Siblings and inheritance: when you argue over a watch but it’s about something else

“Mum always said the watch was mine. Always. And now he has it in a drawer, as if it were the most natural thing in the world.”

The watch she is talking about is not especially valuable. It is old, mechanical, with a scratched glass. Her brother took it when they were clearing the flat three weeks after the funeral, and when she asked him about it, he said he could not remember Mum promising anything to anyone. They have not spoken since. Not because of the watch, she says. But also because of the watch.

Stories like this happen in families far more often than we admit. When parents die, something that has been closed for years often opens up between siblings. On the surface it is about dividing things: the house, the savings, the car, what is in the wardrobe. Underneath there is almost always another question — who was I in this family, and did anyone see it? In this post I want to explain why a dispute over an inheritance flares up so quickly, why a legal division often fails to put it out, and what you can do if you find yourself in the middle of one.

Why siblings fall out right now

People are often surprised at themselves. “But my brother and I get on, we always have.” And then, while clearing the flat, a single remark sets off an anger you have not felt in thirty years. There are several reasons for this, and none of them has to do with character.

The first is grief. A dispute over an inheritance almost always happens in the weeks or months after a death, when every sibling is exhausted, irritable and vulnerable. Grief is not only sadness — it is also anger, guilt and the feeling that the ground has given way beneath you. That anger has nowhere to go; the person who died is no longer there. But your sibling is.

The second reason is that the person who held the family together has gone. Parents were often a quiet regulator: siblings met at their house, at Christmas, on birthdays. Mum would ring one of them and pass on news about the other. Once that centre is gone, you see what the relationship between the siblings is like on its own — without a go-between. Sometimes it is solid. Sometimes it turns out that someone else was carrying it.

The third reason is that an inheritance demands decisions that cannot be postponed. The house has to be sold or kept, the flat emptied, the papers signed. Each of these decisions raises the question of fairness, and each comes with a deadline.

In a national survey he describes in his book Fault Lines, the American sociologist Karl Pillemer found that around 27 per cent of American adults were currently estranged from a family member. Among the reasons people described most often, inheritance and an uneven division of care for ageing parents came up again and again. The figure applies to the United States and cannot simply be transferred to Slovenia, but many people will recognise the pattern it describes in their own families.

Things that are not just things

The most surprising part is that siblings often do not fall out over the big things. A house has a price, savings have an amount; these can be divided, valued, calculated. The worst disputes flare up around objects with almost no market value at all: Mum’s baking tin, Dad’s tools, an old watch, photographs, letters, a handwritten recipe.

The American researcher Marlene Stum studied this specifically and showed that dividing personal belongings — the ones with no official owner or title — is often harder for families than dividing property. There is no rule for how these objects should be shared, and each sibling sees something different in them.

After a parent’s death, an object carries several layers at once. One is value. Another is memory. The third is recognition — proof that I meant something to my parent, that they promised me something, that they chose me. The fourth is a place in the family: who was closer, who was overlooked, who always got more. I wrote about everything that passes from generation to generation besides objects in What I inherited besides genes: a family’s emotional legacy.

When a sister says “the watch is mine”, she may not be talking about the watch. She may be talking about the time Mum, alone with her in the kitchen, said something that meant: you are special to me. When a brother says “I don’t remember her promising anything”, he may not be lying. But perhaps he is not talking about the watch either — perhaps he is talking about the fact that nobody ever promised him anything in particular.

Who cared, and who inherits

In most families who fall out over an inheritance, it turns out the dispute did not start with the death. It started years earlier — at the point when the parents needed help. That help is almost never shared evenly. Usually one child carries it, most often the one who lives closest, the daughter, or the one who was already seen as the responsible one in childhood. The others help now and then, send money or ring on Sundays.

During the years of care this imbalance is often left unspoken. The one who cares stays silent, not wanting a row beside a sick parent. The one who does not care does not ask, perhaps out of shame, or because they think everything is in hand. I described how this silence arises and how to address it while the parent is still alive in When your brother or sister won’t help care for your parents, and wrote about money during this period in Money and caring for parents: who pays and who does the work.

