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.
Not an advice for obvious reasons, but all legal issues aside I feel your friend would have been happier that you kept them—a very close friend of his that he also trusts enormously, who also shared the same passion in watches. He clearly loved his watches and if I were him, I would be incredibly saddened to see the fruits of my passion just get sold off to fuel expenses. But that aside, in this case go with estate laws.