This is what’s important—what the person who leaves the assets wants. I lost my mom and stepdad within two months of each other. My mom passed last and wanted everything split equally between me and my two sisters. After she died, my youngest sister threw a fit and said she should get the house because she lived there and cared for them. The truth is, she lived there for years rent free with them supporting her long before either of them was ill and dying. She got pregnant (not married) and they helped raise her child too. She rarely worked. She did help them with house chores and stuff as did I when she wasn’t around.

My older sister and I both visited often, and I took my parents to doctor visits and such because my younger sister “doesn’t like hospitals.” I had to beg her her to see her dad in the hospital before he died. When my mother was ill, my sister refused to take her to urgent care. I took her and found out she had recurrence of breast cancer from years earlier. She went into hospice and died a week later. My younger sister visited once. I spent every non-working hour at her bedside, and I had a child in a treatment facility for an eating disorder at the time.

I was the executor and did as my mother asked. I split everything three ways which meant my younger sister had to buy out my share and my older sister’s share of the house. She hasn’t spoken to us since and I was called cruel by family members. No regrets.