Sued My Sister And Now She Won't Speak To Me

Brought to you by the EveryDollar app. Start budgeting for free today. I bought a two-family home with my sister quite some time ago and unfortunately I had to take legal action to sue to get out of the property. My question is, we don't really speak anymore and we were super close growing up. Would you guys take any action to try and mend that relationship or leave it alone kind of as it is? Why did you have to sue her? How did he even get to that point? So my sister and I bought a two-family house that we both lived in together and rented out another side and I wanted to get married and start a family and didn't exactly want to be responsible for being a landlord anymore, doing the credit checks, fixing everything that was wrong with the house. I bought my own single-family house relatively close in the same general area and we had conversations about me trying to get out of the house, didn't want to be responsible for it anymore and she refused to sell it, either put it on the market or buy me out of it. Was it because she was living there or she needed the income from the tenant? She was still living there, so it was a mother-daughter side-by-side. She was living in one side, renting at the other side and collecting rent and she told me that she either couldn't afford to move out, didn't want to, wasn't overly... And you guys had no agreement about what it would look like to force the sale or to when and if we're going to sell? We did. When we first bought the house, again, it's a brother and sister so it was more of a verbal agreement that we're only going to stay here for a couple of years until we figure out what we're going to do with our life. We bought it super young. I was 24 at the time, she was 26, so just kind of buying our first house, figuring out how things were going. This was going to be temporary and the plan was for both of us to eventually either move out, sell it or rent it out and start our own life and our own family. So the communication was terrible. So far it's been, well, we had a verbal agreement, it was a couple of years, eventually we were gonna... And so that's all part of the chaos. How many years did it last? We lived in that house together for about five years. Okay, so that feels like it suffices for, let's try this for a couple of years. And you took her to court, obviously she hasn't spoken to you in a year now? About a year. And you want to remedy the relationship? I do. Is that the goal? Yeah. Do you have any way to even get in touch with her or she like blocked you, no contact, there's no way to even have a conversation? So I'm the younger sibling, so that's my older sibling. I don't exactly know how to approach it. There's no blocking, I don't believe so, but once attorneys got involved, everything went just through attorneys. So I don't even know how it would go about it. But you guys live near each other? We're in the same general area, a couple of towns away from each other. Like, could you send a text and say, hey, would you be willing to meet up and get coffee next week? Do you think she'd even respond? Yeah, I could. I don't think that she would. Okay. What if you just... Don't wait for the interest rate to be perfect before buying or refinancing a home. Talk to Churchill Mortgage. Smart buyers buy the home they can afford now and then refinance later if rates improve. Churchill helps you make decisions with confidence instead of guessing. And Churchill Mortgage has a webpage with special offers just for our audience. Go to churchillmortgage.com slash Ramsey offer. This is a paid advertisement. NMLS ID 1591. NMLSconsumeraccess.org. Equal housing lender. You could try a couple of things. You could try writing a letter or sending an email. You could try calling her and just cold calling her. You could try leaving a message. Like, there's so many things that I think you could do. And I think of everything. Let me ask you this. I don't think so, but do you owe her any apologies or this is simply, I want to find a way to repair our relationship. Is there like an apology owed or no? Yeah. If anything, there is. And I'm sure that most people on my side of the argument would say this. If anything, there's an apology that's owed by her to me. I'm the more understanding of the sibling. She's very stubborn and way more intellectually smart than I am. So when she thinks she's right on a point, takes it full bore. I actually gave up a lot of things in the sale of this house. I didn't collect rent for the two years that I owned that house. I wasn't living there. I let her keep it all. I let her do a mortgage assumption. So she kept the great rate that we had on that house when we first bought it. I didn't make her listed on the market and I actually took less money after we got all the appraisals back for the house. So if there's any way that owed an apology, I feel like it would be me, but it's still one of the only family members that I have left. So I would like to have a and my first son was just born six months ago and I would like for him to know his basically only family. So I don't know if this is, that's kind of the catalyst of it is that now the dust settles, got past him finally sleeping through the night and have had some time to actually think and breathe and that I would like him to know who his aunt is. But how do you mend the relationship with somebody when you're the one that owes an apology? Yeah, maybe you are, but I think that what you're saying outweighs that, right? This is the only family I have. I have a baby in this world and he should know his aunt, right? All those things outweigh who owes who an apology, I think at this point. So I would kind of come hat in hand and I would say, I'm so sorry this happened to us. We set out to try to do something and it created this rift between us and I hate that. I love you. You're my sister. I want you to know my family. I really hope that you would consider, I would love to repair a relationship with you. It's going to be hard for anyone to turn that down. The extra layer that I don't think that she would be willing to is that she is also an attorney and was representing herself through this entire ordeal. So I think there's an extra layer of cynicism on her end. Cause she was, she didn't have the filter that you had. Correct. Okay. And you technically won the legal outcome. I did. She assumed the mortgage. I got paid half the equity that was in the house, which, I mean, that's a whole separate idea. I don't know what to do. You can only do what you can do. You can't force her to be open to this, but what you can do is start just planting the seed and be it persistent, but also, you know, reasonable. You don't need to be knocking at her door, like answer. We got to talk. But I would just say, Hey, I miss my sister. I want my sister back. I, I know what happened happened. That's water under the bridge. I just want to be a part of your life. I don't want us to not have a relationship over something that happened a year ago on a business transaction gone wrong. You can also ask her to like quantify it and say, what would you need? What must be true? What would you need from me for us to be able to move forward? Maybe she feels like she's owed an apology because sometimes, you know, everybody perceives things differently. And I'm not saying I honestly can't judge who's right or who's wrong on this. And I, for me, it doesn't matter. But if she perceives that she's owed an apology, sometimes, listen, if you're married, you know, there's sometimes you just have to apologize, even though it wasn't on you. I apologize to my wife every day. Come on, man. Just to sort of cover the sins of the day. When you get out of bed, I'm sorry. And then you just go on with your day. But you see what I'm saying, Timothy, there could be something there. If you know, if you happen to know where she feels she's owed an apology, even if you're like, man, I'm right, like I did it. It could be worth it to say, I'm sorry for X, Y, Z. It could be worth it. And if not, if you if you truly don't know, just ask her what what would it take? I really want to know what it would take to be back in your life. I miss you. I love you. We've got X amount of years history. We're the only family we have. Gosh, I would love to make this right this year. Just please let me know what I need to do. And she sounds like a tough nut to crack. But you can try. But the key is you go first, you put the ball in her court. Yeah. And you at least then you'll sleep better at night knowing that you made the attempt. And whether it's reciprocated and there's some healing that's not in your control, unfortunately. And at the very least, I mean, who can resist a picture of a cute baby? That does. That's a very good point. But my other concern would be how do you even find it to forgive somebody when they put themselves between you and your new family? Now there's through that. Now there's the part that I'm wrestling I think that you may you may need to deal with that, Timothy, before you come to her. Otherwise, you guys are going to start arguing. It's going to it's just going to come out eventually. And it's going to close the door once again. So get with a counselor. Make sure you work through your side of this and that you're truly OK. And then extend the invitation so that you know that on your side is water under the bridge. 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