Letters to the Editor
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RJ Stanford
So... what if they'd stayed together until the will had been executed, and then they had decided to split up? Since the will was phrased the way that it was, with her name mentioned specifically, she'd get to keep the money as hers (at least in my state, don't know about yours). Not likely that she'd give it back.
So by the logic I've seen here, the only time that she'd need to give the money back is if - as now - they split up in the brief period between the grandmother dying and the will being executed. I don't get it.
The question isn't legal (it seems she's legally entitled to the money), but ethical.
I actually think that if the will had been executed before they split, that the right thing to do is to give it back. Grandma most likely intended the inheritance to stay in her family. As others have noted, she may have split it up for tax purposes. It just doesn't seem right to take what the grandmother intended for her family, just because grandma had perhaps too much faith in the long-term success of the relationship.
In this hypothetical situation, there are other factors to take in account, of course. If, for example, the will was executed and they split five years later, it wouldn't make sense (to me) to return it. OTOH, if they split one day later, it seems dead obvious that she should. Where to draw the line isn't black and white, but it seems to me that even after a few months, she should return it.
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If any part of the justification for keeping the money is that it's a way of getting back at the ex, this decision isn't being made on purely ethical grounds. I'm not saying that other considerations don't count at all, but that the LW should be aware of this.
I kind of like the charity idea that others have floated. That way, the LW gets to keep a clean conscience and also satisfy, in a productive way, her negative feelings toward the ex. And then she won't have any more lingering ties to the ex.