Inheritance debacle. WWYD?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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?

Yes they both worked, they couldn't live off of the money that Thelma's parents left her. They simply took that relatively small sum of money added to it and invested it and then putting that into savings while still working. I believe originally it was supposed to be a retirement fund but then it became much more than that. my grandmother told me that for time they actually flipped houses and made a great deal of money on that and all the money they made they would reinvest.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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.

I think it is fishy that Thelma and her sister were the only family members that had copies of the will, and that the lawyer advised making another elderly person the executor of the will. In my family, all the kids have copies of our elderly parents' wills, the same for my cousins with their parents' wills. I also know that my parents were advised to make one or two of their children the executors, because they are more likely to be around, even if my parents live to be 100.

The optics of this is that it looks like Thelma's sister went to the lawyer with her and maybe talked her into leaving the family home to Larla, the sister's granddaughter, over Thelma's own children. Did your grandmother maybe feel that the house should now go to her side of the family? Did Thelma ever buy out her sister's share of the house? Did your parents have all the extra people living at your house at the time the will was written?

This is a very complicated situation and it is clear your side of the family does not really like Mary and Roy very much. It might be hard to understand when you're 25, but losing your mother is a very traumatic event in one's life, even if your relationship was not very close and had problems. I'd say it is even more difficult to deal with when you've had a problematic relationship.

No matter how old we get, we still need the love of our mothers. When your mother dies, it is a comfort to know that she loved you and she knew that you loved her. It can have deep longterm effects on a person to feel unloved by one's own mother. Mary and Roy must feel right now as though their mother turned her back on them one final time and essentially said that she doesn't love them. That is devastating feeling for a person to have and it is hard to imagine why a mother would allow that to happen. I can't even imagine the extent of the sadness mary and Roy must be feeling, and then on top of that, to have a distant relative taking there family home on top of that.

[Anonymous]

Oh come on, PP, just because one of the children is the executor in your family that's not the case for everyone. For my parents it's my uncle and their lawyer advised them NOT to have a beneficiary as the executor.

You are reading so much more emotion into OPs question than is necessary to answer it.

[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.

Doesn't anyone have basic comprehension skills here? Larla is answering the same questions over and over. Yes, she said that Mary knew. In fact she'd been told multiple times including in front of Larla that this was the case, though Larla was not told she was the beneficiary.

Bottom line is that her godmother wanted her to have the house, therefore she know owns it and gets to do as she wishes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm going to go against the grain here and say it's Larla's house, not Mary's, and Larla should feel free to do what she wants with it. I think it's selfish for Mary to expect to continue staying there, rent free. That's not how life works. Maybe I know too many Mary-types, but I don't have a lot of sympathy.

The update reinforces my feelings.

I agree. Mary is a 50 year old baby. She has multiple degrees?Did I read that right? Go use them by getting a real job. SHe has money now from her Mom's death. She needs to go rent her own f***ing apartment. It's Larla's house plain and simple. I think Larla should sell the house, invest the money to get good yearly dividends OR buy a 2BD condo. She can find a paying roommate to rent one bedroom if she likes to help cover the monthly expenses. Just my two cents.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm going to go against the grain here and say it's Larla's house, not Mary's, and Larla should feel free to do what she wants with it. I think it's selfish for Mary to expect to continue staying there, rent free. That's not how life works. Maybe I know too many Mary-types, but I don't have a lot of sympathy.

The update reinforces my feelings.

I agree. Mary is a 50 year old baby. She has multiple degrees?Did I read that right? Go use them by getting a real job. SHe has money now from her Mom's death. She needs to go rent her own f***ing apartment. It's Larla's house plain and simple. I think Larla should sell the house, invest the money to get good yearly dividends OR buy a 2BD condo. She can find a paying roommate to rent one bedroom if she likes to help cover the monthly expenses. Just my two cents.

I wish someone who fit the profile of Mary would post here, I'm sure the posters that are demonizing Larla, would light her up

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm going to go against the grain here and say it's Larla's house, not Mary's, and Larla should feel free to do what she wants with it. I think it's selfish for Mary to expect to continue staying there, rent free. That's not how life works. Maybe I know too many Mary-types, but I don't have a lot of sympathy.

