So I started typing this all out and most of it was very boring/wordy so I decided just to post cliffs and elaborate on anything people have questions on. I have a few questions at the end. The cliffs are still pretty long but whatever:

CLIFFS:
-- Have brother, half brother/half sister (father's from previous marriage).
-- Parents buy 500 acres of hunting land for family/friends to use but say it will be given to my brother and me but not half-brother or half-sister because it was bought with money from land my mother was given by her father. We build a cabin on it (15 years ago)
-- Parents give it to us prematurely due to possible impending bankruptcy, around same time my father becomes physically unable to use the land himself. (5 years ago)
-- Brother and I never use the land, half brother and half brother-in-law use it very often. Some of my dad's friends from where we grew up use it too. Brother and I pay taxes/utilities ($500 total/year), half brother/half-BIL maintain cabin etc.
-- Brother gets married/moves far away and wants to take out mortgage on the land to consolidate his wife's debt (90k). I ok it as long as we always keep the land in the family. I ask for part of loan for myself (30k). (3 years ago)
-- Brother takes out maximum possible loan which is way larger than originally agreed (220k total), drama ensues mostly caused by his wife. Brother and I have a bit of a falling out but I basically end up just giving in and letting him have the money.
-- Brother has second kid and decides he wants to sell his half of the land, I say NO WAY, he pursues selling it anyway but can't find a buyer probably because loan is > value of his half. (6 months ago)
-- Father comes up with idea to sell lumber to hopefully tide brother over financially. (2 months ago)
-- We sign contract for lumber and they start. (1 month ago)
-- Half-brother-in-law goes nuts and complains to my dad because it interferes with his hunting and he thinks he and his wife should be co-owners anyway and that they should be consulted when stuff like cutting lumber happens.
-- Brother still wants to sell, possibly to half-brother and half-sister. Half brother wants to buy it and build a house on it to start hoarding for the apocalypse lol. Half sister thinks she should just be given part ownership so seems against buying it.
-- All Walter ever wanted was a happy family.

So was it cool for my parents to give that land to my brother and me but not our half siblings?
Like cliffs say, my mother was left a large piece of land where she grew up and she sold it to buy the land closer to where I grew up. She is most definitely a ****ty step-parent but claims her father asked her to give the land to her eventual children (he died before she got married). My read is she is lying about him making that exact request but who knows.

How big of an ******* (or not) is my brother for wanting to sell his portion of the land?
To me it seems absolutely crazy/ridiculous to do that while my parents are still alive. He and his wife just had their second kid and claim the ~1100/month loan payment is a huge burden. They make 200k/yr plus between them.

Anyone have advice for anything I can do at all?
My parents want to stay out of it as much as possible but I know they are hurt by what my brother has done and what he wants to do.

the 1/2 BIL should definitely **** off from complaining as he's the furthest removed from the family in any event. you could tell your brother to sack up and pay off the debt, or you could try to buy him out.

who's even on the deed? if you have veto on whether or not the land gets sold, then just never let it be sold.

is the land being farmed or anything? perhaps you could get it to generate some sort of income (timber seems like a good start).

there's nothing wrong with keeping it in the family even if it's at the exclusion of some half siblings.

there will probably be problems as long as multiple people are involved who want to do different things.

My brother and I are on the deed but as I understand it each of our wives are partial owners too? I'm not very familiar with real estate law but it's the type of ownership where we each own half of all of it, not where it's like divided or anything. I just know my mom expressed regrets at one point that the way she did it our wive's were partial owners too.

I'm not in a position to buy him out right now. I could possibly do it in about a year, but honestly I don't even want to let him use the land that way, it just seems so ****ed up to me. I've told him that he just needs to pay off his debt and we can re-explore selling it when our parents are gone, but he wants to sell immediately. He keeps arguing that he is tired of paying for land he never uses while I argue he's paying off his previous debt and the land has nothing to do with it.

It's not being farmed and I don't think that's an option really (although my dad is currently exploring possibly planting a bunch of ginseng on it). It's semi-mountainous land that is mostly good for deer hunting and swimming (sweet creek runs through it) but not much else.

Half BIL just expressing the obvious opinion of his wife FWIW. I really don't know how to feel about this part since I don't know how standard it is for parents to leave something to just their children while excluding step-children.

i'm assuming that since you refer to your half brother and sister as half siblings and it seems to be a firmly drawn line, that your mom isn't anywhere close to a mom to them and then it's clearly what's hers is hers and it's okay to give the land to just you and your bro.

