Inheritance debacle. WWYD?

[Anonymous]

I think PPs have no idea how hard it is to litigate and win an estate contest.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:To answer some questions:

1. My godmother was in perfect mental and very good physical health. She frequently took solo cruises and road trips. For example, one day she called me from upstate NY to tell me she drove up there to spend time with an old friend. Not sure why you all insist on the fact that she was some feeble minded frail old woman who was deliriously laying in bed having someone drag her hand across the signature line on the will.

2. I have heard with my own ears, my godmother telling her daughter that she shouldn't be so entitled (in a discussion about inheritance) and that she shouldn't expect to inherit much. My godmother was quite wealthy (independently, not through her late DH) but didn't like to let on that she had money. She only did big purchases at Christmas, birthdays and special occasions like graduations, so no one saw her throwing money around on the regular.

3. As much as I don't want to leave Mary without a home, why is it the "moral" thing to split the proceeds of the house with her? Not arguing, just wondering. What's to stop Roy from saying he wants a cut too?

There isn't any reason you should give her funds. Go ask the same question in the money forum and see what response you get. Your godmother gave you this home because she wanted you to have it. End of story. Has the estate been settled yet? That is, do you formally own it right now? Be sensitive to your cousin but it's her issue not yours. What did the lawyer who settled this say?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Op here. At the time of the writing of the will, my godmother and my grandma both sat with a lawyer and had the will written and verified.

Why was your grandmother with her sister when the will was written?

Who was holding the will at the time of Thelma's death?

So, Larla's grandmother goes with her sister Thelma to a lawyer's office and when the meeting is over, Thelma is leaving her family home to her sister's granddaughter instead of to her own two children.

This sounds like the plot of a tv detective show. An older woman dies and leaves her home to a great niece instead of her own children. The children go to a lawyer to find out if there is any way to challenge this surprising will. The lawyer hires a detective who tracks down the lawyer who wrote the will five years before Thelma passed away. At the end, there is a dramatic courtroom scene where the lawyer who wrote the will is called to the stand and is asked who said what when Thelma and her sister were sitting in his office on the day he wrote Thelma's will. What will the judge decide?

If I were Mary or Roy, I'd be asking a lot of questions and consulting a lawyer about this situation, before too much time has passed.

I think the facts surrounding the writing of the will definitely give Mary and Roy an opening to challenge it.

I think there's enough possibility that something is off here that Mary and Roy should see a lawyer. We don't really know enough because we are only hearing the facts from Larla's perspective. A lawyer can look at the will and find out more about the circumstances from the lawyer who wrote the will. Maybe there's a basis to challenge the will, maybe there's not, but they should get legal advice from an objective professional to find out.

This isn't about sympathy/hostility toward Mary or whether she should be punished/rewarded for her choices/possible mental health problems. A will is a legal document and there are rules about how a will is written. Mary and Roy need to find out if there was anything unusual about the situation surrounding their mother's will that indicate that the will is not a good one.

Do Mary and Roy know that Larla's grandmother accompanied their mother to the lawyer's office to have her will written? The fact that Larla's grandmother was there and ended up being named executor for the will which leaves a valuable asset to her own granddaughter raises at least a yellow flag. The circumstances do lend themselves to the question of whether Thelma was influenced by her sister to leave her family home to the great niece rather than to her own children.

Who had copies of the will when Thelma died? Did Mary and Roy both have copies in advance? Did Thelma's sister have a copy? Did Larla or her parents have a copy?

Did Mary and Roy know ahead of time that their mother's sister would be the executor?

What about the last questions here? Do you know the answers to any of these, OP?

I don't think anyone thinks Thelma's hand was dragged across a signature line- that's not usually how undue influence works.

Also, if your great aunt was so wealthy, where is the rest of the money going? You've accounted for $100,000 each to Mary and Roy, the house(worth $400,000) plus $25,000 to you, and then another $30,000 to each grandson. Who is getting the rest of the estate?

Did she buy the house on her own without her husband ever paying any of the down payment or monthly mortgage? Did he not leave her anything at all?

