The family feud escalated into legal battles over contractual breaches, fiduciary duties and alleged financial mismanagement.
A house bought for the convenience of family
A shared property arrangement became a matter of ownership, sale proceeds and the division of money after a house was sold for $262,519. The dispute began in February 2010 when Carole Caples purchased property on South Fifth Street in Whitehall, Pennsylvania, to be closer to her family and to downsize from her Maryland home. The arrangement was to facilitate the administration of the estate and to allow the property to be sold and the proceeds equally divided between her 3 daughters on her death. That family arrangement was put under the microscope in 2018 when Caples decided to move into Fellowship Community, a continuing-care retirement community, after hip surgery and a hospital stay. To join, she had to pay about $203,000.
Caples added her daughter Katherine Purcell as a joint tenant with right of survivorship to the deed, according to the Pennsylvania Superior Court. A ruling meant to simplify inheritance ended up at the heart of a family property dispute, with a Pennsylvania mother and daughter on opposite sides of a hefty financial disagreement. The Pennsylvania Superior Court’s upholding of separate financial awards for both women has now closed an important chapter of the dispute. The court ruled that Caples did not intend to give Purcell an individual financial interest in the property. But the Pennsylvania Superior Court ruled the distribution didn’t reflect Caples’ grasp of why her daughter had been added to the deed. She thought the money would eventually be available to her and her estate.