The roofer is paid. You put it on a card because someone had to. Your brother still lives in the house. Your sister will pay her share if she can see the number and a proposal. She will not pay her share if the first paragraph is about who visited at Christmas.
Numbers first. Split second. History nowhere.
Facts are the invoice. Fairness is the ask.
Write the stated column so it can be checked:
- vendor, date, total
- what you already put on the card
- any deposit the house account already covered
Then the proposal: equal thirds, or 50/25/25 because he lives there, or he covers this one and you cover the furnace. Close the list. A decision request with an open-ended "what's fair?" is an invitation to retry childhood.
State the assumptions that sit under the split. "The house account is empty" is a fact if you looked. "He can afford the larger share" is a guess, and it should look like one. If your assistant inferred a split from an old will summary, mark it inferred. That inference is not a number on an invoice.
Do not attach the PDF. The total and the date are enough to answer. If they want the line items, they can ask you for the file.
One ask, sized for a busy sibling
Respect their time. Open with the decision: accept the thirds, or send a different split by Friday. Say what a sufficient reply is. "Thirds, I'll Venmo you Saturday" is a complete answer.
If the urgency is only that you already paid, say that. It is a real reason. It is not a medical emergency. An honest deadline plus a default — "If I don't hear by Friday I will assume thirds and send two requests" — is clearer than a guilt paragraph.
A briefing keeps the invoice facts above the proposal. You approve the note. The session still has the sentence about who never shows up, and that sentence does not travel.
Do not try the house politics in the same send
Who uses the porch, who got the bedroom, who was there when Mom died — those are real. They are also a different conversation. If you put them in the expense briefing, you will get a reply about the bedroom and silence on the roof.
If they already have a RelayLink account, invite them as a contact first. If they do not, email and the link are enough. Block is silent if it ever comes to that; a money ask is a poor place to discover a block, so if you are not sure the channel is open, you already know you need a call.
They reply from the page. A fetched link is not a read. You do not see whether they sent the money. When the next invoice lands in a session, connect your assistant and send the figures and the split, once, instead of a thread that starts with Christmas.