[Anonymous]

If you don't understand or recognize that there is a moral dilemma over Mary's sudden precarious position due to her mother leaving the family home away from her (the same house where Mary has lived in for decades, apparently), then I'm not quite sure what there is to tell you. There's a certain stubbornness and even selfishness not to cue in on that plenty of posters on here have spelled out the challenges facing Mary and the peculiarities of Thelma's will. Like it or not, Thelma allowed Mary to become dependent and this is pulling the rug from underneath a middle aged woman with limited means or abilities. Telling Mary not to count her chicks before they hatch is not the same as being upfront that she wouldn't inherit the house, something Thelma should have done from the get-go. Your godmother / great aunt did her daughter an enormous disservice. Mary risks being homeless, becoming dependent on welfare, and no, 100,000 really isn't enough to provide Mary with stability. Half the house's proceeds will go much further for Mary. It will allow her to buy a modest condo and still have a bit of a cushion for her old age.

Mary's situation is different from Roy, who according to you already knew he wouldn't inherit the house and knew not to expect much from his mother's estate. And he is also successful with his own assets.

If the house is genuinely yours then you are legally free to do whatever you want with it. But if you have a conscience, I hope you will be a little generous to Mary (while still inheriting a substantial sum from Thelma's estate).

As it is, I say this solely based on what you have told us, and I agree with other sentiments that there's more to the story we aren't being told.

Anonymous wrote:

3. As much as I don't want to leave Mary without a home, why is it the "moral" thing to split the proceeds of the house with her? Not arguing, just wondering. What's to stop Roy from saying he wants a cut too?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If you don't understand or recognize that there is a moral dilemma over Mary's sudden precarious position due to her mother leaving the family home away from her (the same house where Mary has lived in for decades, apparently), then I'm not quite sure what there is to tell you. There's a certain stubbornness and even selfishness not to cue in on that plenty of posters on here have spelled out the challenges facing Mary and the peculiarities of Thelma's will. Like it or not, Thelma allowed Mary to become dependent and this is pulling the rug from underneath a middle aged woman with limited means or abilities. Telling Mary not to count her chicks before they hatch is not the same as being upfront that she wouldn't inherit the house, something Thelma should have done from the get-go. Your godmother / great aunt did her daughter an enormous disservice. Mary risks being homeless, becoming dependent on welfare, and no, 100,000 really isn't enough to provide Mary with stability. Half the house's proceeds will go much further for Mary. It will allow her to buy a modest condo and still have a bit of a cushion for her old age.

Mary's situation is different from Roy, who according to you already knew he wouldn't inherit the house and knew not to expect much from his mother's estate. And he is also successful with his own assets.

If the house is genuinely yours then you are legally free to do whatever you want with it. But if you have a conscience, I hope you will be a little generous to Mary (while still inheriting a substantial sum from Thelma's estate).

As it is, I say this solely based on what you have told us, and I agree with other sentiments that there's more to the story we aren't being told.

Anonymous wrote:

3. As much as I don't want to leave Mary without a home, why is it the "moral" thing to split the proceeds of the house with her? Not arguing, just wondering. What's to stop Roy from saying he wants a cut too?

Mary is not mentally or physically disabled. She's has a job as a waitress. It's not high paying but she can support herself. If Mary has been living rent-free all these years, then she would've had the opportunity to save up a nice nest egg.

[Anonymous]

Larla,

This is a perfect example of you dribbling out little bits of information as the story spins along and it does seem like whenever someone challenges your assumptions or feelings you come up with another convenient explanation or justification, although ironically it tends to lead to more questionings. For example, you now say Mary works as a waitress and you claim she had all these years to save up a nest egg. Well, waitresses don't make much money, and Mary was allowed to believe she was the inheritor of her mother's property because Thelma didn't say sorry, nope, that ain't gonna be the case, so Mary didn't save at all based on erroneous assumption. So the moral dilemma gets even worse and Thelma is even bitchier than I thought.

I'm wondering if you're making up this entire affair for the kicks or as research for potential story. I don't think there's anything more left to be said especially as if this is a true situation, I get the impression it involves a bunch of unpleasant people, deceased or alive. One way or another I wish you best of luck.

