Asking Eric: Brother-in-law gets aggressive about inheritance split

Dear Eric: My brother passed in 2023. He was not married and had no children. He left an estate of $1.5 million. My two sisters and I split his estate equally and have finally closed the estate. From the start, my older sister’s husband protested that we should not split the estate equally. He says we should have split it to “level the retirement playing field.” In other words, I should have declined my inheritance to give my sisters a retirement financially equivalent to what my husband and I have.

My brother-in-law is still being very aggressive that I need to gift my inheritance to my sisters and not share my inheritance with my adult children. Neither my sisters nor I agree with this. We, including my husband, are all disgusted by this aggressive repeated request from my brother-in-law.

My sisters made different career and financial decisions than my husband and me. They are not concerned that my husband and I have a much more comfortable retirement than they do. However, it really makes my brother-in-law angry. I have repeatedly told him to stop asking and refuse to discuss it. But he keeps bringing it up, as if he has a right to dictate how my sisters and I split our brother’s estate.

I do not want to cut ties with my older sister. As she usually does with disagreements with her husband, she has given up on telling him to drop it. If he knows we are talking, he butts into our conversation or takes her phone away to make his demand again. I do not want to drop contact with my older sister, but I need this discussion to stop. How can I set boundaries that he will recognize without losing my relationship with my sister?

— Frustrated Sister-in-law

Dear Sister-in-law: The utter gall of this man! He doesn’t have a penny in this nickel, and yet here he is repeatedly adding his two cents. You’ve already discussed this at length with your sisters and, presumably, worked with an attorney. The estate is settled, so essentially what he’s doing right now is trying to bully you into writing him a personal check for a couple hundred thousand dollars. I do not think so.

Bullying is not an acceptable form of familial communication. Unfortunately, he’s made it clear that he is not interested in respecting the agreement that you’ve made or the line you’ve drawn. You may even need to formally cut off contact with him and talk to your sister about how you two can maintain your relationship away from him.

This puts a burden on your sister that’s not totally fair, but that, too, is her husband’s doing. You wouldn’t be asking her to choose between the two of you. Ask her what you both can do to maintain your bond. Ask her to work on her side to make this easier, whether that means deciding that she’ll keep him away from the phone when you’re talking or having a harder, stricter set of consequences with him. Though she’s not responsible for his bad behavior, she has more leverage than you. But you would probably do best not to spend another moment trying to reason with him.

Dear Eric: I’ve been mentoring a young lady since she was in middle school. She’s in her early 30s now. She came from a very difficult background but has always had great tenacity and a circle of mentors who have encouraged her along the way. She’s doing incredibly well, graduated from college, has a good job and a car.