Two siblings forced the sale of our inherited beach house and I can't get over it

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Only on DCUM does co-owning a family beach house spark World War III. It is far classier to be pikers all summer at some community pool and stalk discount travel websites for months on end to afford that annual family trip.

OMFG. Don’t call OP low-class just because she can’t afford to buy a beach house on her own. You sound like a first-class jerk.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Only on DCUM does co-owning a family beach house spark World War III. It is far classier to be pikers all summer at some community pool and stalk discount travel websites for months on end to afford that annual family trip.

No, it’s not only on DCUM. Disputes over shared property among family members has generated hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees for my legal practice over the years.

If you’re able to get along so well with your siblings as to be able to jointly own real estate with them, good for you. You’re probably in the minority. My advice to anyone who inherits real estate jointly is to have the other owners buy you out, or to force a sale.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Only on DCUM does co-owning a family beach house spark World War III. It is far classier to be pikers all summer at some community pool and stalk discount travel websites for months on end to afford that annual family trip.

Apparently this is preferable to OPs sisters or brothers, rather than getting engaged with her -- so, yikes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Only on DCUM does co-owning a family beach house spark World War III. It is far classier to be pikers all summer at some community pool and stalk discount travel websites for months on end to afford that annual family trip.

Apparently this is preferable to OPs sisters or brothers, rather than getting engaged with her -- so, yikes.

Yeah, I’m not surprised OP’s siblings took the money rather than jointly own property with her.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Only on DCUM does co-owning a family beach house spark World War III. It is far classier to be pikers all summer at some community pool and stalk discount travel websites for months on end to afford that annual family trip.

Apparently this is preferable to OPs sisters or brothers, rather than getting engaged with her -- so, yikes.

Yeah, I’m not surprised OP’s siblings took the money rather than jointly own property with her.

At least it's a no-drama dynasty!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Only on DCUM does co-owning a family beach house spark World War III. It is far classier to be pikers all summer at some community pool and stalk discount travel websites for months on end to afford that annual family trip.

Apparently this is preferable to OPs sisters or brothers, rather than getting engaged with her -- so, yikes.

Yeah, I’m not surprised OP’s siblings took the money rather than jointly own property with her.

At least it's a no-drama dynasty!

Absolutely. Someone holding a grudge 6 years later is not a drama llama.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Only on DCUM does co-owning a family beach house spark World War III. It is far classier to be pikers all summer at some community pool and stalk discount travel websites for months on end to afford that annual family trip.

OMFG. Don’t call OP low-class just because she can’t afford to buy a beach house on her own. You sound like a first-class jerk.

OP is not low class because she can’t afford it; she is low class because she is p*asked 6 years later that her brothers were not falling all over themselves to bankroll it for her.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Property was co-owned by our father and uncle. No messy drama. During estate at the end of our dad's life, we were offered the opportunity buy out our uncle for a very fair sum we could all afford. My husband and I wanted to, but my two siblings and their spouses said no. Not only did I know the property would never depreciate, I thought it was important to let our dad stay there with his limited time and also keep the family tradition going. Siblings didn't care, they wanted the cash, so the property was sold.

Now six years later the property is worth three times what it was. We would have millions in equity between the three of us if they listened. In addition, the family tradition was lost. I think it broke my dad's heart before he died that he couldn't spend his remaining months there and know it was staying in the family. It infuriates me so much, especially during a holiday week like this. And siblings have a tenancy to complain how expensive a beach house rental is for their family in the same area.

I bet it would break his heart to know you’re holding a grudge and damaging your relationship with your siblings, over *a house*.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Only on DCUM does co-owning a family beach house spark World War III. It is far classier to be pikers all summer at some community pool and stalk discount travel websites for months on end to afford that annual family trip.

No, it’s not only on DCUM. Disputes over shared property among family members has generated hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees for my legal practice over the years.

If you’re able to get along so well with your siblings as to be able to jointly own real estate with them, good for you. You’re probably in the minority. My advice to anyone who inherits real estate jointly is to have the other owners buy you out, or to force a sale.

Listen to the lawyer above, PPs. Don't own property jointly with relatives. I have never, ever seen it turn out happily, even in families where everyone got along well. Absolute minimum: Some seasonal drama over who gets to use a house when and who has to do a repair or who forgot to clean before they left.. Maximum: Permanent, irreparable rifts. No house or chunk of land is worth that. None. Not even if you think it's full of precious memories.

I thank God that when a greatly beloved, childless relative died and left his huge, delightful house jointly to my daughter and niece (then 6 and 7 years old), we four parents were all immediately on the same page, and my SIL and BIL bought us out as quickly as possible. We lived very far away and had no desire to share a property and the responsibilities, or to become landlords if the house were rented. We got a big chunk of cash we invested for DD, and which has almost entirely paid for DD's college tuition. They got a desirable house they have renovated and look on as their DD's house to keep, live in, rent out, or sell someday--as she pleases. While they have had use of it themselves as their DD has grown up. Everyone won and no one got into a twist about emotional attachment to this admittedly wonderful and memory-filled house.

To the OP, I haven't read every post so sorry if you came back with an update, but: Your issues are twofold, they forced the sale and, separately, you can't get over it.

Only ONE of those things is now in your own control. Only one of those things can be changed at this point. You know which it is. You can choose to keep giving this issue a huge rent-free space inside your head, or you can choose to shift your focus and evict it.