The update reinforces my feelings.

I agree. Mary is a 50 year old baby. She has multiple degrees?Did I read that right? Go use them by getting a real job. SHe has money now from her Mom's death. She needs to go rent her own f***ing apartment. It's Larla's house plain and simple. I think Larla should sell the house, invest the money to get good yearly dividends OR buy a 2BD condo. She can find a paying roommate to rent one bedroom if she likes to help cover the monthly expenses. Just my two cents.

+1 Mary can also get herself a condo and rent a bedroom to a paying roommate with what she was left.

[Anonymous]

Larla,

You are a classic example of someone spinning out a story to cover up the plot holes and the more you try to cover them up, the more complicated it becomes and the more you trip yourself.

For example, you describe Thelma's husband / Mary's father as someone who respected his wife's money as her own. Rather progressive thinking for that generation. Yet this is also the same man who, according to you, kicked out his 19 year old son from the family house while allowing his daughter to stay at home as daddy's little princess and indulged her and allowed her to be lazy and unfocused and unproductive. Which strongly implies a domineering, traditional and old fashioned man. You even admitted this yourself when you said: “He was quite "traditional" in that he firmly believed that it is the mans job to work.” Somehow that picture just doesn't gel.

Then you say Mary's father/Thelma's husband did have an active role in helping to build up the inheritance yet somehow still didn't consider it "his" money? For a couple, especially of that generation, who were married for quite some time that's a pretty unusual position to take. To also quote you from your recent post: "They simply took that relatively small sum of money added to it and invested it and then putting that into savings while still working. I believe originally it was supposed to be a retirement fund but then it became much more than that. my grandmother told me that for time they actually flipped houses and made a great deal of money on that and all the money they made they would reinvest."

Wow. So her husband now did add money to the family's investment portfolio and assets whereas you were previously claiming it was Thelma's money and he didn't consider it "his." Last of all, you tripped over using the term "flipped houses." "Flipping" houses is a recent trend. An old person of a previous generation would be very unlikely to use the term "flip." They'd use the term "fix up" houses. Further, the real estate dynamics in most of America, including in the DC area, through the 1990s, rarely made "great deal of money" flipping or fixing up houses for quick resale.

It was only really in the late 1990s that people started to make money off flips as gentrification and the real estate market both started to boom (And more so in the 2000s) and that's when the term entered into popular usage and you started seeing lots of people doing "flips" and making money off it.

In your first post you said: "The house is pretty nice, 3000 sq ft in a nice area (not too close in, but still close to everything)" but now you're saying it's just in a decent area? Sounds like you can't make up your mind what your story is meant to be or you're trying to backtrack when pointed out the inconsistencies in your hypothetical set up.

And, of course, I'm now laughing at your godmother/great aunt now having been left an orphan at age 20 and inheriting the family house which she presumably lived in for practically her entire life? What an amazingly convenient excuse for a young single unmarried woman owning a large single family house in the early 1960s! And she kept the house, too! She must have really eaten up the initial inheritance to pay the inheritance taxes, property taxes, heating bills, general upkeep on the house in her 20s when she couldn't really have been making much money or still in her studies (as any feminist will tell you, single women were paid far less then men in those pre-feminist days). By the way, you forgot to explain what happened to your grandmother's share of the house for she presumably inherited half of it, too? I'd also love to know how your godmother/great aunt's parents died. Both in the same year! Car accident? What was the tragedy?

By the way, I'm trying to figure out where the house is. 3,000 sqft was pretty d*mn big by 1960s standards for the median sqft for a 1950s/1960s house was 1,500 sqft. But we know the house must be older, for it belonged to your godmother/grandmother's parents. Probably pre-war, no? In the DC area, 3k sqft, pre-war, relatively close in area, still in a "nice" area, well, then that house value is going to be a lot more than 400k. Even in Baltimore/Annapolis area it'd be worth more than 400k. Or maybe your great-granddaddy was a self-made man who built the house himself? Is that why it was so special that Thelma had to keep on to the house at age 20 even after both her parents tragically died so young and in whatever peculiar circumstances that caused their deaths?

