OK - I will try to keep this concise. Just looking for outsiders opinions on this.

Situation:
DH's grandma died, she left her house to my husband and his 2 older sisters. The house was worth nothing, there was a mortgage on it (she reverse mortgaged a few years back) needed to be condemned, but the property it was sitting on was potentially valuable - a piece of land that developers have been after in the past. (It was zoned half commercial).

Move ahead a few months after will goes through court, etc.. DH & I are on vacation in Caribbean, we get a call. There is an offer on the house from an outside, we (DH & sisters) need to come up with a large sum of money to keep the house. DH and I don't have that kind of cash unless I empty my 401K. There is also a pretty big risk, developers were looking at the land 10+ years ago, already developed land around it - in this economy would it still be valuable??! House has a mortgage & no one would buy it - it needed to be knocked down. So we decide we cannot come up with the large sum of money & have to bow out.

Sisters are semi-ruthless (in my opinion). They say if we cannot contribute at all, we're out. My husband is a lawyer, he had already been doing a ton of work on the estate, and investigating property value, talking to developers, educating his sisters on the law, etc..... He said maybe he could get a portion smaller than theirs and his legal time could be considered a part of it, otherwise they would have to hire an attorney.... he said to them, his time was valuable & they could save some money on lawyers fees which was true.

After some LONG talks - while we are on vacation keep in mind - they say no, we're out. Fine.

We get back from vacation - DH is constantly on the phone with the sisters helping with legal stuff. I told him to stop since they were so unwilling to help us, why should he help them. But they are his big sisters... So, once everything is settled, they get the house, DH doesn't really hear anything from them. He is pretty upset as they never even thanked him for all of the work he put in. He expressed his frustration to one sister, but the other one wouldn't really hear it.

Cut to now:
Developer was found & buys the property to develop condos (DH suspects sisters knew about developer way back when but didn't say anything so they could split $ two ways & not 3-ways, but i'm not sure)... Each sister is making about $120,000.

Cue super sad DH.

He has about $200K in law school debt. That money would have gone straight to paying that down. It's so frustrating.

We didn't put up the money & didn't assume any risk, so we are out. I get that.

BUT -- i feel like his sisters should at least give him something, right?? Or no? I mean, the 3 of them were left the house. We didn't have the kind of cash they had to pay up front (it was something like $40 or $50K)... I mean, I did in my 401K, so I can't help but feel really guilty at this point that I didn't take the money and contribute. At the time, it seemed like a bad investment, and we were on vacation and had to make the decision fast. Plus, the sisters knew some stuff we didn't, and they didn't share.

It's so greedy & awful. This whole situation sucks.

So in summary:
I am feeling kinda guilty that I didnt' put up the cash to help, DH isn't making me feel that way AT ALL by the way, I am just feeling like that.

I also feel like if this happened in my family, we would help each other out - so this whole thing is putting a bad taste in my mouth -- but maybe it shouldn't'?! I mean, we didn't take on the same risk that they did in the beginning, but since they did make out in the end, and their grandmother left it to the THREE of them, shouldn't they at least acknowledge that? At least give him like $10,000 or something, $5K each out of their combined $220K.

money issues are just so ugly, the whole thing is just gross. I will probably never talk about this with people we know, and neither will DH, so this seems like a good place to get opinions.