If you are unable to stop thinking about this, seek therapy to work on why you're perseverating about it and how you can get unstuck. Nothing. Is. Worth. Rifts. Over. Property. I know, OP, that you wish dad had been able to live out more time there. That's genuinely sad. But again: You cannot alter that now. Individual therapy (doesn't have to be a lifetime of it, this could be a short-term counseling kind of situation), and if necessary, maybe your therapy can help you script how you need to talk to your siblings about this, to get it out there, if you cannot move forward otherwise. But you are stuck right now and need an objective, professional third party to help you get unstuck, or you'll waste a LOT of your energy and your life on this.

[Anonymous]

Jointly owning property is a nightmare. If it’s filled with cousins, siblings etc all summer then it isn’t being rented out. Maintaining a house on the beach is not cheap. Property taxes, insurance, maintenance, utilities, and then general upkeep f the interior so throw in housekeeping.

The only way for your father and uncle to hand this down to multiple siblings nieces, nephews or whatever would have been to already a. Have it in a trust and b. Have a property management company rent it out for a designated time period to cover the costs of maintenance. OP could have done something where she loaned money to her father to buy the house from the uncle, or became a co owner of the house and had a contractual agreement that the house would rented for more time to cover the buy out.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You need to get over this, OP. Far worse things have happened to people, in terms of inheritances and poor decisions made over them.

My family had a 25 year court battle over my Grandfather's will which led to my uncle and his family not talking to his sisters and their families. I regret the family schism deeply.

Several family members are estranged over the sale of an inherited house that was a money pit. Memories were sold and bitterness grew.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:NP.
OP is sentimental about the beach house. She's probably also disappointed that her 2 siblings didn't even want to discuss buying out the uncle together with her.
She said it all went pretty quickly.
Did all 3 siblings even take the time to discuss all the options available to them?

Siblings did not want to discuss what options were available, because they didn’t want to carry a second vacation home with their siblings, full stop. Commingling money with family is often a recipe for disaster, especially when you have multiple families involved. OP was already complaining on this thread about how her siblings would want to use the house (that they paid for, but whatever…)

If OP seriously (not a flight of fancy) wanted to buy it herself, I trust she could have made a deal with her uncle and father.

It is a tricky dynamic for one sibling to just buy it all. Then what, OP and her husband change the locks and ban the others from visiting after they’ve been going there for 40 years? It also could look greedy and bullying to the broader extended family, as if one sibling is “big-shotting” the others.

The other siblings did not want to be property owners of a property they were not using often. Despite OP's rose color glasses view of the house, owning real estate costs money. What did OP expect would happen when the roof needed to be repaired, when appliances broke, when there was a foundation problem? I bet she expected that they would split the costs, so not only would the siblings have to contribute money towards buying the house from the uncle, but they would have been on the hook for maintaining the house. Yes, they have similar incomes, but OP wanted to dictate not only how she and her husband handled their finances, but also how her siblings and their spouses committed their income. If they wanted to take vacations to Europe or put their kids in private school instead of maintaining an aging vacation home, they are clearly just wrong and they kept her from retaining her nostalgic memories of her childhood.

But, if she decided it was important enough, she and her husband could have taken out a mortgage and bought out her siblings and they would be the sole owners. How would it work if the siblings wanted to use the house? The siblings could have paid rental like an airBnB to come and stay at what was now OP's vacation home. Despite the number of people who post on DCUM about siblings who think they are entitled to use poster's vacation homes, there is no reason that you can't charge family to stay at your vacation property that costs you money to own and to keep up. You can tell them they are getting a "family rate" to stay there and charge them less than you would charge someone else renting your house, but you charge them and tell them that the family rate helps defray the costs of keeping up the vacation property.

And it's not "big shotting" if the siblings were given a chance to buy in and chose not to and to force OP to pay out their portion of the property value. In that case, once she has bought them out, they have no more claim on the property even if they have been going there for 40 years. They sold out their claim and she's not bigshotting. If anything, they owe her appreciation for keeping the property in the family when they didn't want to. They can them pay her back when they want to visit the family vacation home because she's covering to keep it in the family.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Then you should have given them their share in cash. This is your fault, not theirs. I assume you couldn’t afford to buy them out?

We all have similar HHIs, so it would have been unfair to put the full burden on me and my husband. It was a very fair price but it wasn’t exactly a small sim; ot would have been a stretch for just us. Not to mention they likely would have tried to keep using it, right. I didn’t want that dynamic either.

You made a conscious choice here and you regret it, which is understandable. Blaming your siblings is not.

[Anonymous]

OP here. All of us were still using the property up until it was sold. And my two siblings and their families continue to vacation in the same area, which is why I mentioned they complain about the cost of vacation rentals and express regret we lost our family property. At the time they simply wanted the free money. I honestly don’t stew on this constantly, sorry if it seemed that way. It’s just a memorial weekend week like this does bring it to the surface as I think about the property, the memories our children and their cousins don’t get to have there, and my late father. And yes, the millions of dollars we lost.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Then you should have given them their share in cash. This is your fault, not theirs. I assume you couldn’t afford to buy them out?

We all have similar HHIs, so it would have been unfair to put the full burden on me and my husband. It was a very fair price but it wasn’t exactly a small sim; ot would have been a stretch for just us. Not to mention they likely would have tried to keep using it, right. I didn’t want that dynamic either.

It is what it is. At the buyout, you would have had them sign a document on the terms of use, including fair market rent for comparable properties. Yes, it sucks, but if you are not going to buy out, then there is nothing you can do and need to let this go.