If you and your siblings are on track to one day inherit your parents’ home, take heed of this cautionary tale.

In a Reddit thread AmITheA—le, a poster recounts how when his mom died in 2018, she left him and his two siblings her house.

“My siblings wanted to sell the house and split the money,” the anonymous poster says. “I wanted to keep the house. I asked them if I could buy them out.”

They agreed. So the siblings got the property appraised, and he paid them both a third of the home’s current value.

His brother spent his share on sports cars, nights out, and exotic vacations; his sister splurged on a boat.

In 2023, the man and his wife decided to move to be closer to her family, and they sold the house. By then, the price of the home had tripled.

“Now, both of my siblings think that I owe it to them to split the profit I made,” he writes. “This has become really toxic and most of my family is on their side. My mom’s sister says it would have broken her heart to see her kids fight like this and I should split the money with my siblings. My dad’s sister thinks I should buy them off so they shut up.”

Does this man owe his siblings anything more? We asked the experts for their take on the situation.

“The brother is not obligated to give them anything,” says Jessa Gary, an attorney in the estate planning, trust, and probate practice at Isaac Wiles in Columbus, OH. “His siblings are not the property owners—and are not legally entitled to anything—because he already bought them out.”

When their brother bought the house, he also took on all the risk, notes Jonathan Ross, managing attorney at Texas Probate Pros in San Antonio, TX.

“This house became his investment,” Ross explains. “His siblings, if they were smart, should have invested the money he paid them to buy them out. Unfortunately, they went and immediately spent that money. The bottom line is that they had every opportunity to do wise things with the money and invest.”

Long story short: They didn’t.

“If the value went down, I don’t think the siblings would be offering to pay him for the loss. He just did better, and legally, I don’t see any basis for complaint,” says Robert Steele, a partner at Schwartz Sladkus Reich Greenberg Atlas in Manhattan, where he heads the trusts and estates department.

It’s a matter of perspective.

“It is no different than selling the property to a stranger and then wanting part of the profit later when the stranger sells the property for more than he or she paid them for the property,” says attorney Don Worley, of McDonald Worley in Houston. “The siblings were more than happy to take the money when their brother offered to buy them out, but then their greed took over when he actually did something with the property and sold it for a profit later.”