Generalized family drama

Hateyou said:

And make sure it is secured with a third party. I have a cousin who’s dad was dying from cancer. He had his will (I guess, some kind of documents) in a small safe in the house. He was leaving their nice, paid in full house to my cousin. The town he lives in is very small, like 20-30 houses, and it’s almost all comprised of the dad’s family.His cousins, brothers, uncles, I think his parents were even still alive.

Anyways they’re pissed about the son getting the house, they want it sold and split between the siblings. At some point while these family members visiting they stole the safe with all the docs. It then had to go to the courts, my cousin ends up losing eventually and has to get evicted from his own house. He grew up their since he was like 8 years old and lived there his entire adulthood with his dad. Makes me fucking sick.

So, he did what any rational person would do, stripped the entire house. Of everything. Wires, pipes, doors, ripped drywall out, etc. They took possession of a bunch of 2x4s with a roof.

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Truly scummy how family are when it comes to inheritance, experienced this with my grandfather.

So my grandfather outlived his then wife(not my grandmother) by 5-10 years. They had been living in the same house together for 15-20 years, but it was a house his wife already owned prior to their marriage. So because of that, his wife setup her estate to allow my grandfather to live in the house if she where to die before him but then the house would pass to her heirs once he dies. Legally speaking that made zero sense, as that asset would have been comingled to hell and back due to how long they both lived in together while married. I looked at the taxes and grandfather had been paying the property taxes on the thing since the mid 90s.

Anyways grandfather dies and so now its time to take care of all the paperwork. No one in my family had any idea of this setup until my sister went to go deal with his estate. For a year or so after his death the house just sits there as its in legal limbo and the reality is its a shitty old house that had a meth head living in it for 3-4 years prior to this so it was worthless and no reason to fight for it. Eventually we get a letter from a title company asking us to sign over our portion of the house, completely out of the blue with zero conversation from the title company or other family. I called the title company and they play confused and tell me this is what they thought me and my siblings wanted as part of some deal with the other family. I tell them no we have no interest in giving them our share of the property and thats it.

Some time later im on Zillow and out of curiosity I check out the property and see it says recently sold. It seems like after we said no to the first title company, the family went shopping for other title companies that would sign off on the title without our involvement. We never pursued anything as the house wasworth very little considering the amount of people involved to split whatever proceeds would come from a sale it just wasnt worth the hassle.

Big Phoenix said:

Truly scummy how family are when it comes to inheritance, experienced this with my grandfather.

So my grandfather outlived his then wife(not my grandmother) by 5-10 years. They had been living in the same house together for 15-20 years, but it was a house his wife already owned prior to their marriage. So because of that, his wife setup her estate to allow my grandfather to live in the house if she where to die before him but then the house would pass to her heirs once he dies. Legally speaking that made zero sense, as that asset would have been comingled to hell and back due to how long they both lived in together while married. I looked at the taxes and grandfather had been paying the property taxes on the thing since the mid 90s.

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An arrangement like this is not as atypical as you would imagine. I believe it is commonly referred to as a "Life Estate."

Paging Cad for back up.

Oblio said:

An arrangement like this is not as atypical as you would imagine. I believe it is commonly referred to as a "Life Estate."

Paging Cad for back up.

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Yeah reading through everything that was the legal basis for what they did, but it was a home they had been living in for quite some time before his wife died. It was an asset that in reality had been comingled significantly and Im pretty sure thats what the first title company realized.

Big Phoenix said:

Yeah reading through everything that was the legal basis for what they did, but it was a home they had been living in for quite some time before his wife died. It was an asset that in reality had been comingled significantly and Im pretty sure thats what the first title company realized.

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Not if they filed a Quit Claim Deed and titled it as hers and hers alone.

Oblio said:

Not if they filed a Quit Claim Deed and titled it as hers and hers alone.

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I dont recall that being the case, it was always titled in her name alone as she owned it herself before they married.

The house was certainly her sole separate property going into marriage and her will reflected that, but the point of contention was that after 15 years or so of living in it with my grandfather with my grandfather contributing to its upkeep/maintenance over those 15 years it was no longer her sole and separate property when she died. It was then a comingled asset. Id guess thats the conclusion the first title company came to.

We never pursued it as financially it was not worth even if we "won". The house was worth less than 100k after fixing it up and that would have been split god knows how many ways.

My parents were pennywise and pound dumb. My father especially. While they successfully ran businesses they were generally terrible at saving money. My dad would bitch about paying $30 but then pay $50k on some shit he could have got for far cheaper because he wanted the nicer one (of whatever).

Both of my parents were effectively only children as their siblings passed away back in the 70s. My grandma on my mom's side passed away in 2008 or something and they squandered all of that money (probably around $1.5M) before 2015. No clue what they spent it on honestly. I didn't ask and don't give a shit. Fast forward to 2018 when my grandma on my father's side passes away giving him access to my grandfather's full inheritance as it was all left directly to him and him alone. My grandfather was a successful attorney and over his life accumulated an estate of $15M or somewhere around there. My dad spent a ton of money on insane shit. Just retarded. Total renovations on a property he didn't live in and hasn't sold yet that probably cost at least $700k. Shit like that.

My father passed away recently and now this all goes to my mom and my mom alone. I keep myself pretty separated from this drama as I legitimately don't give a shit and don't want to be involved in any way whatsoever. If my sisters (I have 3) are fighting with her about I don't want to know. I am the only one that doesn't live in the area with them. My mom knows I am good with money so peppers me with questions about this or that. She has so far paid off the debt of my oldest and youngest sister and I am not really sure what else.

She probably has a solid 20 years left in her. I am hoping she doesn't blow the rest of it on fuck knows what. I do not think my sisters have it in them to be manipulative and just extract money from her as they haven't yet. But who knows what will happen down the road. Not looking forward to it, as she's already made me the power of attorney on her finances if she loses capacity for whatever reason.

Mom is already talking about a bunch of renovations to my grandparents house, which is where she now lives. I think its pointless but whatever. That house is in a good condition but she wants the entire kitchen redone, a room wall collapsed and who the fuck knows what else. All because she "never liked it how it was" for the past 50 years.

Hateyou said:

Well I won’t have to worry about this stuff. All my grandparents are gone and died penniless as will my wife parents and my parents. We inherited a shotgun from her dad when he died, that’s probably all we will get from anyone.

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Speaking of family squandering shit away, supposedly my great great great grandparents owned a ton a land in Southern California like hundreds of acres and their kids somehow managed to lose it all. I grew up lower middle class, my Dad installed carpet on the weekends to give us a little extra cash. Had they not squandered it, I probably never would have been born as my Mom and Dad never would have met, but it still irks me a bit.

Oblio said:

Speaking of family squandering shit away, supposedly my great great great grandparents owned a ton a land in Southern California like hundreds of acres and their kids somehow managed to lose it all. I grew up lower middle class, my Dad installed carpet on the weekends to give us a little extra cash. Had they not squandered it, I probably never would have been born as my Mom and Dad never would have met, but it still irks me a bit.

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I know that feel.

My grandfather was getting a little over $3000 a month between ss/disability/pension for the last decade of his life. Which ideally meant he should have died with a bit of money in the bank as he had zero debt and really only should have been spending money on the essentials due to his condition. He died with just over $1000 in his bank account though because my dad used him as an atm as well as the meth head my dad set my grandfather up with when my father was disowned in a moment of lucid thought by my grandfather.

Goatface said:

question for anyone.
would you play $1000 to bury (cremate) a relative, while not a good person, never did anything personally to you, or let them have a pauper's burial?

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Cremate and then find out what place on earth they hated the most...