I was living with a girl once, well she kind of just moved in on me is more accurate. Anyway she had an accident and was arrested for drunk driving and sentenced to one year in jail, not her first obviously. Her diary sat on the night stand next to my bed unlocked the whole time. I resisted a very strong urge to read it. 3 months after getting out of jail she got in trouble again. This time I read it, all I can say is that I wished I would have read it the first time, it would have saved me a lot of trouble.
First, let me offer my condolences on the loss of your brother.
Now, to the question at hand, I would do exactly what you’re doing: I would not read the journals myself and I would not give my sibling a hard time if he/she chose to do so.
Anyone else going home tonight and burning their journal?
I would read them. I think there is much to gain and little to lose in the process.
You will gain knowledge. How you feel about that knowledge is what you seem to be afraid of. You may find out how he felt about things. He must have wanted someone to read these someday. why did he write it down? A ledger I can understand writing that down, not intended for others. But a journal? It should be read.
I don’t understand why someone would be upset finding out their mother was engaged once previously.
I’ll thank you not to to pretend to read my mind. You can’t. You haven’t a damn clue what I am or am not afraid of.
I forbore to read my brother’s diaries because of the Golden Rule. I wouldn’t want anyone reading my journals after I have died, so I must work under the assumption my brother felt likewise. I keep a journal and have since I was, oh, less than ten. I don’t want anyone else reading them, because that’s where I work out my most intimate thoughts, shared with no one. They’re private. For more than a decade I’ve kept them in password-protected computer files. Not even my wife gets to read them.
I did read my sister’s diary after she died. I don’t think it’s a big deal. I think people write journals to record things for posterity. If they were afraid of them being read after their deaths, they wouldn’t keep journals. (Or would password-protect them as you have.)
My mother wanted to destroy it unread, which seemed akin to wanting to destroy what little was left of my sister. That seemed cruel to me.
Nothing in the journal was a surprise or a secret.
I’d read it only if you want to change your view of him.
Skald, you’ve mentioned the problems you’ve had with your brother. Even something as simple as feeling grief after he died was complicated, as in life he wasn’t someone you got along with. If you want to try and redeem his memory in your eyes, then read it. What you find might make you understand him better, and anger might be mitigated. Of course you could find nothing that changes your mind about him, or find something even worse. But if the choice for me was to either hate someone forever, or take a chance and possibly redeem that memory, I’d try to redeem it.
One of my rules for living is to respect other people’s privacy, just as I wish my own respected. I wouldn’t want anyone reading my journals; therefore I mayn’t read anyone else’s without permission (nor, for that matter, request such permission). It would have to be offered me, and since my brother is not alive to do so, I may not read his diary absent some huge emergency without feeling bad about myself.
I would do it without much reflection, but I might stop real soon if I started getting creeped out.
I’m sorry for your loss. 
I’m curious and nosy. I’d probably read them. I might also regret doing so.
I don’t keep a journal. But if I did, I think I would want someone to read it after I died. Sort of a posthumous life-by-proxy. At any rate, i don’t keep stuff written down that I don’t want anyone to read ever. If I wrote something like that, I would destroy it. Not just before I died (who knows when that might happen) but as soon as I’d worked whatever-it-was out of my system enough that I didn’t need that piece of paper any more.
Huh. I’m single and childless and like Enright3, I keep a journal so it can be read after my death. Mostly for my nephews, I guess - for them to have something to remember me by. Naturally, I don’t record things that might embarrass them or make them feel uncomfortable, mostly life lessons and whatnot.
I wouldn’t necessarily want to read them myself but I wouldn’t stop a sibling from reading them. After all, the decedent isn’t going to mind.
Condolences, by the way. 
That is an entirely different situation. Password-protected computer files are used because the author wants maximum privacy and doesn’t want anyone to read them even after they die, unless they left instructions somewhere or with someone on how to access them after they are gone or for some other purpose.
But if a journal is in paper form in a night-stand or book shelf, and the beloved person has passed away with no instructions, you can’t make the assumption they never want it read by someone close to them or not. I can understand not wanting to jump to read it soon after they passed away, but in time I think it’s a good way to honor someone. But if you don’t want to read them now or ever, that’s certainly your choice.
Would and have done; on the day of his death, my mother gave me a diary my dad had been writing in the last six months of his life (he was 87 when he died, and it was from chronic heart failure, so he knew the end was coming within months). She couldn’t bring herself to read it, but still wanted/needed to know what he’d said.
After I read it and told her, she was able to read it herself.
I’ve kept a diary daily since I was about 9 or 10 years old – since 1975. It’s a couple of hundred notebooks at this point. My family would be enraged at the level of detail about their shenanigans, as would fellow students, instructors, co workers, &c.
There are instructions in my will for where the original copy is to go anyway, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it didn’t end up chucked in a bin. Nevertheless, I saw and read I, Claudius as a kid, so there is a copy of everything as well.
No. The only person who I know that keeps a journal (and has for almost twenty years) is batshit insane. I know there’s nothing but vile and hateful ramblings in there, so there’s no reason to take a bad situation (someone’s death) and make it worse (how awful they’ll make everyone feel, like try did when they were alive, but now in spades because no one will have any recourse).