Anonymous wrote:[ote=Anonymous]If you don't understand or recognize that there is a moral dilemma over Mary's sudden precarious position due to her mother leaving the family home away from her (the same house where Mary has lived in for decades, apparently), then I'm not quite sure what there is to tell you. There's a certain stubbornness and even selfishness not to cue in on that plenty of posters on here have spelled out the challenges facing Mary and the peculiarities of Thelma's will. Like it or not, Thelma allowed Mary to become dependent and this is pulling the rug from underneath a middle aged woman with limited means or abilities. Telling Mary not to count her chicks before they hatch is not the same as being upfront that she wouldn't inherit the house, something Thelma should have done from the get-go. Your godmother / great aunt did her daughter an enormous disservice. Mary risks being homeless, becoming dependent on welfare, and no, 100,000 really isn't enough to provide Mary with stability. Half the house's proceeds will go much further for Mary. It will allow her to buy a modest condo and still have a bit of a cushion for her old age.

Mary's situation is different from Roy, who according to you already knew he wouldn't inherit the house and knew not to expect much from his mother's estate. And he is also successful with his own assets.

If the house is genuinely yours then you are legally free to do whatever you want with it. But if you have a conscience, I hope you will be a little generous to Mary (while still inheriting a substantial sum from Thelma's estate).

As it is, I say this solely based on what you have told us, and I agree with other sentiments that there's more to the story we aren't being told.

Anonymous wrote:

3. As much as I don't want to leave Mary without a home, why is it the "moral" thing to split the proceeds of the house with her? Not arguing, just wondering. What's to stop Roy from saying he wants a cut too?

Mary is not mentally or physically disabled. She's has a job as a waitress. It's not high paying but she can support herself. If Mary has been living rent-free all these years, then she would've had the opportunity to save up a nice nest egg.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Larla,

This is a perfect example of you dribbling out little bits of information as the story spins along and it does seem like whenever someone challenges your assumptions or feelings you come up with another convenient explanation or justification, although ironically it tends to lead to more questionings. For example, you now say Mary works as a waitress and you claim she had all these years to save up a nest egg. Well, waitresses don't make much money, and Mary was allowed to believe she was the inheritor of her mother's property because Thelma didn't say sorry, nope, that ain't gonna be the case, so Mary didn't save at all based on erroneous assumption. So the moral dilemma gets even worse and Thelma is even bitchier than I thought.

I'm wondering if you're making up this entire affair for the kicks or as research for potential story. I don't think there's anything more left to be said especially as if this is a true situation, I get the impression it involves a bunch of unpleasant people, deceased or alive. One way or another I wish you best of luck.

Anonymous wrote:[ote=Anonymous]If you don't understand or recognize that there is a moral dilemma over Mary's sudden precarious position due to her mother leaving the family home away from her (the same house where Mary has lived in for decades, apparently), then I'm not quite sure what there is to tell you. There's a certain stubbornness and even selfishness not to cue in on that plenty of posters on here have spelled out the challenges facing Mary and the peculiarities of Thelma's will. Like it or not, Thelma allowed Mary to become dependent and this is pulling the rug from underneath a middle aged woman with limited means or abilities. Telling Mary not to count her chicks before they hatch is not the same as being upfront that she wouldn't inherit the house, something Thelma should have done from the get-go. Your godmother / great aunt did her daughter an enormous disservice. Mary risks being homeless, becoming dependent on welfare, and no, 100,000 really isn't enough to provide Mary with stability. Half the house's proceeds will go much further for Mary. It will allow her to buy a modest condo and still have a bit of a cushion for her old age.

Mary's situation is different from Roy, who according to you already knew he wouldn't inherit the house and knew not to expect much from his mother's estate. And he is also successful with his own assets.

If the house is genuinely yours then you are legally free to do whatever you want with it. But if you have a conscience, I hope you will be a little generous to Mary (while still inheriting a substantial sum from Thelma's estate).

As it is, I say this solely based on what you have told us, and I agree with other sentiments that there's more to the story we aren't being told.

Anonymous wrote:

3. As much as I don't want to leave Mary without a home, why is it the "moral" thing to split the proceeds of the house with her? Not arguing, just wondering. What's to stop Roy from saying he wants a cut too?

Mary is not mentally or physically disabled. She's has a job as a waitress. It's not high paying but she can support herself. If Mary has been living rent-free all these years, then she would've had the opportunity to save up a nice nest egg.

