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[quote=Anonymous][quote=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.

[quote=Anonymous]
[/quote]

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.[/quote][/quote]

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. [/quote]

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