Father denies children inheritance unless they quit Jehovah's Witnesses

by Tiktaalik 26 Replies latest jw friends

• 

  Tiktaalik

  An article in the Sydney Morning Herald:

  http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/father-denies-children-inheritance-unless-they-quit-jehovahs-witnesses-and-become-catholics-20140810-102egl.html#ixzz39yZIuUVF

  "From beyond the grave, father-of-four Patrick Carroll continued a five-decade crusade to steer his children away from being active Jehovah's Witnesses and into Catholicism.

  Mr Carroll wrote into his will that his adult children were not to receive any inheritance unless they met two conditions: attend his funeral and become Catholics within three months of his death.

  Mr Carroll died in April 2012. His children attended the funeral but they did not become Catholics and challenged the condition in the NSW Supreme Court in a bid to still receive their share of his estate.

  But Justice Francois Kunc last week ruled that Mr Carroll was entitled to place such conditions on his will.

  The court heard that Mr Carroll's motivation was not so much about imposing his own beliefs but rather the fact he never approved of his children becoming Jehovah's Witness.

  The court heard that Mr Carroll did not raise his children as Catholics, neither he or they had attended church services when they were young and he did not enroll them in Catholic schools.

  But when he split from their mother Lillian in 1959 she became a Jehovah's Witness and over the next decade the couple's four children, Robyn, Paulene, Anthony and Susan, were baptised as Jehovah's Witnesses.

  Mr Carroll never approved of "their adherence to that faith", the court heard.

  "[Lillian's] conversion to that faith enraged Mr Carroll, who for the rest of his life continued to express his very strong objections to Lillian's and the children's member of that faith," Justice Kunc said in his judgement.

  The court was told that all four of his children remain active members of their congregation.

  In his will, written in December 2011, four months before he died, Mr Carroll left more than a third of his estate to his four children "dependent upon them becoming baptised into the Catholic Church within a period of three months from the date of my death and such gifts are also subject to and dependent my children attending my funeral."

  Mr Carroll's step-daughter and executor of his will, Carolyn Hickin, challenged that condition in court saying those conditions were vague.

  But Justice Kunc disagreed, saying the conditions, and in particular the requirement the children become baptised into the Catholic Church were "not uncertain".

  He ordered that the children's share of his estate be divided among the other 13 beneficiaries of Mr Carroll's will."
• 

  Tiktaalik

  Makes you wonder why they are grasping after money in the worldy courts when armageddon is so close. Pathetic hypocrites.

  He did get them to attend his funeral though, which is something, I suppose.

  An non-JW relative of mine died recently, and some of the JW family showed up at the funeral. They all stayed outside on the footpath and didn't go into the church. Everyone was talking afterwards, about how wierd, rude and arrogant those JWs were. Standing outside the church and missing the entire service. There were some who were highly offended at their actions.
• 

  smiddy

  This report was also in the Herald Sun in Vict.

  So obviously these witness children are not relying on jehovah to" rectify it in his own time ", they want his money now.

  Just another example of jehovahs witness double standards .

  smiddy
• 

  steve2

  Well, I suppose a JW parent whose child has "committed" apostasy could stipulate that the child must be reinstated in order to receive its inheritance.

  On the question of needing to convert to Catholicism, does the will state for how long? If one stands to gain a sizable inheritance from one's conversion, pethaps it would be worth converting, getting the inheritance and then leaving. Most wills are not saddled with "quality checks". I'd become a bag lady for a month if I was paid enough. Ain't too proud to beg.
• 

  Witness My Fury

  I was going to leave everything to my favorite neice, but since she got baptized age 18 back in march this year she is going to get nothing.

  She didnt know my intentions, so from her perspective nothing will have changed....
• 

  AnnOMaly

  It was an unreasonable demand to make - 'change your religion to the one I stipulate or else you get nothing.' I know somebody in my town whose father tried to pull a similar stunt (different faith), and there have been stories on this forum where adult children who left JWs were cut out of their parents' wills on that basis. It's mean to blackmail potential beneficiaries that way based on religious preference (or political or whatever) - I don't care who does it - and the JW children were right to challenge it. Shame the judge upheld the conditions in the will but maybe those were the constraints of the law.
• 

  Mikado

  it's seems absolutely awful and cruel to me. I suspect there were lots of other issues there.
• 

  galaxie

  Since when did money become the catalyst for religious belief. ?...oops ask the gb(fds)lol!!!!!
• 

  Julia Orwell

  The thing is, to a jw, trying to get them to convert for 50 years or whatever is only going to reinforce their persecution complex.
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  carla

  The kids are probably getting so much great PR in the kh's it is worth more than the money to them anyway. Heck, they will probably be speakers at the next convention saying how they chose their faith over the money. Naturally leaving out the fact they went to a worldly judge to get their worldly father's money. Right or wrong the dad had the right to make stipulations in his will. If he wanted them to click their heels three times and turn around as a stipulation he could have done that too, his money, his rules.

  Surely after all those years he must have known they would not convert or leave the jw's. Maybe it was all those lonely holidays, weekends and missed time with him because they were too busy with jw crap finally got to him and he decided to leave them nothing all along.