Sorry, the picture just doesn't work out. Your lack of understanding of past generations and economic and real estate dynamics is coming through in the latest round of your storytelling.
By the way, I found this in your first post:

“Currently, Mary is not upset about the house, just surprised. She thought it would be split between her and her sibling, Roy. Roy is upset, thinking that he would buy out his sister and just sell the house.”

Then you said many pages later: “Roy knew all along that his mother wasn't leaving him the house.”

In other words, you have been busted. And not only have you been busted, you tripped by saying Mary wasn't upset about the house, which makes no sense whatsoever given the subsequent posts and your claims that Mary is still holding on to the house at the moment and even moving into the master bedroom, instead of getting ready to leave. FYI you should have reversed the roles. Roy should have been the surprised one, not upset, while Mary should have been the upset one. That's the correct sentiments based on their circumstances as told to us (Mary the freeloader who expected to inherit, Roy the estranged son who barely stayed in touch with his mother). Learn to keep your story straight if you want to be successful in your next fictional thread.

FYI the funeral was 5 months ago, according to your first post. In real life, Mary and Roy would have been to the lawyers the day after the funeral, not five months later. The battle would be going on now. The time for hand-wringing "oh my what to do" was a long time ago.

You’ve been a good troll. It was an entertaining thread for a while

Anonymous wrote:

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]

Anonymous wrote:Larla,

You are a classic example of someone spinning out a story to cover up the plot holes and the more you try to cover them up, the more complicated it becomes and the more you trip yourself.

For example, you describe Thelma's husband / Mary's father as someone who respected his wife's money as her own. Rather progressive thinking for that generation. Yet this is also the same man who, according to you, kicked out his 19 year old son from the family house while allowing his daughter to stay at home as daddy's little princess and indulged her and allowed her to be lazy and unfocused and unproductive. Which strongly implies a domineering, traditional and old fashioned man. You even admitted this yourself when you said: “He was quite "traditional" in that he firmly believed that it is the mans job to work.” Somehow that picture just doesn't gel.

Then you say Mary's father/Thelma's husband did have an active role in helping to build up the inheritance yet somehow still didn't consider it "his" money? For a couple, especially of that generation, who were married for quite some time that's a pretty unusual position to take. To also quote you from your recent post: "They simply took that relatively small sum of money added to it and invested it and then putting that into savings while still working. I believe originally it was supposed to be a retirement fund but then it became much more than that. my grandmother told me that for time they actually flipped houses and made a great deal of money on that and all the money they made they would reinvest."

Wow. So her husband now did add money to the family's investment portfolio and assets whereas you were previously claiming it was Thelma's money and he didn't consider it "his." Last of all, you tripped over using the term "flipped houses." "Flipping" houses is a recent trend. An old person of a previous generation would be very unlikely to use the term "flip." They'd use the term "fix up" houses. Further, the real estate dynamics in most of America, including in the DC area, through the 1990s, rarely made "great deal of money" flipping or fixing up houses for quick resale.

It was only really in the late 1990s that people started to make money off flips as gentrification and the real estate market both started to boom (And more so in the 2000s) and that's when the term entered into popular usage and you started seeing lots of people doing "flips" and making money off it.

In your first post you said: "The house is pretty nice, 3000 sq ft in a nice area (not too close in, but still close to everything)" but now you're saying it's just in a decent area? Sounds like you can't make up your mind what your story is meant to be or you're trying to backtrack when pointed out the inconsistencies in your hypothetical set up.

And, of course, I'm now laughing at your godmother/great aunt now having been left an orphan at age 20 and inheriting the family house which she presumably lived in for practically her entire life? What an amazingly convenient excuse for a young single unmarried woman owning a large single family house in the early 1960s! And she kept the house, too! She must have really eaten up the initial inheritance to pay the inheritance taxes, property taxes, heating bills, general upkeep on the house in her 20s when she couldn't really have been making much money or still in her studies (as any feminist will tell you, single women were paid far less then men in those pre-feminist days). By the way, you forgot to explain what happened to your grandmother's share of the house for she presumably inherited half of it, too? I'd also love to know how your godmother/great aunt's parents died. Both in the same year! Car accident? What was the tragedy?

