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As far as I can tell, it's not specified whether Vanthus is Lavinia's younger or older brother. I was tempted to make them fraternal twins to extend the Demogorgon duality theme, but since both his heads are evil I decided that it'd be misleading to have a "light/dark" set of twins at the beginning.
Instead, I decided to have Vanthus be the older brother so that he'd expect to inherit upon murdering them. But, surprisingly, it turns out he was cut out of the will, which leaves Lavinia in charge of the estate (and forcing Vanthus to resort to the second-best expedient of robbing the family vaults). I reckon that Verik and Larissa might have suspected Vanthus's involvement in Khallum's death (who I decided was Verik's brother, as this also wasn't specified) and so disinherited him.
The setup I'm thinking about using to begin the adventure is that the PCs are either friends of Lavinia, or creditors of the estate, or folks with dirt on the family who are angling to blackmail the new heir. Lavinia calls them all together, hoping to negotiate a delayed repayment with all her creditors at once. During the meeting, it turns out that one of the NPC creditors is an impostor: when he is accidentally unmasked, he tries to fight his way out, giving the PCs a chance to prove themselves to Lavinia.
Afterwards, Lavinia confesses that the estate is in dire trouble: without the money in the vaults, she can't stay afloat. I'm considering having her make a desperate offer - in exchange for her help, she'll make the PCs partial owners of the estate.
The advantages I see to this vs. the Lavinia-hires-the-party approach are 1) players will care more about something they see as theirs 2) I like the idea of them moving into Vanderboren Mansion to get more mileage out of its maps & the cool Greyhawk relics in each room 3) it doesn't make sense to me that Lavinia has cash on hand to hire the PCs, or that Vanthus would stop short of cleaning out the vault.
I think that, as written, Vanthus is Lavinia's younger brother. But what you've written up sounds like a good setup, and Vanthus could well have still been expecting to inherit, as oldest (only) male heir. For that matter, I don't think there's anything written that relies on Vanthus being younger, and I think the elder Vanderborens could easily have written him out of the will when he started acting up after the death of his uncle -- maybe even suspecting him of being involved.
I agree, it actually makes his motivation more clear. However it also nicely brings out Lavinia's quietly stubborn streak--she obviously has no intention of yielding the inheritance to her brother. (wisely) And it also gives the pcs a good general hook for the earlier part of the game.