DonwannaBgreedy
Junior Member
What is the name of your state (only U.S. law)? Connecticut
Our mother left her estate divided equally between my sister and me. I agreed to be the executrix and take care of everything relating to the estate (clearing, renovating and selling our mother's house, probate, taxes, bill-paying, etc.) in return for 10% of the proceeds from the sale of the house (not 10% of the estate as a whole).
Since my sister said she'd give me 10%, I expected I would receive it in addition to what I would have gotten anyway if we had just divided the house sale money in half, in other words that the 10% would come out of my sister's half after we divided the proceeds from the house.
Doing it that way, if we cleared 100,000 from the sale of the house, she'd receive 40,000 and I'd receive 60,000, and she'd be giving me the correct 10% of the house proceeds (10,000), from her half.
However when my sister saw the figures, she concluded that she'd be giving me 20,000. I explained that no, this is the same as any other transaction where you're paying for something - if you buy a pizza for $10.00, you're giving up $10 while the seller is gaining $10, therefore as a result of the transaction Pizza Hut's net worth ends up increasing by $20 relative to yours. That doesn't mean you get to insist on only giving them $5.00 for a $10 pizza.
If we do it my sister's way, by taking my fee "off the top" of the money from the house sale before it's split (which would mean half of my fee would come out of my half of the money and half of it out of hers), she receives 45,000 and I receive 55,000, which is only 5,000 more than the 50,000 I would have received from a simple split (instead of the correct amount of 10,000). So as far as I can see, by this method I'd only be getting 5% for what I did, not 10%.
Renovating and selling the house, handling probate, etc., was a whole lot more work than either my sister or I thought it would be when I agreed to our arrangement, so I'd really like to get the 10% we agreed on. However I don't want to cheat her in any way, would rather get less than I was expecting than do that, so I'll really appreciate any input on whether or not I've got this straight!
Our mother left her estate divided equally between my sister and me. I agreed to be the executrix and take care of everything relating to the estate (clearing, renovating and selling our mother's house, probate, taxes, bill-paying, etc.) in return for 10% of the proceeds from the sale of the house (not 10% of the estate as a whole).
Since my sister said she'd give me 10%, I expected I would receive it in addition to what I would have gotten anyway if we had just divided the house sale money in half, in other words that the 10% would come out of my sister's half after we divided the proceeds from the house.
Doing it that way, if we cleared 100,000 from the sale of the house, she'd receive 40,000 and I'd receive 60,000, and she'd be giving me the correct 10% of the house proceeds (10,000), from her half.
However when my sister saw the figures, she concluded that she'd be giving me 20,000. I explained that no, this is the same as any other transaction where you're paying for something - if you buy a pizza for $10.00, you're giving up $10 while the seller is gaining $10, therefore as a result of the transaction Pizza Hut's net worth ends up increasing by $20 relative to yours. That doesn't mean you get to insist on only giving them $5.00 for a $10 pizza.
If we do it my sister's way, by taking my fee "off the top" of the money from the house sale before it's split (which would mean half of my fee would come out of my half of the money and half of it out of hers), she receives 45,000 and I receive 55,000, which is only 5,000 more than the 50,000 I would have received from a simple split (instead of the correct amount of 10,000). So as far as I can see, by this method I'd only be getting 5% for what I did, not 10%.
Renovating and selling the house, handling probate, etc., was a whole lot more work than either my sister or I thought it would be when I agreed to our arrangement, so I'd really like to get the 10% we agreed on. However I don't want to cheat her in any way, would rather get less than I was expecting than do that, so I'll really appreciate any input on whether or not I've got this straight!
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