By the way, I'm trying to figure out where the house is. 3,000 sqft was pretty d*mn big by 1960s standards for the median sqft for a 1950s/1960s house was 1,500 sqft. But we know the house must be older, for it belonged to your godmother/grandmother's parents. Probably pre-war, no? In the DC area, 3k sqft, pre-war, relatively close in area, still in a "nice" area, well, then that house value is going to be a lot more than 400k. Even in Baltimore/Annapolis area it'd be worth more than 400k. Or maybe your great-granddaddy was a self-made man who built the house himself? Is that why it was so special that Thelma had to keep on to the house at age 20 even after both her parents tragically died so young and in whatever peculiar circumstances that caused their deaths?

Sorry, the picture just doesn't work out. Your lack of understanding of past generations and economic and real estate dynamics is coming through in the latest round of your storytelling.
By the way, I found this in your first post:

“Currently, Mary is not upset about the house, just surprised. She thought it would be split between her and her sibling, Roy. Roy is upset, thinking that he would buy out his sister and just sell the house.”

Then you said many pages later: “Roy knew all along that his mother wasn't leaving him the house.”

In other words, you have been busted. And not only have you been busted, you tripped by saying Mary wasn't upset about the house, which makes no sense whatsoever given the subsequent posts and your claims that Mary is still holding on to the house at the moment and even moving into the master bedroom, instead of getting ready to leave. FYI you should have reversed the roles. Roy should have been the surprised one, not upset, while Mary should have been the upset one. That's the correct sentiments based on their circumstances as told to us (Mary the freeloader who expected to inherit, Roy the estranged son who barely stayed in touch with his mother). Learn to keep your story straight if you want to be successful in your next fictional thread.

FYI the funeral was 5 months ago, according to your first post. In real life, Mary and Roy would have been to the lawyers the day after the funeral, not five months later. The battle would be going on now. The time for hand-wringing "oh my what to do" was a long time ago.

You’ve been a good troll. It was an entertaining thread for a while

Anonymous wrote:

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.

Oh geez now you're going to argue over the term "flipped" versus "fixed up". House flipping has been a thing for a very long time even if it went be different names. Obviously someone posting from today's perspective would call buying a house in bad shape, fixing and selling higher "flipping" because that is the modern term for it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Larla,

You are a classic example of someone spinning out a story to cover up the plot holes and the more you try to cover them up, the more complicated it becomes and the more you trip yourself.

For example, you describe Thelma's husband / Mary's father as someone who respected his wife's money as her own. Rather progressive thinking for that generation. Yet this is also the same man who, according to you, kicked out his 19 year old son from the family house while allowing his daughter to stay at home as daddy's little princess and indulged her and allowed her to be lazy and unfocused and unproductive. Which strongly implies a domineering, traditional and old fashioned man. You even admitted this yourself when you said: “He was quite "traditional" in that he firmly believed that it is the mans job to work.” Somehow that picture just doesn't gel.

Then you say Mary's father/Thelma's husband did have an active role in helping to build up the inheritance yet somehow still didn't consider it "his" money? For a couple, especially of that generation, who were married for quite some time that's a pretty unusual position to take. To also quote you from your recent post: "They simply took that relatively small sum of money added to it and invested it and then putting that into savings while still working. I believe originally it was supposed to be a retirement fund but then it became much more than that. my grandmother told me that for time they actually flipped houses and made a great deal of money on that and all the money they made they would reinvest."

Wow. So her husband now did add money to the family's investment portfolio and assets whereas you were previously claiming it was Thelma's money and he didn't consider it "his." Last of all, you tripped over using the term "flipped houses." "Flipping" houses is a recent trend. An old person of a previous generation would be very unlikely to use the term "flip." They'd use the term "fix up" houses. Further, the real estate dynamics in most of America, including in the DC area, through the 1990s, rarely made "great deal of money" flipping or fixing up houses for quick resale.

It was only really in the late 1990s that people started to make money off flips as gentrification and the real estate market both started to boom (And more so in the 2000s) and that's when the term entered into popular usage and you started seeing lots of people doing "flips" and making money off it.

In your first post you said: "The house is pretty nice, 3000 sq ft in a nice area (not too close in, but still close to everything)" but now you're saying it's just in a decent area? Sounds like you can't make up your mind what your story is meant to be or you're trying to backtrack when pointed out the inconsistencies in your hypothetical set up.

