Disputes over inheritance may arise among siblings. Illustration photo by VnExpress/Quynh Tran
Two brothers blocked their sisters from using their inherited plots by threatening physical harm, but they all ended up losing 2,800 square meters of land.
My family used to own many land lots in the area formerly known as Binh Tan District in HCMC. Each of us siblings was given a deed to 2,200 square meters of land as inheritance from our maternal grandmother.
However, because we could not afford the fee to convert them to residential plots back in the 1990s, we listened to one of our older brothers and sold most of our land in 1997 at a much cheaper price. Residential land often fetches much higher rates and is easier to sell than industrial or agricultural land.
We earned nearly VND500 million (US$19,000) from the sales. After that, each of us still had some smaller plots of land that people did not want to buy, which together measured 2,800 square meters.
Then, our eldest brother passed away at a young age without children or a will, prompting the two surviving brothers to seize all of the inherited land from their younger sisters. They insisted that the remaining land should be reserved for the sons and the three daughters were not allowed to live on it. They also threatened to slash any sister who dared to build anything on their plots.
They then built workshops to rent out and pocketed all the income for themselves. Later, they even physically fought each other to claim more inheritance for themselves. For over 20 years, neither of them cared to convert the plots to residential land.
The land was recently reclaimed for a project and each sibling was compensated since they each hold their own title deeds. Thus, the brothers’ over two decades of threats and fighting (from 2000 to 2025) turned out to be meaningless.
*The opinion was translated into English with the assistance of AI. Readers’ views are personal and do not necessarily match VnExpress’ viewpoints.