When it comes to the inheritance, this account lands on the table. The law generally divides equally between children. But someone who visited their mother every day for ten years does not experience an equal share as fair. For them, equal is not equal. And the one who lived far away feels accused of something they could not have changed.

Two understandings of fairness meet here, and both are legitimate. One says: we are all children, everyone gets the same. The other says: whoever gave more should have that seen. Neither is wrong. But the dispute becomes endless when each person defends their own understanding as if it were the only one possible.

Old roles come back

In every family children have their roles. One is the responsible one, another the sensitive one, a third the one who always slips away, a fourth the one who keeps the peace. These roles form early and are often more stubborn than we think — you will find a short explanation in the knowledge base under roles in the family.

While siblings live their separate adult lives, these roles stay in the background. When a parent dies, amid grief and the pressure of decisions, they return with astonishing speed. A fifty-year-old engineer who runs a department suddenly feels, in a conversation with his older sister, like a twelve-year-old nobody takes seriously. A daughter who looked after her younger brothers as a child because her mother could not cope once again sorts everything out herself — and is once again angry that it all falls on her. This is the pattern I describe in the knowledge base under parentification.

In a long-running research project, Jill Suitor and Karl Pillemer showed that most parents, even in old age, have different relationships with each of their children — they are closer to one, expect more from another, find it easier to talk to a third. Adult children sense this, even when their parents insist they love them all the same. And perceived favouritism was linked in their research to poorer relationships between siblings, regardless of who was the “chosen” one. I wrote about how comparison in childhood shapes the way you see yourself in “Why can’t you be like your sister?” Sibling comparison and how you see yourself.

An inheritance is the last chance for a parent to “speak” about whom they loved and how. That is why a will or a spoken promise is read as a verdict. Even when the parent thought about it in purely practical terms.

Invisible loyalties and the ledger of merit

The Hungarian-American family therapist Ivan Boszormenyi-Nagy described something he called invisible loyalties. In every family there runs a kind of unwritten ledger of merits and debts — who gave what to whom, who was short-changed, who owes. That ledger does not close with death. When the parent is gone, the open accounts are often transferred between the siblings.

In relational family therapy, in which I am training, Christian Gostečnik describes how the emotional atmospheres of our family of origin repeat themselves in our relationships. If two siblings were rivals for their mother’s attention as children, the same contest can play out over her estate — with the same feeling that there can be only one winner. Siblings also often unconsciously take on the roles their parents played: one becomes the strict father, the other the wounded mother.

Another important pattern is what we call triangulation: when tension between two people is relieved through a third. Around an inheritance this happens when one sibling sends messages to another through a third, when two siblings join forces against a fourth, or when a parent, while still alive, complains to one child about another. I wrote at greater length about these invisible alliances in Siblings, alliances and coalitions: the invisible geometry of a family.

Partners and in-laws

Conversations about an inheritance also include people who were not that parent’s children: the siblings’ partners. Their role is more demanding than it seems. On the one hand, they are not part of the original ledger and may see things more soberly. On the other, they do not share the grief in the same way, they have their own interests, and they often find it easier to say what their partner does not dare to.

A common pattern is that the siblings themselves still get on somehow, while the tension is carried by their partners — a daughter-in-law who thinks her husband is “giving in to his sister again”, or a son-in-law who is the first to mention a solicitor. The siblings then find themselves torn between loyalty to their family of origin and loyalty to their partner. It helps the partner to understand that their role is not to fight on their partner’s behalf, but to help them work out what they themselves want.

What a dispute that isn’t about the house sounds like

This is how a conversation between two sisters about their mother’s flat might sound (composite, not a real person):

“I suggest we sell the flat and split the money in half. That’s the fairest way.”
“Fair. You came to visit at Christmas. I bathed her every day for the last three years.”
“I know you did more. What do you want me to do now?”
“Nothing. Just say once that you know. Not in passing.”
Silence. “I know. It wouldn’t have worked without you. I couldn’t have done it.”
“… That was all I wanted to hear. We’ll sort the flat out.”

Of course, in real life it does not always end so well. But the conversation shows something important: the sister did not want more money. She wanted her years of caring to be seen. Until she got that, she experienced every proposal about the flat as one more confirmation that nobody noticed.