And, of course, I'm now laughing at your godmother/great aunt now having been left an orphan at age 20 and inheriting the family house which she presumably lived in for practically her entire life? What an amazingly convenient excuse for a young single unmarried woman owning a large single family house in the early 1960s! And she kept the house, too! She must have really eaten up the initial inheritance to pay the inheritance taxes, property taxes, heating bills, general upkeep on the house in her 20s when she couldn't really have been making much money or still in her studies (as any feminist will tell you, single women were paid far less then men in those pre-feminist days). By the way, you forgot to explain what happened to your grandmother's share of the house for she presumably inherited half of it, too? I'd also love to know how your godmother/great aunt's parents died. Both in the same year! Car accident? What was the tragedy?

By the way, I'm trying to figure out where the house is. 3,000 sqft was pretty d*mn big by 1960s standards for the median sqft for a 1950s/1960s house was 1,500 sqft. But we know the house must be older, for it belonged to your godmother/grandmother's parents. Probably pre-war, no? In the DC area, 3k sqft, pre-war, relatively close in area, still in a "nice" area, well, then that house value is going to be a lot more than 400k. Even in Baltimore/Annapolis area it'd be worth more than 400k. Or maybe your great-granddaddy was a self-made man who built the house himself? Is that why it was so special that Thelma had to keep on to the house at age 20 even after both her parents tragically died so young and in whatever peculiar circumstances that caused their deaths?

Sorry, the picture just doesn't work out. Your lack of understanding of past generations and economic and real estate dynamics is coming through in the latest round of your storytelling.
By the way, I found this in your first post:

“Currently, Mary is not upset about the house, just surprised. She thought it would be split between her and her sibling, Roy. Roy is upset, thinking that he would buy out his sister and just sell the house.”

Then you said many pages later: “Roy knew all along that his mother wasn't leaving him the house.”

In other words, you have been busted. And not only have you been busted, you tripped by saying Mary wasn't upset about the house, which makes no sense whatsoever given the subsequent posts and your claims that Mary is still holding on to the house at the moment and even moving into the master bedroom, instead of getting ready to leave. FYI you should have reversed the roles. Roy should have been the surprised one, not upset, while Mary should have been the upset one. That's the correct sentiments based on their circumstances as told to us (Mary the freeloader who expected to inherit, Roy the estranged son who barely stayed in touch with his mother). Learn to keep your story straight if you want to be successful in your next fictional thread.

FYI the funeral was 5 months ago, according to your first post. In real life, Mary and Roy would have been to the lawyers the day after the funeral, not five months later. The battle would be going on now. The time for hand-wringing "oh my what to do" was a long time ago.

You’ve been a good troll. It was an entertaining thread for a while

Anonymous wrote:

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.

Why is this detective poster trying to act like the descriptions of the house don't jive? "Close to everything" and "in a decent area" aren't mutually exclusive.

[Anonymous]

The actual terminology is less important than feasibility to make much money fixing up houses and reselling them in the past. The real estate market operated quite differently in the past that made doing "flips" either impractical or the profit margins were so small. In the American real estate market of the 1950s-1980s real estate was fairly inexpensive, urban areas where all today's flips are were declining, not gentrifying, first ring suburbs were still newish. A couple of Thelma's generation would have bought an older property and retrofitted it into apartments or as a SFH rental property and rented it out. Not flipped it for the margins were rarely ever there, nor was the demand to buy a flipped single family property there. Rents was where the money came from. And many people still got burned.

The one possible exception I can think of is flipping houses in formerly white neighborhoods to African American buyers at huge markups, which did happen in Baltimore the 1950s/1960s, as well as in DC, but that opens up a whole can of worms involving ethics and I don't think Larla wants her fictional godmother to be thought of as someone who profited off racism

Anyone with a solid understanding of the 1950s, 1960s or 1970s (especially if they'd lived through those decades) can easily see all the holes in Larla's depictions of the family backgrounds and how remarkably unique Thelma's circumstances were and the less likely she's a real person.

