Jill Duggar, 32, revealed that her dad Jim Bob, 58, threatened to lower her inheritance amid battles over her contract in 2018 in her new memoir Counting the Cost. She revealed that she and her husband Derrick Dillard, 34, received an email from her dad where he tried to “to settle this once and for all,” where he explained “costs” that Jill and Derrick had accrued as they tried to get the money they were owed for appearing in 19 Kids And Counting and its spin-offs.
Jill revealed that in the email, Jim Bob explained that she would “receive 1/19th of everything we own that is set up in a trust for you kids,” when he and his wife Michelle, 56, die, but said that might not be the case if she kept up her contract fight. “If you attack us, probably your inheritance will be lowered significantly. I love you, but I am grieved by the disrespect and the accusations that continue,” he wrote, according to Jill.
She said her dad made her a “one-time offer” of $20,000, but if they didn’t respond within a certain timeframe the “amount will be zero.” She revealed that the email “set us back a long way” in their relationship, and she explained that it was heartbreaking. “It felt cold. It felt brutal. It hurt,” she said.
The Dillards eventually hired a lawyer to try to get a copy of the 2014 contract that Jill signed in relation to Mad Family Inc. Jill said that Jim Bob “went ballistic” and tried to get the couple to settle, both on his own and by asking his other children to get in touch with them. Eventually, Jill and Derrick got $175,000.
While the couple were in El Salvador doing Mission Work, Jill was told that she was “contractually” required to travel to take promo photos for TLC. While the pair refused, Jim Bob allegedly tried to guilt them into returning by saying that Jill would be sued. He also apparently told Derrick that he was “failing his family and leading them down a path of destruction” for violating the contract.
When it eventually came time for the family to sign a new contract with Mad Family, Jim Bob told them that they’d each get $80,000 for signing. Derrick confronted his father-in-law about the 2014 contract, and the Duggar patriarch eventually apologized. “I’m sorry for making her agree to something she wasn’t obligated to,” he told them both.