Op here.

I didn't write the part about Mary having saved up a lot of money. And no I'm not responsible for her assuming that her mother was gonna leave the house to her. I'm not sure what I haven't been upfront about... I gave you all the entire story in the first post and then people start asking questions which I then started answering, is that what you mean by giving out dribbles of information?

To answer any other questions that I may have left out, I don't think Roy and Mary know that my grandmother was the executor of the will, no one expected my godmother to die so soon.

No I don't think anyone ever told Mary flat out she was not going to get the house and Thelma died, but it takes a whole lot of entitlement to assume you're getting something when somebody dies. I don't expect to inherit my parents house when they die because I'm not entitled person.

[Anonymous]

I think I'd be more accommodating to her if she wasn't so rude every time I talk to her. She was rude before my godmother died and she's rude now. The last conversation we had, wasn't even originally about this inheritance issue, we were just chatting casually. That's when she brought up the fact that if I want to move into the house I would need to move into the guestroom and not expect to change anything in the house.

I am trying to be gracious about the situation, but it's very difficult when she won't do the same.

[Anonymous]

I think OP's godmother determined that Mary has already received her inheritance in the form of multiple degrees and free rent for decades.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Op here. At the time of the writing of the will, my godmother and my grandma both sat with a lawyer and had the will written and verified.

Why was your grandmother with her sister when the will was written?

Who was holding the will at the time of Thelma's death?

So, Larla's grandmother goes with her sister Thelma to a lawyer's office and when the meeting is over, Thelma is leaving her family home to her sister's granddaughter instead of to her own two children.

This sounds like the plot of a tv detective show. An older woman dies and leaves her home to a great niece instead of her own children. The children go to a lawyer to find out if there is any way to challenge this surprising will. The lawyer hires a detective who tracks down the lawyer who wrote the will five years before Thelma passed away. At the end, there is a dramatic courtroom scene where the lawyer who wrote the will is called to the stand and is asked who said what when Thelma and her sister were sitting in his office on the day he wrote Thelma's will. What will the judge decide?

If I were Mary or Roy, I'd be asking a lot of questions and consulting a lawyer about this situation, before too much time has passed.

I think the facts surrounding the writing of the will definitely give Mary and Roy an opening to challenge it.

I think there's enough possibility that something is off here that Mary and Roy should see a lawyer. We don't really know enough because we are only hearing the facts from Larla's perspective. A lawyer can look at the will and find out more about the circumstances from the lawyer who wrote the will. Maybe there's a basis to challenge the will, maybe there's not, but they should get legal advice from an objective professional to find out.

This isn't about sympathy/hostility toward Mary or whether she should be punished/rewarded for her choices/possible mental health problems. A will is a legal document and there are rules about how a will is written. Mary and Roy need to find out if there was anything unusual about the situation surrounding their mother's will that indicate that the will is not a good one.

Do Mary and Roy know that Larla's grandmother accompanied their mother to the lawyer's office to have her will written? The fact that Larla's grandmother was there and ended up being named executor for the will which leaves a valuable asset to her own granddaughter raises at least a yellow flag. The circumstances do lend themselves to the question of whether Thelma was influenced by her sister to leave her family home to the great niece rather than to her own children.

Who had copies of the will when Thelma died? Did Mary and Roy both have copies in advance? Did Thelma's sister have a copy? Did Larla or her parents have a copy?

Did Mary and Roy know ahead of time that their mother's sister would be the executor?

What about the last questions here? Do you know the answers to any of these, OP?

I don't think anyone thinks Thelma's hand was dragged across a signature line- that's not usually how undue influence works.

Also, if your great aunt was so wealthy, where is the rest of the money going? You've accounted for $100,000 each to Mary and Roy, the house(worth $400,000) plus $25,000 to you, and then another $30,000 to each grandson. Who is getting the rest of the estate?

Did she buy the house on her own without her husband ever paying any of the down payment or monthly mortgage? Did he not leave her anything at all?

1. The lawyer and my grandmother had copies of the will.
2. My parents and I didn't even know anything was being left to me so now we did not have copies.
3. The rest of the money from her estate is doled out to other family members and a few charities.
4. Yes my godmother was wealthy on her own, she owned the house before she married her husband so no I don't believe he had any stake in it.

