Am I Halachically Obligated to Give a Portion of the Inheritance to My Passed Husband’s Daughter – Even If the Law Exempts Me?

Question:

Hello Rabbi, When I got married to my ex-husband, his siblings told me that there is a girl who claims to be his daughter, yet he and his father were clear that the girl was not his. According to them, there was a legal process which determined that he has no responsibilities towards her - he did not sign her birth certificate, did not pay alimony, and was not recognized as her legal father. After a number of years of marriage, when I was pregnant with our third daughter (and after two other children were born to us), we got divorced. In the year 2018, my ex-husband was killed, and in 2019, with no will, I received his inheritance as the guardian of our shared children. I used his inheritance funds to pay of his debts and purchased a small commercial building which I use for much work, however the income from it is low and not steady. As of late, six years after his death, the girl who claimed to be his daughter reached out - and showed a DNA test that she performed through the website Ancestry.com (as a coincidence, due to a test that my son performed) which confirmed that she is the half-sister of my children. Now she is threatening to claim her portion of the inheritance. According to the law in New Zealand, where I live, one can claim inheritance up to two years from the date of death - and this time has passed. Despite the fact that the law does not obligate me, I want to know what the halachic position is: should I give her a portion of the inheritance - or do I not have any obligation to do so?

Hello,

It is very difficult to answer this question.

First of all, I haven’t heard both sides of the situation.

However, the core of the matter: the Torah’s economic system was built entirely differently. In general, matters of property were conducted by the male head of the household alone, and in practice women were almost never inheritors. They would practically join the families of their husband, for better or for worse.

Now the system is entirely different, and there is great contraversy surrounding which of the biblical halachot around inheritance we continue to practice even in an entirely different system, and what we do in light of edicts that the courts enacted due to the large changes, as were enacted in many other categories.

Assuming that daughters inherit – and she can prove (with evidence that is substantial according to biblical law) that she is truly the daughter of your ex-husband, it seems that she has a right to the inheritance. There are many discussions in the Gemara regarding a son that suddenly appears much time after the splitting of the inheritance, and what arises from there is that it seems he is deserving of the inheritance.

As stated, these are general statements, and practically do not have much impact, for the justice between the two of you will not occur in the rabbinic courts, and according to the law in the place where you live it seems that she would join the inheritance.

I hope that the gates of recovery and rehabilitation open up before you.

All the best and much joy,

Rabbi Yuval Cherlow, Head of the Tzohar Ethics Center