Anonymous wrote:

Oh geez now you're going to argue over the term "flipped" versus "fixed up". House flipping has been a thing for a very long time even if it went be different names. Obviously someone posting from today's perspective would call buying a house in bad shape, fixing and selling higher "flipping" because that is the modern term for it.

[Anonymous]

Because it fits a pattern of Larla contradicting what she said earlier.

"The house is pretty nice, 3000 sq ft in a nice area (not too close in, but still close to everything)"

Then she says: "all I said is that it's about 3000 sq ft and it's in a decent area."

I can see the difference between the two and it most likely stems from that Larla hadn't fully fleshed out her story at the beginning so she's falling into the trap of slightly changing elements of it to reflect the evolution of the thread's discussion and the challenges made to her assumptions by the various posters. One sees the same pattern with the depiction of Mary whose depiction sounds too much like a caricature to be taken seriously. And, of course, there's the contradictory statements over how Roy and Mary responded to the will's revelations, changing from the initial post to the subsequent storytelling.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Larla,

You are a classic example of someone spinning out a story to cover up the plot holes and the more you try to cover them up, the more complicated it becomes and the more you trip yourself.

For example, you describe Thelma's husband / Mary's father as someone who respected his wife's money as her own. Rather progressive thinking for that generation. Yet this is also the same man who, according to you, kicked out his 19 year old son from the family house while allowing his daughter to stay at home as daddy's little princess and indulged her and allowed her to be lazy and unfocused and unproductive. Which strongly implies a domineering, traditional and old fashioned man. You even admitted this yourself when you said: “He was quite "traditional" in that he firmly believed that it is the mans job to work.” Somehow that picture just doesn't gel.

Then you say Mary's father/Thelma's husband did have an active role in helping to build up the inheritance yet somehow still didn't consider it "his" money? For a couple, especially of that generation, who were married for quite some time that's a pretty unusual position to take. To also quote you from your recent post: "They simply took that relatively small sum of money added to it and invested it and then putting that into savings while still working. I believe originally it was supposed to be a retirement fund but then it became much more than that. my grandmother told me that for time they actually flipped houses and made a great deal of money on that and all the money they made they would reinvest."

Wow. So her husband now did add money to the family's investment portfolio and assets whereas you were previously claiming it was Thelma's money and he didn't consider it "his." Last of all, you tripped over using the term "flipped houses." "Flipping" houses is a recent trend. An old person of a previous generation would be very unlikely to use the term "flip." They'd use the term "fix up" houses. Further, the real estate dynamics in most of America, including in the DC area, through the 1990s, rarely made "great deal of money" flipping or fixing up houses for quick resale.

It was only really in the late 1990s that people started to make money off flips as gentrification and the real estate market both started to boom (And more so in the 2000s) and that's when the term entered into popular usage and you started seeing lots of people doing "flips" and making money off it.

In your first post you said: "The house is pretty nice, 3000 sq ft in a nice area (not too close in, but still close to everything)" but now you're saying it's just in a decent area? Sounds like you can't make up your mind what your story is meant to be or you're trying to backtrack when pointed out the inconsistencies in your hypothetical set up.

And, of course, I'm now laughing at your godmother/great aunt now having been left an orphan at age 20 and inheriting the family house which she presumably lived in for practically her entire life? What an amazingly convenient excuse for a young single unmarried woman owning a large single family house in the early 1960s! And she kept the house, too! She must have really eaten up the initial inheritance to pay the inheritance taxes, property taxes, heating bills, general upkeep on the house in her 20s when she couldn't really have been making much money or still in her studies (as any feminist will tell you, single women were paid far less then men in those pre-feminist days). By the way, you forgot to explain what happened to your grandmother's share of the house for she presumably inherited half of it, too? I'd also love to know how your godmother/great aunt's parents died. Both in the same year! Car accident? What was the tragedy?

By the way, I'm trying to figure out where the house is. 3,000 sqft was pretty d*mn big by 1960s standards for the median sqft for a 1950s/1960s house was 1,500 sqft. But we know the house must be older, for it belonged to your godmother/grandmother's parents. Probably pre-war, no? In the DC area, 3k sqft, pre-war, relatively close in area, still in a "nice" area, well, then that house value is going to be a lot more than 400k. Even in Baltimore/Annapolis area it'd be worth more than 400k. Or maybe your great-granddaddy was a self-made man who built the house himself? Is that why it was so special that Thelma had to keep on to the house at age 20 even after both her parents tragically died so young and in whatever peculiar circumstances that caused their deaths?

