I Accidentally Found Out a Secret About My Brother’s Financial Life. I Want to Offer My Help, But There’s a Catch.

Pay Dirt is Slate’s money advice column. Have a question? Send it to Kristin and Ilyce here . (It’s anonymous!)

​​My parents died recently and I was the executor of their estate. I only have one sibling, a younger brother. I disbursed our inheritance earlier this year, and we each came away with about $300,000. Recently, when I was checking our estate case docket with a public search of our county clerk’s website, I learned that my brother is being sued to collect on a credit card debt!

The amount is a tiny percentage of his inheritance. It is hard to understand why he would allow this to happen—he and my sister-in-law appear to live a reasonable lifestyle, there is no evidence they have blown through that much money already. I don’t know how to approach the situation with him or if I even should.

I have been guilty in the past of being a bossy or overbearing big sister, but through our parents’ illnesses and the administration of their estates, I have worked hard to repair that dynamic. I am proud of how far our relationship has come. On one hand, he is a grown man with a wife and child, and unless there are dramatically worse problems lurking in the background that I am unaware of, he should be able to pay this bill easily. On the other hand, he had to take over our dad’s business when dad got sick, which he was not prepared to do, and is now navigating those responsibilities while being a new dad himself. I have great respect for everything he has handled. If he has gotten himself into a jam I want him to know I am willing to help. I can easily pay the bill for him if necessary, though it’s not something I would be willing to do on a recurring basis. But I don’t know how to raise this with him without risking falling back into our old dynamic. And I am almost scared to learn of deeper problems lurking under the surface. I wish I had never been on the clerk’s website in the first place.

I get why you’d be alarmed at the lawsuit, but it doesn’t necessarily mean your brother is going through a financial catastrophe. People miss payments for all kinds of reasons, and considering everything he’s juggling at the moment, it’s possible something slipped through the cracks, got out of hand, and he’s dealing with it.

Especially if you have a history of coming on too strong about this kind of thing in the past, I would err on the side of leaving it alone and letting him figure it out. That doesn’t mean you have to totally ignore it, and if you do want to bring it up, you should be honest with him about what you found. But then approach the conversation with a sense of curiosity rather than judgment. Something simple like, “I was checking up on the estate and I noticed this case —it’s not my business and I’m sure you have it under control, I just want you to know I’m here if you need help with it.” Then, leave it there. If he wants to tell you anything, he will.

Approach the conversation lightly, offer your support, but then trust that he’ll tell you anything he wants you to know.