[Anonymous]

I can't believe some of these posters are trying to reward Mary for doing nothing with her life except sitting and waiting for her mother to die.

[Anonymous]

Larla, the more you tell, the less believable your story is.

You described your godmother/great aunt as wealthy, but we're told of a 400k house and maybe another 400k on top of that. For an elderly woman in her 80s that's not a particularly wealthy set up. That seems feasible for a middle class octogenarian who's been financially responsible all her life and benefitted from appreciation in housing values. 400k isn't much for a house. In the DC area that means a very modest bungalow or split level or rancher in an unremarkable neighborhood. Even in less expensive cities it still mostly means a middle class house. Nothing fancy or extravagant.

You tell us your godmother owned the house before she married her husband. Mary is 50. So I can extrapolate that your godmother owned the house for at least the last 50 years, which takes us to 1966. Do you know how unusual it would have been for a single woman to buy a house of some value on her own in the 1960s? It did happen but it was pretty rare (in the early 1970s, my aunt, who was a doctor, had trouble getting a bank to approve of a mortgage because she was single and she only got one when my grandfather cosigned the mortgage). In your first post the way you described the house (nice house, not too close in but close enough to everything strongly implicates a suburban house in a post-war suburb, which, once again, would not have been something commonly bought by a single woman without a husband or family in the early-mid 1960s).

If your godmother/great aunt was independently wealthy from, say, family money (meaning her husband and Mary's father had negligible input in the family's assets), then what about your grandmother, Thelma's sister? Why isn't she independently wealthy too? (your first few posts about your half of the family strongly suggests otherwise). You haven't said anything about Thelma working and only referred to her being "wealthy on her own."

You say Mary has two degrees. But she's a waitress? Ok, definitely possible. But unusual, nonetheless. I dine out often at restaurants both high and low and 50 year old waitresses are almost only ever found at lower-end restaurants, which, once again, makes it even odder that Mary is a waitress. Being a waitress is a very demanding job, long hours on the feet, constantly on the move, requiring people skills - all of which are not consistent with Mary's personality as told to us.

Then, of course, we have the initial situation of a mother/ daughter / willing the house instead to a distant family member, and both the mother and her sister (your grandmother) knew the contents of the will for the last five years but never explicitly making clear to the daughter not to expect to inherit the family house, which is pretty odd if not downright cruel.

There are odd elements of your story that on their own are plausible, but the more and more oddities that are revealed, the more unlikely the whole story becomes. I'm now expecting you to come back with further stories of how Mary's "father" was really a stepfather who Thelma married after her first husband died etc cetera, or Thelma got her money by winning the lottery or whatever.

You've had your fun. But I suspect you've now been busted.

Anonymous wrote:

1. The lawyer and my grandmother had copies of the will.
2. My parents and I didn't even know anything was being left to me so now we did not have copies.
3. The rest of the money from her estate is doled out to other family members and a few charities.
4. Yes my godmother was wealthy on her own, she owned the house before she married her husband so no I don't believe he had any stake in it.

[Anonymous]

OP, is your grandmother, the executor, asking you what you want to do? Unless the title of the house is in your name, you don't yet own the property, the estate does. And so the executor should be the one to make sure Mary is paying rent as a tenant with a formal agreement in place and/or taking the steps needed to evict Mary before she hands the title of the house over to you. Hopefully your grandmother is doing her job, but if she isn't, the beneficiaries of the will can take legal action against the executor, which means getting a lawyer. Since your grandmother was with your godmother when she made the will, I'd think she knows her sister's intentions regarding Mary, and hopefully she is acting on them appropriately. I hope for your sake that Mary won't be your problem to resolve.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Larla, the more you tell, the less believable your story is.

You described your godmother/great aunt as wealthy, but we're told of a 400k house and maybe another 400k on top of that. For an elderly woman in her 80s that's not a particularly wealthy set up. That seems feasible for a middle class octogenarian who's been financially responsible all her life and benefitted from appreciation in housing values. 400k isn't much for a house. In the DC area that means a very modest bungalow or split level or rancher in an unremarkable neighborhood. Even in less expensive cities it still mostly means a middle class house. Nothing fancy or extravagant.