Sorry, the picture just doesn't work out. Your lack of understanding of past generations and economic and real estate dynamics is coming through in the latest round of your storytelling.
By the way, I found this in your first post:

“Currently, Mary is not upset about the house, just surprised. She thought it would be split between her and her sibling, Roy. Roy is upset, thinking that he would buy out his sister and just sell the house.”

Then you said many pages later: “Roy knew all along that his mother wasn't leaving him the house.”

In other words, you have been busted. And not only have you been busted, you tripped by saying Mary wasn't upset about the house, which makes no sense whatsoever given the subsequent posts and your claims that Mary is still holding on to the house at the moment and even moving into the master bedroom, instead of getting ready to leave. FYI you should have reversed the roles. Roy should have been the surprised one, not upset, while Mary should have been the upset one. That's the correct sentiments based on their circumstances as told to us (Mary the freeloader who expected to inherit, Roy the estranged son who barely stayed in touch with his mother). Learn to keep your story straight if you want to be successful in your next fictional thread.

FYI the funeral was 5 months ago, according to your first post. In real life, Mary and Roy would have been to the lawyers the day after the funeral, not five months later. The battle would be going on now. The time for hand-wringing "oh my what to do" was a long time ago.

You’ve been a good troll. It was an entertaining thread for a while

Anonymous wrote:

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.

Why is this detective poster trying to act like the descriptions of the house don't jive? "Close to everything" and "in a decent area" aren't mutually exclusive.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
Oh geez now you're going to argue over the term "flipped" versus "fixed up". House flipping has been a thing for a very long time even if it went be different names. Obviously someone posting from today's perspective would call buying a house in bad shape, fixing and selling higher "flipping" because that is the modern term for it.

Next thing, you'll be calling a Model T a "car" instead of a "mechanical perambulator." Pshaw.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The more you tell us, the more I realize that it's a very unpleasant family. I bet Thelma was a right bitch and witch. You may see it differently but based on what we've been told, there was a mother who regularly quarrelled with her daughter and went to the extreme step of not leaving a valuable home to her (regardless of the situation, the house was Mary's home too), despite that such a move would actually leave the daughter in a very precarious position, financially and even emotionally. There's a son who was kicked out of the house at 19 and who, for whatever reason, has never maintained close contact with his own mother (which strongly implies the mother was a dysfunctional bitch). The son has children of his own, yet their own grandmother literally cut them off by leaving the most valuable asset to a grandniece instead of her own kith and kin. I'm guessing there wasn't much of a relationship between the grandmother and grandchildren? Which means Roy didn't encourage it. Yet another evidence supporting the notion Thelma was bitch asshole.

Anyway, there's a lot we're being told that doesn't quite piece together neatly. You're giving out critical information in little dribbles instead of being entirely upfront. And I suspect you're still hiding a lot from us or embellishing certain details or avoiding stating the real truth that could be Thelma was a dysfunctional and bitter bitch of a mother and you, whether intentionally or not, have benefited from it.

You are an absolute idiot. This is one of the dumbest things I have ever read and reeks of projection. You should see a therapist about your anger and resentment issues. Or maybe you just need a good cry to let it all out. Let me guess, mommy didn't love you enough or breast feed you long enough?

[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?

OP, all of this is Mary's problem. It's not yours. Focus on school, being a homeowner, and living your life. Mary had 50 years to get her act together. She CHOSE NOT to. That is HER fault. That is why there is welfare. So that tax payers, who decided that they would work and contribute to society can take care of the Mary's of the world who were too good to work and now find themselves in a "precarious" situation because they didn't have the foresight to see what the future was going to look like once mommy dearest passed away and wasn't footing the life bill anymore. There is no MORAL issue. Mary made bad choices. Mary is in a precarious situation. This is Mary's problem.

So typical, a person spends their whole life making bad decisions, and instead of taking responsibility for it, decides to put the burden of those bad choices on a kid.