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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]What questions, exactly, have I ignored?

If you mean the constant, "But WHY did she leave YOU the house instead of her kids?!?!?!"

The answer is that I DO NOT KNOW. I can guess it is because she has floated my cousin/godsister all this time and gave her some money and called it even[/quote]

If this were a TV movie we were watching, I would say the answer to the question of why Thelma left the house to Larla goes back to the day Thelma and Larla's grandmother went to the lawyer together to have Thelma's will written. How interesting that when they left that office, Thelma's home was being left to her sister's granddaughter instead of her own two children. If this were a movie, I think a flashback to what happened in that lawyer's office would answer that question.

Sorry, I know you'd prefer not to have to think of it this way, but the way Thelma's assets were divided in her will is not at all common. It is much more common for an estate to be divided evenly among the children of the deceased. Skipping over the deceased's own children to leave a large asset like a family home to a great niece is highly unusual. It is just not how these things are typically done. I have read a lot of wills and I've never seen one that handled the family home in this manner.

And here's some questions that were never answered: Who served as the witnesses to the will? Who produced the copy of the will after Thelma died? was the lawyer who wrote the will the same one who handled the disposition of the will?

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The house was originally left to the two sisters (Thelma and Larla's grandmother) by their parents.  Who knows what agreement they made when they inherited it.  Obviously, only one lived there after they each got married.  The house may have remained in both of their names.  Fairness would dictate that the one who lived there (Thelma) owed something to the other one who moved out (Larla's grandmother), but we don't know how that was resolved.  I doubt this all just happened when the will was drawn up in the lawyer's office.

Thelma left money to others as well in her will, and this important because it appears that she wanted to leave some of her wealth to all who mattered to her.  Thelma may have told Mary that her stipend was coming out of her inheritance, and she may have been telling her that all along, but maybe Mary just tuned her out, thinking that the good times would last forever.  We really don't know what went on or was said between Thelma and Mary.  But it appears to me that Thelma's will was made when she was of sound mind and body, and she seemed to have given much thought to it.  I think the family needs to respect and accept Thelma's final wishes -- especially Mary. 
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Somewhere back in this thread, Larla stated that Thelma had bought out the sister's half of the house and there was no agreement to give it back to the sister's side of the family.

Also, we really don't know that this will reflects Thelma's wishes. It's entirely possible that her sister had an influence on how the will was written since she was in the lawyer's office with Thelma when the will was done. I haven't seen evidence here that Thelma gave a lot of thought to her will, just that her sister took her to a lawyer's office to have it done about five years ago.

The issue here is not that Mary needs to be taken care of, but that the usual thing is for parents to pass on their family's assets to their children or possibly their grandchildren. It is rare to see a will that leaves a larger asset to a more distant relative like a great niece rather that the decedent's own children. 
It is too bad that Mary and Roy did not get good legal advice about their mother's will.[/quote]

I am aware that you think she is biased, but realistically, the OP is in a much better position to know Thelma's wishes than you are. Your insistence that her sister MUST have influenced her to write the will in a particular way is bizarre. I also think that your fixation on "great niece" is ignoring the actual relationship as described between these two people. For one thing, in addition to being a great niece, she is also Thelma's goddaughter. That relationship is, for many people, much closer than whatever the on-paper blood relationship is. I posted I-don't-even-know-how-many-pages-ago asking about the family's cultural background, and the OP's answer indicated to me that they come from a culture where extended family relationships are closer than in my WASP family. I saw my grandparents and aunts and cousins a couple times a year. We didn't communicate that regularly. We definitely didn't see each other regularly outside of holidays and special occasions. That's not the case with the OP's family. This is a family that remained close together geographically and close knit personally for decades. Saying "a more distant relative like a great niece" misunderstands this family's way of relating. Mary's adulting incompetence aside, I don't think it's out of the ordinary that Thelma left a substantial inheritance to her goddaughter at all, and I don't think you'd think it was that strange either, except that you are weirdly fixated on how Mary and Roy got screwed by Evil Gold Digger Grandma.[/quote]

People can be influenced in ways that don't involve being dragged and held at gun point. We have heard this story only from one side and, as with any story, it might look very different when told from another side.

I have read a lot of wills and most of them with the level of assets involved in the situation recounted here leave everything to the children of the couple, to be divided equally. Leaving large bequests to people outside the nuclear family is not common, particularly when those amounts are larger than those left to the decedent's own children. 
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