Bobby Gets Bubkes: Navigating the Sibling Estate Fight

By Charles B. Ticker

Fighting with a sibling over your parent's estate? Before taking another step, read this book!

Estate litigation lawyer and mediation specialist Charles Ticker has written an invaluable book on how to navigate the sibling estate fight. The book discusses the source of sibling estate fights and competing concepts of fairness. The book sets out common sibling estate fight scenarios and gives examples from real cases and celebrity estates. Alternative dispute resolution options such as mediation are discussed.

An essential guide for anyone involved in a fight over an estate.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Jul 22, 2019
• ISBN: 9780987910837

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Mom Always Liked You Best!

Sibling Rivalry—The Source of Estate Disputes

Sibling relationships — and 80 percent of Americans have at least one — outlast marriages, survive the death of parents, resurface after quarrels that would sink any friendship. They flourish in a thousand incarnations of closeness and distance, warmth, loyalty and distrust.

– Erica E. Goode

The Smothers Brothers had a hugely successful television show. Everyone remembers their most famous routine when Tommy would complain to his brother Dick: Mom always liked you best!

Tommy Smothers once said that the audience went wild when he came out with that line, and his theory was that it really resonated because the audience could relate to the experience.

I recall speaking at an event with approximately 100 people in attendance. I asked the attendees how many had siblings. Almost every hand went up. I then asked, Who can’t stand their siblings? I was amazed that about 10 hands remained up.

I remember throwing a shoe at my younger sister when she was five and I was ten because she was messing with my stuff. Ever try to play Monopoly without the plastic houses? Eventually my dad had to get me a huge locked cabinet to protect what was mine. You would think that my sister would forget the shoe incident — not a chance. She mentioned it at my wedding almost 20 years later!

Sibling estate fights have deep roots that go way back to childhood. In my almost 40 years of experience as a civil litigation lawyer — focusing for the last several years on estate disputes — I’m amazed at how often childhood fights or experiences come up in estate disputes between adult siblings.

I once had a client suing his brother because Dad left him out of the will. In our first meeting, the client revealed that he was still mourning the pet turtle his brother had killed when my client was nine years old.

Apparently, a sibling maltreating a sibling’s pet to get back at that sibling is not so uncommon. In an article in Psychology Today,1 Jane Mersky Leder writes about a young adult named Karen who was willing to forgive her sister and forget about the seven beloved pet parakeets her sister, who was then a child, had let out the window, one at a time. According to the article, Karen tried, but couldn’t make the relationship with her estranged sister work out. She and her sister never did reconcile.

The Leder article in Psychology Today describes the work of Judy Dunn, a psychologist who has specialized in studying sibling relationships. According to Dunn, from the age of one year on, children are acutely sensitive to how they are being treated in relation to their siblings. When a parent shows more love, gives more attention or is unable or unwilling to monitor the goings-on between children, it is often the siblings and their relationships that suffer.

Sibling rivalry is well known. Psychologist Dr. Jeanne Safer, in her book Cain’s Legacy,2 writes that at least one-third of adult siblings suffer serious sibling strife, and the numbers rise significantly to 45 percent when clinicians make deeper inquiries.

Serious sibling strife leads to estate fights.

If you are involved in an estate fight with your sibling, rest assured that you are not alone. More and more sibling estate fights are filling the Court dockets and, as a result, more and more estates are being eaten up by lawyers’ fees.

Little kids will often exclaim, It’s not fair! The same refrain can be heard in many an estate litigator’s office when an adult child is left out of a parent’s will or if he receives a smaller share than his sibling.

Sibling estate fights are not only about money. Children, both young and adult, compete for the love of their parents. When a child is not treated equally in the will, it is interpreted as a statement by the parent that the child receiving less was not as loved as his sibling. That rejection stirs up deep emotions that can drive the sibling estate fight. A sibling who has been treated unequally in a will might be litigating simply to gain understanding of the parent’s reasoning.

Is Sibling Rivalry in Our Genes?

What are the dynamics driving estate fights between siblings? Scientists have argued that sibling rivalry is in our genes. Dr. Safer notes that biologists studying various species of microbes, animals and plants have been able to document and record some pretty brutal examples of sibling rivalry. For example, there are colonies of bacteria that secrete a lethal antibacterial compound to inhibit the growth of their sibling bacteria.3

Further examples are offered by Dr. Safer. In the plant world, the first seed of the Indian rosewood secretes a poison that silently kills every one of its pod-mates within weeks.4 Tiger shark embryos have teeth and the first shark to hatch feeds on the other eggs with fully functioning teeth, so that the largest baby shark survives.5 In the Galapagos Islands, a bird called the blue-footed Booby lays two eggs a few days apart. If one egg does not hatch or if a chick dies within a few days of being born, there is a second egg that can be relied upon. However, if both chicks hatch, there is not enough food for both of them. The older chick pecks the other chick to death or pushes it out of the nest. This is all done in the presence of the mother bird who does nothing.6

Similarly, baby eaglets are prone to killing their siblings. The firstborn eaglet either casts its younger sibling out of the nest in front of the parents or pecks it to death. Newborn spotted hyenas will bite their twin siblings with the result that close to 25 percent die of their wounds.7

Biologists and psychologists have come up with a theory known as evolutionary psychology, which maintains that the biological struggle for survival that is observed in the plant and animal kingdom has also been encoded in humans. In his book Blood & Money 8 attorney P. Mark Accettura suggests that sibling rivalry, a key component of family inheritance conflicts, can be explained as part of the evolutionary struggle for survival.

Sibling Rivalry in the Bible

Clients involved in estate disputes alleging undue influence often speak of their sibling stealing their inheritance, much like Esau complained about his brother Jacob. Indeed, there are numerous stories of sibling rivalry in the Bible.

The Book of Genesis contains several examples of sibling rivalry. The first story about sibling rivalry is of Cain and Abel. They were the two sons of Adam and Eve. Cain, the firstborn, was a farmer. His younger brother, Abel, was a shepherd. Each of them made sacrifices to God. Abel’s sacrifice was accepted by God. Cain’s sacrifice was rejected. This rejection infuriated Cain. However, God told him that if he did the right thing, his sacrifice would be accepted. Unfortunately, Cain disregarded God’s advice. Instead, he took his anger out on his brother. He invited his brother out for a walk and murdered him. This was the first known case of fratricide. The story of Cain and Abel is an extreme case of sibling rivalry gone wrong, but it points out that siblings can be predisposed to rivalry and jealousy. Indeed, reports of fratricide in the media are not that