is absolute, and searching for absolutes is bullshit, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try to "optimize" every situation; like this one. can't optimize in this social domain without introducing potential for bitterness, regret, etc down the road. even split gives the least room for people to feel negative about the compromise because there are the fewest "reasons" for negativity to latch onto and dwell on in the present and future

I don't think you understood me properly, Even split = a way to optimize, a way to judge whats fair. It's your perception of the validity of the even split concept that applies to you. Even split for ME in this case would cause me to have bitterness over fact that my siblings don't value (we can assume and admit that the amount is important to us, and to the siblings, you would be lying or stink rich to not care about value amount) what i did. The potential is there no matter what, unless a understanding and agreement is made between them. In this case, its pretty obvious that the local would be bitter and introduce bitterness into who relationship, since the question is being asked, obviously the local doesn't agree with even split, thus why the question about the ethical side is being asked. if local would not be affected negatively by taking an even split, we wouldn't be discussing this right now,

On April 04 2013 05:17 brambolius wrote: Show nested quote + On April 03 2013 23:41 barbieman wrote: Insufficient information.

Indeed. One could easily come up with a scenario to make either case. For example, imagine the local is the youngest of the 3 siblings. The older siblings helped in raising him, drove him to his soccer practice, tutored him in school, and did most of the chores around the house since they were older, stronger and more mature. Then they start families and move away but the youngest is now a young adult and now he is looking after the parents because he is the only one that is still local. Why should he now be compensated for helping his family when the older siblings weren't compensated for when they helped the family? Just because the chronology of the work just so happened to occur in that way?

Moral of the story: If the local wanted more than 1/3 of the inheritance then he should have made sure arrangements were put in place so that he would be reimbursed by the estate.

It also seems like everyone is putting themselves in the shoes of the local sibling. Try the opposite. How would you feel if one of your siblings felt they deserved the lion's share of the inheritance and you were expected to trust whatever X value of dollars they deserve for what they did. You are across the country, so how do you even know how much the other sibling did for your parents?

On April 04 2013 20:22 Daut wrote: if the child was paying for the health care, i cant imagine the inheritance is that much. but obviously, decide on some compensation for money put in to care, then split equally

I'm guessing what he meant by paying bills was actually doing the leg work of paying them, not actually paying with his own money.

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On April 05 2013 01:37 blackjacki2 wrote: It also seems like everyone is putting themselves in the shoes of the local sibling. Try the opposite. How would you feel if one of your siblings felt they deserved the lion's share of the inheritance and you were expected to trust whatever X value of dollars they deserve for what they did. You are across the country, so how do you even know how much the other sibling did for your parents?

It's no lion share, i think the % increase that has been suggested is rather small and almost negligible (something like: 35.3, 32.3, 32.3 ?), more of sign of good faith towards local who did take the time necessary for other two siblings to not to lose their incomes for given period of time.

How much he did for your parents? serious? he took care of all the legal work, insurance work, funeral arrangements im supposing, etc That's ALOT of time spent. not including direct care of parents(which is the only part that can be argued as in "how much did he really spent time caring for them", the rest can't be argued, since it HAD to be done).

I would hate putting myself in the shoes of the ones "across the country" given that both my parents had to go to another continent all together for similar situation, and both my parents need to work and bring in revenue more then general population (since their pension = money they have to save up, since their pension from their employment will be too little, due to immigrating late in their careers). Don't see how you can't help out, even if it's taking off 1 week of work.
Sure there might be other issues we are not aware, but what are the probabilities that 2 siblings couldn't help out, at all (which is what OP seems to suggest)?