An exercise: separate the object from its meaning

If you are in the middle of tension with a sibling, or can see it coming, you can do this exercise on your own, today, with a pen and paper.

1. Write down what it is about. On the left of the page, list the concrete things that are causing friction: the house, the watch, who will deal with the paperwork, how the money is divided.
2. Next to each, write what it means to you. On the right, beside each item, write what it carries for you. Not the reasons it should be yours, but what you remember when you think of it, or what you would gain from it. For example: “that my caring was seen” or “that I was part of the family too”.
3. Look for what could be given another way. For each meaning, ask yourself: could I get this without the object? Recognition can be spoken. A memory can be shared — through a photograph, an agreement that the object passes between you, or by each person taking one smaller piece.
4. Write down what you think it means to your sibling. Look at the same object from their side. Do not guess at bad intentions; ask yourself what they might be afraid of or what they might be missing.
5. Choose one sentence for the conversation. From the right-hand column, pick one thing you could say without accusing. For example: “It isn’t really about the watch. It’s about the fact that I was the one dressing her those last years.”

The exercise will not settle the division. But it can help you avoid walking into the conversation with a demand that is really grief.

When a third person helps

Dividing an inheritance involves two tables, and it is worth keeping them apart. At one sit the legal questions: who inherits, what the will says, how the procedure is carried out. For these, the right people to turn to are a notary, a lawyer and the court — not a therapist, and not the relative who heard how it went next door. At the other table sit the emotional questions: who was what to whom, who was seen and who was not, how we grieve.

When siblings cannot agree on the division themselves, it is worth knowing that mediation exists — a conversation with a neutral third person who is not a judge and does not decide, but helps everyone be heard. For legal details such as deadlines, shares and procedures, turn to a notary or a lawyer; the rules depend on the circumstances, and I will not try to summarise them here.

The emotional table usually needs a different kind of space. Sometimes it is a long walk with your brother, phones left behind. Sometimes it is a conversation with someone outside the family. And sometimes it is therapy — individual or family — where you can explore what is really going on beneath the dispute. A genogram can help here: a drawing of the family across several generations, which often reveals that a similar dispute has happened before.

It also helps if a family talks about money and property while the parents are still alive. That is not in poor taste — it is a way of making sure the children are not left with nothing but guesses. I described how to approach such a conversation in Inheritance and children: how to talk about wealth in the family, and wrote about the tensions that creep into a holiday meal when an inheritance is at stake in Family holidays when there is an inheritance on the table.

When it isn’t about feelings

I want to be honest here, because it would be wrong to explain every dispute over an inheritance in terms of grief and childhood wounds.

Sometimes it really is about money. For someone in an insecure housing situation or in debt, a share of an inheritance is not a symbol but survival. In that case it makes sense to talk openly about the real hardship rather than search for hidden meanings.

Sometimes it is about injustice or abuse. If one of the siblings handled a parent’s money dishonestly while the parent was frail, pressured them over the will, or hid assets, that is not a misunderstanding that recognition can resolve. It is a question for a lawyer and, if necessary, for the court.

Sometimes reconciliation is neither possible nor necessary. Some sibling relationships were already marked by violence, exploitation or long-term neglect. In that case a measured distance can be healthier than a forced “let’s talk”. An inheritance can also be divided through lawyers, without shared dinners. Peace is not always the same as closeness.

And sometimes the will really is unfair. Parents are human. Some deliberately reward or punish through an inheritance; some use it as the last word in an argument they never resolved in life. In that case the anger is not excessive but understandable. It helps, though, not to direct it at a sibling who did not write the will either. I wrote about the sadness that comes with realising our parents were not who we needed them to be in Seeing your parents as they really are: the loss of idealisation.

What to remember

• A dispute over an inheritance flares up in grief, when the parent who held the family together is gone — it is not a sign that you never liked each other.
• The worst disputes are often over objects of little value, because they carry memory, recognition and a place in the family.
• Unevenly shared care for parents lands on the table when it comes to dividing things; equal is not always experienced as fair.
• Legal and emotional questions each need their own space — a notary or mediator for the first, a conversation or therapy for the second.
• Where there is abuse or genuine hardship, it is first a legal or social question, not one to be explained by feelings.