Woman, 84, wins lawsuit against daughter-in-law for inheritance of $320,000 property

The Hanoi People’s Court last week heard the suit Nguyet filed against her late son’s wife, Hoa, 48, who lives with her in the house in Dong Da District.

Nguyet and her husband jointly owned the house and the 44-square-meter parcel of land it stood on. They had two daughters and a son.

Her husband passed away in 2020 and her son followed a year later, and neither left a will, leading to disputes over inheritance.

In her lawsuit Nguyet asked the court to divide her son and husband’s assets according to the law and allow her to pay other heirs their inheritance in cash so that she could keep the house until her death.

Hoa previously agreed to this solution but demanded VND2 billion while Nguyet only wanted to pay VND1.8 billion, so the latter took the matter to court.

Bich, one of Nguyet’s daughters, represented her in court while Hoa’s lawyers stood in for her.

Bich said her father was a lecturer and the house had been provided by his university.

Her parents moved in there in 1998, bought the house and received the title deed with their names on it in 2010, she said. In 2012 they and their children pooled money to rebuild it into a five-story house.

Hoa’s lawyers said Nguyet and her husband were only figureheads in the title deed and the house did not belong solely to them.

They argued that Hoa and her husband fully paid for the purchase of the house and land, and so it belonged solely to them.

They also presented some invoices showing payments made for the enlargement of the house, claiming the couple had also paid fully for it.

The invoices admittedly did not represent the entire cost of the construction, but the couple had not foreseen a dispute in the "happy" family and did not bother to keep all of them, they claimed. Bich and her sister, for their part, did not have any documents proving they chipped in for the construction.

Having heard from both sides, an official from the People’s Procuracy said the house had been legally sold to Nguyet and her husband for VND78 million, and so they were its owners.

Hoa and her husband could not provide any documents to prove they had paid for the original house and land, while their employment record at the time shows they were jobless, meaning they would have had no means of paying for the purchase or reconstruction, the official said.

In the event, he called on the court to accept Nguyet’s demand. The court agreed and ruled that the inheritance should be distributed according to the law.

The land plot is valued at VND8.2 billion, and the reconstructed house built in 2012 is worth around VND1 billion.

The land belongs entirely to Nguyet and her late husband while the house is to be shared equally between the couple, their son and daughter-in-law.

The assets belonging to Nguyet’s husband will pass down first to Nguyet and her children, and her son’s assets will be inherited by Nguyet, Hoa and Hoa’s two adult children.

To retain the house, Nguyet has to pay VND1.1 billion to each of her two daughters and VND1.28 billion to Hoa and her two children.

*Names of characters have been changed