How do you divide your deceased parent's belongings?

Question

My father died last April and my half brother is the executor of his estate so he has decided to put a price on all of the stuff and decided that whatever we want we take the price of it off of the money that we would be getting from his home but he has decided that we take the full amount instead of dividing it 5 ways (there are 5 of us). For instance his motorcycle has a price of $2000 so whoever buys it has to take $2000 away from the money that person would be getting instead of $1600 which is 1/5 less. Can anyone tell me how this is usually done. The lawyers wont tell me anything because they are my half brothers lawyers and not mine. We have to go and do this tomorrow so if there is anyone that knows how this is supposed to work or has been through this I would appreciate any advice.

Answer 1

It would be better if you could get an attorney and find out more before this happens because I would think the executor should be more unbiased than he sounds. Keep track of who pays what and if there is any question of where the money goes and who pays what, you can go to court and demand an accounting of every dollar involved. If this is a garage sale that he is having, you need one of the 5 there to mark down how much anything major is sold for to be sure it is included in the final accounting.

Answer 2

Usually, a will says who gets what, so I'm presuming there is no will. The question then becomes, what happens to the money you"pay" for the goods? If it goes into a pool which will be divided in fifths when all the goods are allocated, you'll get your share back. If your half-brother keeps the money for the goods, he's embezzling from the estate.