Here’s the bare bones of the situation:
Dad recently passed away, leaving 3 adult children; sib1, sib2, and myself. Decades ago sib2 accused Dad of sexual abuse, sued him in civil court, lost, and was disinherited.
Now sib2 is asking sib1 and me to give sib2 1/3 of our inheritance. She feels she deserves compensation for the abuse, and that this negates Dad’s (and stepmom’s, also deceased) strongly stated desires re: disinheritance.
What do you think?
Do you believe sib2’s claim of sexual abuse?
On the fact of it, I would say no - did you father and stepmother both have Wills that specifically said sib2 was disinherited and would get nothing from either of them? How do you and sib1 feel about that?
If there are expressly stated wishes in a Will that define what both dad and stepmum wanted, are you prepared to go against that? How would that make you feel afterwards?
Final thought would be about sib2’s accusation. Do you think there was any truth in it? If she lost in court then presumably the facts of the accusation have already been laid out and discussed so on the basis of that, do you think there is any validity in the claim that would justify her having a third of your combined inheritance?
Provable facts. I know of one SA case that, based on other things, I completely believe but was not even close to being provable despite the police’s best efforts.
Once you and sib1 receive your inheritance, it becomes your asset(s), and you are free to do with it what you want.
Isn’t it that simple?
mmm
IANAL, but are you asking what people think legally or morally?
Legally, just because sib2 thinks she “deserves” compensation doesn’t mean she is entitled to it.
As for what you should do, I suppose that’s up to you and sib1. Is it worth 1/3 of your what is essentially “found money” to preserve the relationship?
How large of a fortune are we talking about? I mean if you give 1/3 away to your sibling, will you be out of the Tres Commas Club?
It’s your money. If you give some of it to her there may be tax consequences.
That being said, if it were me, and i believed her accusation, i would give her the money. Otherwise, your father fucked her when he was alive and fucked her again when he died.
If you don’t believe the accusation, then i dunno, do you think she believed it? How would it make you feel either way? What’s your relationship with the sister and what do you want it to be?
That’s the question OP needs to ponder.
Do you believe sib2’s accusation? Were you called to provide testimony?
It’s a personal issue for you and your siblings. If you feel like sib2 deserves the money, then give them 1/3 of your inheritance. If sib1 feels sib2 deserves the money, they can do the same.
I think she should get 1/3rd because it will help her through whatever she is dealing with. This is distressing to her no matter if the allegations are true or not. She lost the relationship with her parents, which has a huge emotional impact on anyone. Her remaining siblings can help restore some of her feelings of self worth and self confidence by agreeing to split the estate in 1/3rds. That will make her feel like an equal part of the family rather than an estranged outsider.
If you go that route, consult with an estate attorney. I believe the executor has some leeway in distributing the estate, and can divide it into 1/3rds rather than 1/2 if the heirs are in agreement. As for tax consequences if the other heirs give part of their share to this sibling, that only really matters if they go over the max lifetime gift tax amount (something like $11M?). An estate attorney would be able to resolve any issues like these.
ETA: wrote this then sat an hour before posting while everybody else said mostly the same thing. Sorry to pile on redundantly.
As a matter of law you must follow the terms of the will.
However once the probate is complete and you and sib1 have deposited the estate’s payouts into your accounts, you’re each free to do whatever you want with what’s now solely your own money. You can burn it, buy booze with it, give it to the local cat orphanage, or give it to sib2. In any combination you prefer. You and sib1 have no need to do the same thing. There are tax consequences both positive and negative to bear in mind for any gift to a charity or to sib2. Burning it and drinking it are tax-free actions.
So far so easy. Now comes the hard part.
Your Mom and Dad will never know nor care what you & sib1 do next. You two are the ones who have to live with each other, with sib2, and with the consequences of your actions. You don’t mention if sib1 or you are married or have kids. Which if so add additional interested parties into the mix.
Note that sib2 also has to live with the consequences of her actions now. Having unilaterally chosen to open this can of worms, she now must be prepared to eat them. IOW, the mere fact she’s asked does not mean the asking was/is reasonable.
