An Ethical Question

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LoveMercyGrace

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(If) you were going thru a box of belongings of a deceased relative and in there came upon a letter written addressed to the deceased ,by a still living family member.

Would you
  1. give in to curiosity and read the letter?
  2. not read it and throw it away?
  3. return it , unread, to the still living family member with a note…I found this in belongings of…it belongs to you.
If you did not return the letter to author, and you read it, would you send it to other family members but not to the one who wrote it?

I am trying to discern and see clearly this situation, and how to respond, or not respond.
I am to say the action of reading and sharing

thank you
 
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In conscience, the third option,.
The letter mattered enough to the recipient to keep it
And the living sender merits privacy.
I’d have no right to send it to a third party without permission.
God bless you
 
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I think there is a certain level of prudential judgement needed. Lets say the person who died had written a letter to someone (like one of their children) who they had a strained relationahip with. The letter could be an asking for forgiveness, something sweet to the still living person or it could be mean leading to the surviving people to have extra pain by the death. I have been in this postion, I have opened a letter to make sure it didn’t cause more pain.
 
Legally the copyright of the letter belongs to the writer (at least where I live). The letter itself belongs to the recipient and therefore to the estate of the person who has died. The person able to make decisions about the estate is the executor of the will. The legally correct thing to do would be to pass the matter over to the executor. The executor should in my view return the letter to the original sender but only after skim-reading it to ensure that it does not contain anything the could benefit the beneficiaries of the estate. This could be, for example, an acknowledgement of money owed. Having done that legally the executor would have to observe any privacy laws in the jurisdiction. I think there would usually cover the letter because the sender would have had a ‘reasonable expectation’ of privacy and the executor would have a ‘duty of care’.

However I have no idea what the Catholic moral position would be! I think that privacy is generally a post-enlightenment concept.
 
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Hmmm…well, if you are the sole heir of the deceased belongings, the letter belongs to you and it is up to you to decide what to do with it. If you are not the only heir, it isn’t for you to decide alone what to do with it. If you are not an heir at all, then I would think you’d want to ask what the heirs want. (Our family said they only wanted letters from our parents that they had written themselves, and probably not most of those.)

Those of us who have things we want disposed of without being read in the event of our deaths would do well (and usually do) mark our personal effects as such. Otherwise, families usually keep papers that the deceased saved under the assumption that the deceased was OK with having the papers read after he or she died and wanted those things in the family archives, if anybody even wanted them.

Having said all of that, it is charitable to ask yourself what the deceased would want now that they have died, and do that. As others have suggested, that requires prudential judgment. You know them; we don’t. I don’t think that I would automatically assume it is wrong to read the letter.

Of course, I say this having gone through a lot of old letters that were all just the pleasant kind of letters that people used to write. A few were of “historical interest” but most were just the kind that would have made the deceased smile. I ran into nothing shocking and that was no surprise. A few gave clues as to where certain items that the deceased owned came from and when they got them. I’m also the kind that has very studiously burned every letter that I don’t want to become part of my legacy when I die. Why have it there to dwell on? I have sent excised versions of letters a deceased person sent to me to their families, leaving out the parts that I know were meant to be for my eyes only. It is a matter for prudence.
 
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Yes my mistake, I saw “unread” and thought they meant the deceased family member didn’t read it. Thanks for the correction.
 
The Catechism (2489) speaks of “respect for privacy” and “the right to know.” While this teaching is firstly about transmitting the truth (speaking or writing), I think it may also be applied to receiving the truth (listening and reading). For example, one may well choose not to listen to gossip or read a letter or diary.

http://www.scborromeo.org/ccc/p3s2c2a8.htm#IV
 
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LoveMercyGrace said:
(If) you were going thru a box of belongings of a deceased relative
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In what capacity were you acting when you did that? There seem to be three basic alternatives:

(a) Were you the heir who had inherited the box of papers?
(b) Were you the executor?
( c) Were you one of a group of family members who had volunteered to try and help sort things out?

If the answer is (a), then follow @PetraG’s advice.
If it’s (b), then do as @FiveLinden says.
In the case of ( c), then hand the letter to the executor, if there is one, or if there isn’t one, then @Trishie, @Aquinas11, and others have given the answer.
 
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Been there.
Done that.

Opened and read as it was now mine.

Each situation is different. In my case, the letter writer had been suffering dementia for some time. The letter could easily of inflamed hurt feelings as she had an unfortunate tendency to accuse others of the most hideous actions towards the end.
 
As it was the possession of the deceased family member, then because it was a private letter I would either ask the one who sent it if they wanted it as a keepsake, and if not then I’d burn it.
  1. wrong - invasion of privacy and lacks respect for deceased family member.
  2. possible, though I wouldn’t just throw it away as who knows who may read it. I’d burn it to make sure no-one could read it and it remained private.
  3. the right course of action out of the 3 options you presented.
Why circulate private correspondence? What was private during life still remains private *or should * - once the individual is deceased.

A bit like someone else reading my private mail. If you wouldn’t do that when the person was alive, why would it be ok to do it just because the person is now deceased?
 
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I am the OP.

I sincerely appreciate everyone’s reply.
To comment on a few, I am not the one who received the letter in belongings. I am speaking of a situation. and now, the other part which I failed to ask, or mention in orginal post is this…
would you notify the living author that their letter was received or found in box of belongings belonging to the deceased, and is now being passed around? do I have a moral duty to advise her, or should I
just …I don’t know.

I personally see no good coming from this, and want to pray about it and dismiss it all. your thoughts?
 
So if it isn’t you who has this letter and therefore it isn’t you who is passing it around, then as this is obviously bothering your conscience, my advice would be to have a conversation about whether this is really appropriate to the person who did receive/found/has and is passing the letter around.

I also assume it you’ve read or heard about the contents or parts thereof and consider it to be rather personal and not just run of the mill as in “I went to the store and bought a pair of shoes for $$” that would do no harm if anyone else came by this knowledge - but the contents is rather more than that and so is why it is bothering you.

Depending on what it is, how personal, if it could damage the personal reputation of the author of the letter, then also depending on what your relationship is to either of these people (person passing letter around and author of said letter) - your choices would be I think to speak firstly to the one passing the letter around about not doing so, and then if the contents are seriously embarrassing or would do harm to the authors reputation, then you could let them know.

Best is to pray about it and ask the Lord to show you what is the right thing to do in this circumstance. Then decide how to handle the situation - to act or not to act.
 
LoveMercyGrace said:
I sincerely appreciate everyone’s reply.
To comment on a few, I am not the one who received the letter in belongings. I am speaking of a situation. and now, the other part which I failed to ask, or mention in orginal post is this…
would you notify the living author that their letter was received or found in box of belongings belonging to the deceased, and is now being passed around? do I have a moral duty to advise her, or should I
just …I don’t know.

I personally see no good coming from this, and want to pray about it and dismiss it all. your thoughts?
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My thoughts are that the letter belonged to the deceased. It was his/hers to show around during life, correct? I would suggest that a discrete person read it and decide if it ought to be burned, returned or just kept around as something interesting. It really does depend on the nature of the letter. If you are pretty sure the deceased would have wanted the letter destroyed, do that.
 
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