Eh, that was mostly for identification purposes ITT. And yeah she's probably not much of a mom to them but that's almost definitely her doing. They were 12 and 14 when she married my Dad and lived with us off and on until they were adults. They show up to all holidays etc. and she tries to include them but in financial stuff like this she def draws a clear line.

OP have you ever seen Hunger Games?

do that

Did your mom raise the HB/HS? If not, I think only bequeathing the land to you and your brother is fine.

What would be BILs purchase price compared to Brother's debt?


EDIT: I accidentally posted too early, but I had meant to say it seems very reasonable that BIL buys land if he is the only one who uses it anyhow. Also, oh man I missed Brother's income info. He is definitely a douche for selling the land in that case. What's the story with his wife's financial problems?

This stuff is so tricky. happened when my grandfather passed and he owned 50% of a piece of property but had borrowed money from the other owner, essentially selling her part of his %. There was no documentation supporting this and a huge fight ensued between my mom (grandfathers executor) and the other owner since my my aunts and uncles all wanted to sell the property and get the $$ from it and were claiming 50% ownership when according to the other owner it was more like 33% due to the loan.

Anyhow,

You need to have an lawyer review the documentation that surrounds the property to ensure it makes sense and is clear on ownership rights.

If 1/2BIL wants to buy, why not sell it to him at fair market value? he already uses the land. You would maintain veto rights on them building a house and becoming survivalists on the property but 1/2 BIL would then assume paying 50% of taxes on land plus maintenance on the cabin.

In summation. Get a lawyer, get the facts clear and have your brother there too so he understands. Have the property assessed for value and if 1/2BIL wants to buy out your brother, come to an agreement all current and potential new owners are comfortable with. Have your dad sit in on the discussions if you'd like but doesn't seem necessary. If you want to log it, or farm it or w/e that is up to the owners to decide and agree on.

yeah, I think those details are important to the question you ask and I was making assumptions based on what you wrote (assumptions which were correct, it seems). if the four of you were raised to think of each other as brothers and sisters by your mom and dad then it'd be lame to leave the land to just you two but that's not the case so it's fine.

Land was valued at ~325k for the loan which was almost certainly inflated to allow the loan to be as big as it was. That particular type of mortgage would only pay out 2/3 the value of the land I think. Half brother thinks it is worth ~180k total but wants to have it re-appraised before buying and base his price off a current/accurate appraisal. I'd guess it's somewhere right in the middle of those two numbers.

Sorry if I was unclear, it's my half brother that wants to buy it to be a survivalist. Half BIL and half sister think they should already own it anyway. I think once they finally understand they are never going to have it given to them they would probably be interested in buying it too though half brother doesn't want them to own it because he doesn't like half BIL. Half brother AND half BIL both use the land.

Yeah the way he took out the huge loan and now wanting to sell it really piss me off. She had a bunch of student loans/cc debt from sophomore year of college through law school because her parents cut her off. They also put about ~40k on credit cards for their wedding. I have a very strong suspicion she talked him in to the loan with plans of making him sell later.

As it turns out my brother didn't even consolidate all of their debt with the money. He didn't pay off some of the student loans, and then he invested/lost a good portion of the leftover money. I don't know how much he lost but it seems like when his investments ran dry was when he decided to try and sell the land.

My brother and I are in a similar spot. Mom owns several hundred acres of farm land, woods, large pond with a new cabin, new trailer, etc. in rural Indiana. We're both city boys and will get very little use from the land (small farm income, but that's nothing compared to what we'd get for the land). This is old family land that goes way back. She wants to leave it to us, but her top priority is keeping it in the family. My brother is a stand up guy but I figure after she's been gone awhile he'll be hot to sell. So to avoid a **** mess like yours I'm trying to work out a deal where my buying him out is part of the will.

So to follow my mom's wishes he gets the cash, I get useless land that I can leave to family I don't know when I die.

**** that. If your mom knows he won't follow her wishes, she just shouldn't leave the land to you and then you still split half of everything else with him.

I don't think this land can be sold if it isn't divided.
Both of you own this land,and wouldn't you be responsible for half the money that it was mortgaged if your brother defaults?

Which sounds like a real possibility.

I think the best you can do is get as much money from your brother for your half and once you do(in cash,not a payment plan)let him have it.

You may end up on the hook financially for property you never bought or used.

I wish I would have posted when he originally took out the loan. His wife went bat**** insane when I asked him to only take out half of the total possible loan. I wish I could remember more details as some of what was said was really lol but here are the highlights:

He found out we could borrow a total of 220k. He said he needed 90k to consolidate debt and asked if I had any interest in borrowing some too and I said sure I'll take 30k of it to consolidate my debt as well.

