A reader writes:
Our father left a little under four acres in the hills when he died. There was a board house on it that is now mostly termite dust, a spring at the bottom, a line of orange trees he planted the year I was born, and a lot of feelings. There were three of us girls. I am the middle one. My older sister, Joan, stayed in Jamaica and lived nearest to the land. My younger sister, Beverley, went to Toronto at nineteen. I went to London and came back twelve years ago.
Papa did not leave a will. He used to say, “The land is for all of you,” and he thought that was enough. It was not.
I will not bore you with twenty years of details. The short version is that Joan felt that because she had looked after Papa in his last years, and kept the bush down on the land and paid the taxes when she could, she deserved the part with the house and the road frontage. Beverley felt that Joan was trying to take everything while she was too far away to stop it. I tried to be the peacemaker and ended up getting shouted at by both of them. After one terrible Christmas phone call in about 2006, Joan and Beverley did not speak for almost eleven years. They each spoke to me. I carried messages like a postman, and I did it badly. I would soften things, or I would add my own opinion without meaning to. I understand now that I was part of the problem.
What changed? Several things, and none of them was dramatic.
The first was that we got old. Joan had a stroke, a small one, four years ago. I rang Beverley from the hospital car park and for the first time in years she did not ask about the land. She asked if Joan was frightened. The next day she rang Joan directly. I was not on the call and I have never asked what was said.
The second was our children. My son, who is an accountant and very annoying about paperwork, sat me down and asked what would happen to Papa’s land when the three of us were gone. He drew it on a napkin: three sisters, seven grandchildren, and by then maybe a dozen great-grandchildren, most of them abroad, all with a share of something nobody had ever properly sorted. “If you three can’t do it,” he said, “what chance do we have?” That frightened me more than any argument.
The third was that we stopped trying to do it by ourselves. We agreed, over a very stiff three-way video call, to get proper help. An attorney-at-law in the parish explained, patiently and more than once, what had to happen first before the land could be divided at all, because it was still in Papa’s name and that had to be dealt with. We also got a commissioned land surveyor to walk the whole property and mark it, so for the first time we were not arguing about places we each remembered differently. Joan was convinced the boundary went to the big cotton tree. It did not. Beverley was convinced the spring was on the neighbour’s side. It was not. It is amazing how much heat goes out of a quarrel once somebody in boots shows you where the pegs actually are.
Then came the part that was hardest. We had to actually decide. We met in person, all three of us, at Joan’s house, the first time we had been in one room since our mother’s funeral. Our pastor’s wife came and sat in the corner. She did not say much. She prayed at the beginning and at the end, and in the middle she brought us mint tea when voices started to rise. I cannot explain how much that helped.
We agreed that Joan would have the portion with the old house site and the road, because she lives there and will build. We agreed that Beverley would have the part with the spring, which she wants to keep as it is for her children to visit. And I took the slope with Papa’s orange trees, which nobody else wanted, and which I love. Joan offered, on her own, that her portion should carry a written right of way so that Beverley and I can always reach ours. Beverley offered, on her own, to pay a bigger share of the surveyor’s bill because she had held things up the longest. Neither of them told me they were going to offer. I sat there with my tea going cold and thought: this is what twenty years of praying looks like when it finally lands.
It has not been perfect since. The paperwork took much longer than any of us wanted, and there was a month when Beverley was sure Joan had changed the plan behind her back (she had not; a clerk had spelled something wrong). But it is done. There are pegs in the ground and papers in a folder, and copies of those papers with each of us and with our children.
I have thought a lot about Abraham and Lot, when their herdsmen were fighting and Abraham said, in effect, let there be no strife between us, because we are family; choose your side and I will take the other (Genesis 13:8-9). I used to think that was a story about generosity. Now I think it is also a story about finally drawing a line. Sometimes love needs a boundary peg.
If you are carrying messages between relatives about land, stop. Get them in one room, with somebody wise in the corner. And do it before someone has a stroke.
— Hyacinth, Manchester
Editor’s note
Hyacinth’s letter holds two lessons worth underlining. The practical one: family land disputes often turn on facts nobody has checked, and a surveyor’s measurements and an attorney-at-law’s explanation of what must happen with the estate can take a lot of heat out of the room. The human one: she recognised that being the go-between had kept her sisters apart. A shared meeting with a calm, trusted person present gave them space to make generous offers of their own. If your family is stuck, the first step may simply be to stop passing messages.
This article is general information only and is not financial, legal, tax or other professional advice. Please speak to a qualified professional about your own circumstances.
Reader letters may be edited for length and clarity, and names and identifying details are changed.
Follow Jamaica Homes on Youtube @jamaicahomes and Instagram @jamaica_homes and on Facebook @jamaicahomesnews Send us a message or email us at onlinefeedback@jamaica-homes.com or editor@jamaica-homes.com
