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Unable to find a common voice, 9 sisters, one of whom was over 70 years old, divided into two factions (plaintiff and defendant) and took each other to court to dispute the inheritance of a piece of land with a total area of 6,377 square meters.
At the end of February, the People's Court of Hiep Hoa district (Bac Giang province) opened the first-instance trial of a civil lawsuit to divide inheritance. The co-plaintiffs were eight biological sisters represented by Ms. QTT (71 years old), the defendant was Mr. QVH (68 years old) - the eldest son and third child in the family.
The case was accepted by the District People's Court in 2021. After many mediations, the parties could not find a common voice and still decided to take each other to court.
The petition stated that the parents had nine children, two boys and seven girls. Ms. T. was the eldest and Mr. H. was the third child.
In 2001, the father passed away. At the end of 2015, the mother passed away without leaving a will.
The assets she left behind included more than 230 million VND, a house and five plots of land - total area of 6,377m2.2, of which 360m2 is residential land, more than 6,000m2is perennial land - all in mother's name.
According to the lawsuit, in 2018, the siblings agreed to contribute assets to rebuild the dilapidated house as a place to gather and worship their parents. The cost of building and completing the house was more than 900 million VND. In addition to the cash left by their parents, the seven daughters each contributed 80 million VND, and the youngest son contributed 600 million VND.
The plaintiff claimed that the eldest son, Mr. H., "did not contribute any assets or efforts" to the construction of the house. However, since February 2021, he returned from Hanoi and deliberately took possession of and used the assets left by his mother and chased everyone away from the house, leading to disputes with the sisters in the house.
In the lawsuit, Ms. T. said that "currently, all the assets left by her mother and the land use right certificates are being possessed, managed, and used by Mr. H.". From there, Ms. T. requested the court to divide this asset according to the law and wished to receive the inheritance in kind.
Mr. QVH (defendant) asserted that the sisters in the family had deliberately slandered, fabricated, defamed, and insulted him. He said that when they were alive, his parents often declared: "This mansion is left to Mr. H., the eldest son, who is responsible for worshiping the ancestors."
According to local and family tradition, a married daughter does not have the right to claim property division with her brothers. Mr. H. asserted that he understood the law, did not take more than his share, and did not spare anything from his sisters. Therefore, when a dispute arose, he held a family meeting to divide the property.
With a plot of land of over 4,650m2, where there is a house and 360m2 of residential land, he divided it in half for himself and his youngest brother. The remaining coastal land was divided equally among his seven sisters who had married and they agreed to sell it all to him for 70 million VND (10 million VND for each). As for the two fields of his parents, Mr. H. enjoyed them to take care of the ancestral altar.
"Everyone agreed and submitted their ID cards, land use right certificates, household registration books... so I could go through the procedures to change the name, change the owner, and divide the land. However, a few days later, the other sisters changed their tune and did not want to divide it like that, so they filed a lawsuit in court, requesting to divide the land into nine parts," said Mr. H.
The defendant said he completely agreed to divide the inheritance, but was dissatisfied with the slander and defamation of his dignity, reputation, and morality by his sisters. At the same time, the sisters had formed cliques, destroying the brotherly affection in the family.
Faced with the accusation that he did not contribute anything but still returned from Hanoi to his hometown to occupy his ancestors' land, Mr. H. said that he still returned to his parents' house to worship during death anniversaries and Tet holidays. It was natural for him to return to his hometown to live and stay in this house when he was old. He said that his sisters had encroached on his property when he was not home and hired an excavator to destroy the entire area.
"Ms. T. fabricated and slandered that I chased everyone away from the house and took possession of other properties left by my parents, which is untrue. Ms. T. herself drew up factions, incited and prevented people from going to the place of worship for their parents," Mr. H. affirmed.
Mr. H. also accused these people of selling the long-planted eucalyptus garden and 245 red sandalwood trees he had rented to plant since 2008, causing a loss of nearly 1 billion VND, and selling all five plots of land his parents left him.
Mr. H. said that from the time he started working in his youth until he retired and opened a company, he always wholeheartedly took care of and helped the women in his family. He also recruited his sisters and children into the company so that they could have jobs. "Since I learned that my sisters in the family were suing each other in court, I have been thinking a lot, losing sleep, feeling depressed, regretting my efforts, my money, and my kindness to my extended family," Mr. H. confided.
Before the trial opened, Mr. H. filed a request to change the judge because he believed that it could not ensure objectivity. The court rejected the request because he could not provide evidence. He continued to complain.
In the trial that opened on February 23, due to the absence of a defendant's lawyer and the court's lack of a written response to the defendant's complaint regarding the request to change the judge, Mr. H. requested to postpone the trial. This request of Mr. H. was approved by the panel of judges. The trial will resume on another day.
Attorney Nguyen Dang Tu(Ho Chi Minh City Bar Association):
In fact, in recent years, it has become very common for siblings to sue each other in court to divide their parents' assets after their parents' death. Because of this property, siblings have turned their backs on each other.
As a lawyer, I have also advised many families to make a will while they are still healthy and lucid, and even to announce that will to their children. Thanks to this legal will, immediately after the parents pass away, the children follow the will and do not have to sue or fight over it.
But that is in the city, the conditions for contact with the law are also convenient. There are many families in the countryside that have assets left by their grandparents, passed from generation to generation according to custom, whoever stays on the grandparents' land, the assets belong to that person. Old parents also do not think about having to clearly separate and clarify the assets so that their children do not have to be jealous of each other.
Many families are very harmonious and loving when the parents are alive. When the parents die, the children are scattered because of property.
One of the main reasons is that parents do not leave a will or do not divide their assets among their children before they die, or divide them unfairly, some love one, some hate one, or just follow the custom, or only leave assets to their sons. However, only verbal declarations cause daughters to demand a division of the assets.
In many rural areas, the feudal ideology is deeply ingrained in parents' minds: daughters are other people's children, when they get married they serve their husband's family, so they should enjoy the property of their husband's family. The grandparents' property is for their sons and daughters-in-law.
When grandparents are sick, daughters worry that their husband's family cannot take care of their parents and that only their daughter-in-law can. Some families have daughters who are angry and sad because of this, and siblings suddenly are no longer as happy with each other as before, especially when the daughter gets married and is struggling financially.
Through consultation, there is a family of grandparents who are nearly 90 years old, with many children, many boys and few girls. When the children get married, the grandparents divide the fields, divide the land or give them money, build separate houses for them to live in. Now there is still a garden left by the grandparents, in a good location, facing a newly opened road, so the children fight over it, demanding to divide the yard and garden even when their parents are still healthy.
The grandparents were so sad that they got sick and called the commune to come and make a document stating that this house and this land were only for worship and not to be divided among any of the children. The children were angry with their parents because of that. One of them, the mother, was sick and did not come home for a whole year.
Civil law clearly stipulates inheritance and inheritance division. In the city, you can go to a notary office or a lawyer to consult on the procedures for making a will. In the countryside, where such services are not available, people can go to the commune committee to ask about the procedures for making a will.
And to have a reasonable will, many families call their children to discuss the division of assets after their parents die, then invite the government to draw up a written document with witnesses.
The assets left by parents can sometimes be small and bring happiness, and sometimes large and cause painful disputes. Many people, because they are more knowledgeable, secretly make wills and give them to their parents to sign when they are not sober or do not understand the content at all. When the parents die, a legal battle breaks out. Or some people even forge wills, and then some people get into trouble with the law because of the small assets that they did not earn.
