Co-homeowner moves into the family home they inherited, then their estranged father splits hairs over 50% ownership: 'I own it, I could've called a locksmith at any time'

If it's your house, are you allowed to live there?

This person owned a house 50/50 with their father, and ran into some moral issues on move-in day. After speed racing to Reddit to calibrate their moral compass, the r/AITA community weighed in on this particular family conundrum. Although technically her father owned half of the house, so did she. Nothing would please him, and anything short of cutting the property and the homestead literally in half would appease this particular property dispute, so she did the one thing she could think of to claim her space. 

She moved in. 

She didn't just pack up a few boxes and set up a couch in the living room; she fully brought her entire apartment into this house, deciding to live there between leases because she had every right to the space. The problem was that this unlocked Pandora's box to family disputes that would leave both parties questioning their inheritance. 

While every inheritance is a gift, most wills also come with a curse. 

Money and wealth, especially when bestowed suddenly, make people get weird. Just recently, my own grandmother passed, leaving behind a sizable fortune to her kin. In her will, she stipulated that if anyone complained about the amount they got, they would rescind their rights to it. Now, that's one thing I can always respect about my grandma; she wasn't going to let the buzzards bicker about their pickings. Take it or leave it, kids. 

However, this story also shows the cursed nature of an inheritance. While this young woman only sought to distance herself from her estranged father, the 50/50 co-ownership of this house would always bring her back to him somehow. Without a way to buy him out of his half and without any real clout of her own, she decided to take this cursed gift in strides, using the house as a fallback to live in while she was between leases. And quite frankly, her dad was just going to have to deal with that. Take it or leave it, this 50/50 property ownership is both a gift and a curse, for all parties involved.