You tell us your godmother owned the house before she married her husband. Mary is 50. So I can extrapolate that your godmother owned the house for at least the last 50 years, which takes us to 1966. Do you know how unusual it would have been for a single woman to buy a house of some value on her own in the 1960s? It did happen but it was pretty rare (in the early 1970s, my aunt, who was a doctor, had trouble getting a bank to approve of a mortgage because she was single and she only got one when my grandfather cosigned the mortgage). In your first post the way you described the house (nice house, not too close in but close enough to everything strongly implicates a suburban house in a post-war suburb, which, once again, would not have been something commonly bought by a single woman without a husband or family in the early-mid 1960s).

If your godmother/great aunt was independently wealthy from, say, family money (meaning her husband and Mary's father had negligible input in the family's assets), then what about your grandmother, Thelma's sister? Why isn't she independently wealthy too? (your first few posts about your half of the family strongly suggests otherwise). You haven't said anything about Thelma working and only referred to her being "wealthy on her own."

You say Mary has two degrees. But she's a waitress? Ok, definitely possible. But unusual, nonetheless. I dine out often at restaurants both high and low and 50 year old waitresses are almost only ever found at lower-end restaurants, which, once again, makes it even odder that Mary is a waitress. Being a waitress is a very demanding job, long hours on the feet, constantly on the move, requiring people skills - all of which are not consistent with Mary's personality as told to us.

Then, of course, we have the initial situation of a mother/ daughter / willing the house instead to a distant family member, and both the mother and her sister (your grandmother) knew the contents of the will for the last five years but never explicitly making clear to the daughter not to expect to inherit the family house, which is pretty odd if not downright cruel.

There are odd elements of your story that on their own are plausible, but the more and more oddities that are revealed, the more unlikely the whole story becomes. I'm now expecting you to come back with further stories of how Mary's "father" was really a stepfather who Thelma married after her first husband died etc cetera, or Thelma got her money by winning the lottery or whatever.

You've had your fun. But I suspect you've now been busted.

Anonymous wrote:

1. The lawyer and my grandmother had copies of the will.
2. My parents and I didn't even know anything was being left to me so now we did not have copies.
3. The rest of the money from her estate is doled out to other family members and a few charities.
4. Yes my godmother was wealthy on her own, she owned the house before she married her husband so no I don't believe he had any stake in it.

No I'm not busted, because this is all true. Sorry I didn't give you a complete financial breakdown of what money my godmother has and where as I'm not completely sure of that myself but she is quite wealthy. I'm sure you had a great time doing all this research about what a woman could buy in the 50s and what they couldn't buy however that's not the case. if you must know, my godmother's parents died when she was 20 and when my grandmother was 16. They left them the house which my godmother stayed in with my grandma, who only moved when she got married. when my godmother married her husband they just stayed in the house which then belonged to my godmother. She was not independently wealthy in that her and my grandmother came from a rich family, but they did both get money left to them and my godmother and her dh saved and invested it and were able to build it into a bigger nest egg. Her husband however, never took the money to be his own, he always remember the fact that their wealth through investments started out with her modest inheritance from her parents.
My grandmother is not wealthy, but she is well off as she was able to save her part of the inheritance to ended up buying another home which she has rented out over the years and has been saving that money too.
I'm not sure why I have to explain this to you, it isn't relevant to the situation but since I have strangers on the Internet calling me a liar I guess I have to explain all the inner workings of my family.

As to your point about the house not being particularly " remarkable", I never said that it was, all I said is that it's about 3000 sq ft and it's in a decent area. And since we're already all the way off topic, I'm sure if that house had a number of repairs it would be worth even more. That doesn't mean that it's not a great house it just wouldn't get as much as it probably would if it was a new build.

[Anonymous]

She was not independently wealthy in that her and my grandmother came from a rich family, but they did both get money left to them and my godmother and her dh saved and invested it and were able to build it into a bigger nest egg. Her husband however, never took the money to be his own, he always remember the fact that their wealth through investments started out with her modest inheritance from her parents.

Did your Great Aunt Thelma's husband ever have a job? Did he make any financial contribution to the household at all?