Family disputes, unexpected events, unusual circumstances… Failed inheritances are not uncommon. Two notaries tell some of them.
Michel Beauchamp, a notary specializing in the liquidation of estates and lecturer at the University of Montreal’s Faculty of Law, has experienced difficult times during his many years as a lawyer. He mentions that inheritance issues generally arise from family history and not from the will. “As long as the parents are still alive, the children can feel certain injustices, but everyone is silent. “People settle their scores with death,” he explains.
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For example, a father donated $10,000 to one of his children’s weddings during his lifetime. The other did not marry and received nothing. He feels he has been treated unfairly and demands compensation from his inheritance. Or a mother left $300,000 equally to her two children, a boy and a girl. She also left her daughter worthless jewelry. “The son wanted to get half for his wife, but his sister refused. The situation worsened, leading to many complications [des] Deadlines,” explains Me Beauchamp. He adds that difficulties can also arise when sharing tools or other items that belonged to parents.
“The human comedy is found in sequence because it is about people and psychology. It is also difficult to reason with people in such situations because they experience many emotions related to death and perhaps a sense of injustice that extends over several decades,” mentions Me Beauchamp.
- Listen to Yves Daoust’s economic contribution where he talks about family conflicts arising from inheritance QUB radio :
The collateral damage can be very great: cousins who considered each other brothers no longer talk to each other, couples divorce, others fall into depression. Sometimes we even witness the suicide of an heir.
Me Beauchamp also recalls the case of a childless woman who left an inheritance of $700,000, divided equally among her seven nephews and nieces. “This woman always said she had treasures in her shed. We actually found two fishing chests full of worthless jewelry. Since the heirs couldn’t agree on this, the tackle boxes sat in my office for over two years. “Finally, one of the nieces paid $700 to the other heirs to be able to preserve it,” says the notary.
Bad surprises and disappointments
Unpleasant surprises are not uncommon when an inheritance occurs. “We may think that the deceased is rich because he had a great lifestyle, but at death we see that everything is on credit and that he was heavily in debt,” mentions Mr. Beauchamp. The heirs must therefore refuse the inheritance in order not to have to pay the debts. They even turn against their new partner and accuse her of “getting her hands on her father’s money”!
Another anecdote: the disappointment of the heirs who thought that their uncle, who worked illegally and regularly deposited cash in his bank safe deposit box, was rolling in gold. What was their disappointment when, upon opening the famous chest, they discovered that it was completely empty. “What they didn’t know was that every time the uncle went to the bank, he also took money out of the safe. At the end of the day there was nothing left,” says Me Beauchamp.
Endless delays
For his part, Lionel Neyts, notary and legal popularizer in Éducaloi, remembers a wealthy family in which an agreement had been made between the father and his children on the division of property after his death. “But a pact about future succession has no legal value, and the settlement of the succession ultimately took six years, the time in which the heirs could come to an agreement,” he remembers.
He also tells of the case of three children, one of whom could not get along with the others. After their father appointed one of them as executor of the estate, at the time of death the son, in conflict with the other two, systematically resisted the executor’s actions. This blockage lasted for a long time.
The notary closes with a situation that is unusual to say the least: the murder of a woman in her apartment. “His only heir, his sister, did not have access to his will, which was in the house because it had been sealed by the police as it was a crime scene,” he said. If the will had been notarized, a simple call to the Chamber of Notaries would have given him access to it.
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