Why Property Disputes Tear South Asian Families Apart
The battle over who inherits the house, land, or jewelry is rarely logical. It often exposes what relatives have spent years avoiding.
“For the longest time, my family refused to talk about it,” Diya Patel, a Chicago-based software engineer, told The Juggernaut. “Death and money, they’re so taboo.”
Patel and her two brothers, all in their late 30s and early 40s, worry that by avoiding the subject, their parents have also put off the estate planning that could spare them trouble later.
You might think they’d learned their lesson. Her mother had been part of a years-long inheritance feud with her siblings when their parents left behind a substantial plot of land in their Indian hometown — with no clear plan for how it should be divided. After years of embittered negotiations, the property, which had been in the family for generations, was haphazardly sold off. Needless to say, many of these relatives no longer speak. Property disputes seem so common in South Asian families. But their ubiquity hasn’t made them easier to navigate — especially in this economy.