I don’t think they’re splitting the money it sounds like most or all of it is intended to go to Toby’s ex-wife and kids. It also helps that-as we find out later-he had a cellmate who had robbed banks, and presumably they talked shop enough for him to have picked up some pointers. His crimes did not include anything at the level of bank robbery, but he has at least a better grasp of such things than Toby, so he lends his personal experience to the equation. Since then he has pursued a criminal lifestyle at least off and on it sounds like he has spent perhaps 50% of his adult years behind bars. It is strongly implied that he, or both he and Toby, were abused by their father, that as a youth he shot and killed their father in retaliation, and that although she cooperated in covering it up by making it look like an accident, his mother never forgave him for that. Though he rarely sees his kids, his plan is to save the farm and then put it in a trust for them, such that they (or their mother) cannot sell it, but they will be able to live comfortably off the oil money. Toby wants to come up with the necessary money to keep the farm, plus he wants to be able to pay the money he owes his ex-wife in accumulated alimony and child support. The stakes are higher now because oil has recently been discovered on the property.

Apparently the bank has been dishonest and exploitative toward the family, or at least Toby is convinced of this. Their mother has recently died, and Texas Midland Bank is set to foreclose on their farm shortly. But he’s someone who-while he’s evidently made his share of mistakes and done what he needed to do to survive sometimes difficult circumstances-has never turned to major crime until now.

He has a clean police record-which helps in making him less of a suspect later-but from some things that are said it seems he’s really not so squeaky clean.

Toby is the younger brother, but the one who came up with the idea and who more or less is the brains of the operation. Hell or High Water is about two brothers in rural Texas who turn to robbing banks to save the family farm.

Hell or high water movie clips