Ultimately this is about you and sib1 buying a different future from sib2. Whether that’s knuckling under to blackmail or being a stand-up fair-minded person is for you each to decide. It’s also worth considering if that different future will stay bought or if sib2 will say “Thank you” quickly followed by “What have you done for me lately?”
I will suggest that to the degree sib1 & you do similar things, that future will be better.
Good luck. Seriously, not snarkily.
Story time:
I nearly had a similar problem wherein my wife & her one sister were treated very differently in their mother’s will because reasons that made sense to emotionally blackmailing people from the 1920s. But that made no sense to my wife, her sis/my SIL, or to me.
Anyhow, wife and I had a standing plan for decades that when Mom died and after the estate was settled we’d make sure sis/SIL got 50% of Mom’s payout. Because that was unequivocally the right thing to do. Both for moral justice and to avoid putting an utterly unnecessary and unwanted wedge between wife & her sis. It was helpful that wife & I were much wealthier than sis, so the practical negative impact on us would be much smaller than the practical positive impact on her. So Win-win sorta.
Leaving out a lot of irrelevant detail, my wife died first so the issue became moot. But we had a plan.
As this might apply to the OP he needs to consider how differently $X will affect sib1 and himself as well as whatever families they have. Sharing the pain equally and sharing the dollars equally are not necessarily the same thing. if indeed anything is to be shared w sib2 at all.
Really? If the allegations are false, what about the emotional impact on the father and the rest of the family? If someone falsely accused you of a serious crime and sued you, would you volunteer to give them your money to help them get over the stress they experienced as a result of the false accusation?
Does anyone ever “deserve” an inheritance?
What is “just” is another question. Do the OP and the other sib who did not sue over abuse “deserve” more because of the alleged abuse?
Different bar than legal. If there is any reasonable possibility that the abuse occurred then no question I pass on what I got in excess due to events. Otherwise I’d feel like I was aiding and abetting the abuse after the fact.
I may never have a relationship with the abused sib in any case but it won’t be because I had been an ass.
IMO it basically comes down to how you feel re: sib2. Do you believe her? Like her? Desire continued relations with her? If you believe her, how do you feel about dead dad?
I’ve known many situations in which people received less than an “equal proportionate share” of an inheritance. Not sure I can think of a single case in which the folk who got larger shares evened things out.
My wife’s dad disinherited her and 1 of her 2 sisters in favor of the 3d sister and his other family. For us, never having to deal with any of those folk is all we could have hoped for! 
I can’t tell you what to do - that’s going to depend on how you feel about your sibling, whether you believes the sibling about the abuse, financial implications and so on. But what I will say is your father left you and the other sibling his estate. And once his estate has been divided between the two of you, his wishes have been followed and the money belongs to you and sibling 1. At that point, your father’s wishes are irrelevant - he doesn’t get a say in who you give your money to.
The money is yours. Your parents gave it to you to do with as you choose. What do you want to do?
If you believe her and think your parents wronged her by leaving her out of the will, the answer is obvious. If you don’t believe her but you sympathize with whatever struggles caused her to make the false accusation and you forgave her, give her the money. If you don’t believe her but you are willing to spend some of the inheritance to strengthen your relationship with her nonetheless, give her the money. If you don’t care about the money, share it with her. If none of these things apply, keep it.
I actual sort of know of one - my husband was was adopted and met his bio-family when he was about 30. When bio-mom died, she left her estate to her children to be divided equally and they decided to include my husband in the split although due to the adoption he wasn’t included in “her children” for inheritance purposes. So it happens sometimes.
If the allegations are false, and I were her father, I would wonder what I did to invite this treatment or what was wrong with her to make the allegations. I don’t think I would disinherit her (although I can’t suppose I would know unless it happened to me). Disinheriting a daughter seems like the kind of thing a controlling abusive asshole does to get revenge from the grave.
Good for them. Thanks for sharing. Out of curiosity, did your H share both parents with the other children, or just the same mother?
One older full brother, two younger half-sisters. Bio-father abandoned her while she was pregnant.