He’s also my business partner. He kept his watch collection with me since his wife doesn’t allow him to buy watches and made me promise not to ever tell his wife about them. Not only because she doesn’t like it but also because she will definitely ask him to sell them and probably spend the money on clothes and traveling like she often does.
He lets me use the watches in the condition that I don’t cause any damage. But now that he passed away it doesn’t feel right any more.
His watch collection is worth about 200K$ in todays market. I think the lawful and ethical thing to do is to break the promise and tell his wife but I’m not sure that’s the right thing to do since he made me promise not to tell her.
Almost no one here saying to keep the watches is considering what debt the friend left behind. The watches belong to the wife, no question. But how shitty would y’all be, hiding them and then watching the wife have to pay off debt associated with them. We have no clue if the friend was a good person, a good husband, super rich, or in debt. We have second hand word of mouth about the wife. OP was kind of scummy for making that promise to start with. Plus I am sure he made it just so he could wear them from time to time. Give the watches to the legal owner (the wife) and let probate handle it from there. Ask if you can keep one if you want. Be prepared to now how a new business partner who doesn’t trust you and rightfully so. You are about to be dealing with a lot of headaches and an eventual lawsuit wondering where $200k went is not one you want to add to it.