Lateral Financial Assistance with Home Ownership: Understanding the Role of Siblings

Abstract

Studies of family financial assistance with home ownership have focused exclusively on vertical forms of assistance, in which members of older generations help younger relatives to finance home ownership. Consideration of the role of siblings has been limited to accounts of their competing requests for assistance, leaving the topic of lateral assistance between siblings absent from these discussions. This article presents findings from interviews with 80 donors and recipients of family financial assistance with home ownership in Australia, which included a significant number of sibling donors and recipients. It argues that sibling assistance is often provided to compensate for an absent parent, protect the assets of parents or restore perceived fairness. In so doing, it challenges the notion of parent donors as the arbiters of fairness in family financial assistance with home ownership and outlines some of the practices through which lateral financial assistance between siblings tends to be transmitted.