I was under the impression he was taking out 120k total, 90k for himself and 30k for me. When he sent me the money it somehow came up that he took out the whole 220k. He claimed to have cleared this with me by saying "okay so I'll take the rest" during one of our lengthy conversations about the whole thing. I thought that meant 90/120k and not 190/220k, but in any case at best it was definitely only one mention of "the rest" in one sentence of several hours of talking.

When I found out I told him I would much rather he only take out the 110k which was his portion and that I really didn't understand why he was taking out more than that. He said something about a 'nest-egg', that since I didn't need it and the loan was happening anyway/we wouldn't be able to do another one it would be better to borrow it and yadayadayada. I really don't remember except that his wife was obviously forcing him or at least talking him into it.

I told him I had some doubts about his wife's motivation as I didn't think she liked our family at all and somehow that became the center of the drama. He told her about my concern and she tried to turn the whole thing of us not wanting him to borrow all the money as an attack on her and that it was because my family didn't like her (because I expressed I thought she didn't like us). I cited the fact he hadn't seen me the last 8 times he was in town since he had been with her (previously we would hang out every time) and that she had made plans with my wife then just ignored her the day of but these were 'false allegations' and I was 'unjustly attacking her' and some other BS lawyer speak. She also kept screaming that "IT"S MY CREDIT ON THE LINE, HE'S LUCKY TO GET 30 THOUSAND" because she had cosigned the loan.

Eventually it became clear he wasn't going to budge and I just gave in and let him keep it. The best I got was at one point he did offer to let me have another 80k to split it evenly and I would pay half the mortgage but I wasn't very interested in that especially with her screaming in the background "IT'S MY CREDIT WE AREN'T LOANING HIM ANY MORE MONEY."

There are a lot of money grubbers in my family, I loathe them. I could most likely talk my mom into this, but I want to be the one person in my family that doesn't go dirtbag behind the scenes.

She told me a week ago that she sent my step sister $10K and she wanted to do the same for me and my brother so we could start enjoying the money before she died. The only problem is my brother has really been pissing her off lately, so I told her to keep both shares.

Oh holy ****, just read the rest of it.

I don't really have anything constructive to add, but stuff like this is why people should think long and hard about just selling real estate before willing it off and "trying to keep it in the family".

What happened in my family is that my dad is part of a large group of siblings that were all living on a small family farm. Everyone moved away and/or started families elsewhere and we were all raised there. Everything is hunky dory until one of the siblings has a money crunch with a balloon payment on his house coming up and the final result being that the whole property was sold and the proceeds divvied up amongst the siblings.

My generation were always cool with each other, but I literally did not see my cousins from that family for > 10 years.

OP, the more info you give, the worse it sounds. Your brother has worked himself into horrible debt. Do you think he would decide to default on the mortgage since he has no real interest in the land? Selling may be your best option. You'd have to make it clear to your brother that you get 50% of the sales price, but are only on the hook for ~14% (30k/220k) of the outstanding balance on the loan. How he comes up with the rest of the money to settle the loan is his problem.

I would like to think he won't default as he wants to buy a house soon and that would kill his credit rating. I also don't believe he's in that dire of a financial situation as he and his wife are both well-paid. But he has continued to surprise me at every turn, so who knows.

wow, your brother and his wife are idiots(and i'm sure your read is right on wrt to her as well). definitely seems to put you in a crappy situation.

How did they take out a mortgage that you didn't sign?

Yeah, your half owner,right?

Not a lot to say except that your mom giving just you two the land and not her step children is at least relatively common.

Do you know how much debt your brother has outstanding (not including the loan)? If someone told me they took out 190k to consolidate 90k in debt, then didn't consolidate all of the debt and now wants to sell, I would guess that there is more debt than I know about. Hopefully I'm wrong.

Three pieces of advice:

1. Get a lawyer.
2. Get a lawyer.
3. Get a lawyer.

What state are you in? Different states have different rules as to the effect of one joint owner mortgaging land that's held by joint tenants. The worst case scenario is really, really bad -- it's worth spending the money to see what position you've put yourself in.

Also, your sister-in-law sounds terrible and I wouldn't feel comfortable aligning myself with her on any financial transaction considering her track record in that regard.

Half brother in law is big time douche for complaining to your dad about the lumber cause it interferes with his hunting. Lol **** off dude.

Seems pretty reasonable for your brother to sell it *to your half brother*, though I think it would be much better form to do it after the parents have passed.