The “mistress” who read the will “giving all her property to her adulterous partner” said a shocking word while laughing in front of her children.

Hundreds of thousands of couples divorce every year in Japan. Did you know that there are cases in which an amicable divorce can lead to unexpected problems at the time of inheritance?

In this article, Yushi Okano, a licensed tax accountant specializing in inheritance tax, explains an inheritance dispute that came to the children, Mrs. C’s sisters, after the death of the divorced couple’s husband.

When Ms. C was still a child, her parents divorced after discovering their father’s adultery, and her mother left home with her older sister and Ms. C. As children, the sisters were familiar with their home. It was a difficult experience for the sisters, who were still children, to be away from their familiar home, town, and friends. However, since their father rarely returned home, they did not feel much loneliness without him.

Despite her mother’s hardships, she successfully raised her two children, her older sister got married, and Ms. C started working as a businesswoman.

One day, Mr. C and his sister received a letter from a lawyer. The letter stated that their father had died and they had received an inheritance.

Father married Ms. A, with whom he had an affair, soon after the divorce. Since the divorced mother had no inheritance rights, the three legal heirs were the current spouse, Ms. A, and the sisters, Ms. C.

The property left by the father was a house where the sisters and Mr. C were once born and raised, and where the father and Mr. A have lived since then, a survivor’s pension, and a savings account of about 3 million yen. He also left a will that his current wife would inherit all of it. In other words, he did not want his sister and Mr. C to inherit the estate.

Since her father did not seem to have any debts or other obligations, Ms. C thought that it would be okay even if she did not receive the inheritance. At the time of his parents’ divorce, the young Mr. C had almost no memory of his father, and his father, whom he had not seen for more than 20 years, was already a stranger to him. She also felt a little sorry to deprive Mr. A, whose face she did not know, of his house and living expenses.

However, Mr. C’s sister was furious when she learned that Mr. A had read the will and laughed, saying, “Thank God!

Unlike the young Ms. C, her sister grew up watching her mother struggle. She was the one who did most of the housework in place of her working mother. Being women, she was more sympathetic to her mother than Mrs. C. Perhaps because of this, she harbored feelings of hatred and resentment toward her father and Mr. A.

The sister gasped, “Let’s claim the invalidity of father’s will, since we are legally entitled to receive the inheritance. However, the Civil Code stipulates that the testator’s will is paramount, and that the contents of the will take precedence over the division of the estate and the legal share of inheritance. A will is invalid only in cases where the will is not written in accordance with legal procedures, for example.

The father’s will was a notarized will prepared by a professional with legal knowledge and experience in legal practice. When making a notarized will, the presence of two witnesses was required, one of whom was a tax accountant from his old employer, and the other was his family doctor. Furthermore, his family doctor had even prepared a medical certificate that stated that there was no problem with my father’s cognitive functions.

In other words, this was not a case where my father’s will would be invalid. In order to ignore this will and inherit the property, all of Mr. A and Ms. C’s sisters would have to agree to it, but it is unlikely that Mr. A would agree to it.

One would think that the sister would give up on this, but now she said, “We can claim the remaining portion of the estate.