Anonymous wrote:I'm cracking up at the "detective" poster trying so hard to poke holes in this story. I have a feeling that some details were changed for obvious reasons a but the underlying story is true.

Anonymous wrote:I'm cracking up at the "detective" poster trying so hard to poke holes in this story. I have a feeling that some details were changed for obvious reasons a but the underlying story is true.

Anonymous wrote:So you're saying your grandma owned half the house and then suddenly she didn't because she moved out?

Anonymous wrote:Just a FYI I think Mary does work. As a waitress. They're usually pretty long and tiring jobs.

Everything we know was fabricated by the OP. Even if her story was true, we only have her perspective and there's validity in offering a different view of what the real dynamics might have been like.

By the way I'd rather that Thelma's estate was settled on Mary so that she doesn't go on welfare and the rest of us have to subsidy her through our taxes. Maybe if the fictional Thelma had given the fictional Mary the kind of tough love you received from your parents Mary wouldn't be in this current situation. But then again, it's a fictional story so what's the point speculating anymore?

By the way, your post just made me realise how much I am grateful for my loving parents and for when they supported me in times of difficulties (and my siblings too) and how they forgave us our mistakes. I've attempted to return their generosity. Other than the vacations I paid for, they've rejected the financial offers and keep saying it's what a family does. And I've learned from that. And we're an even stronger and more loving family now and we don't take it for granted either. That approach works for us although I'm sure it wouldn't work for everyone.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I suspect someone is a little defensive, no? Why are you so bothered when an anonymous person calls an anonymous person in what now seems likely a fictional story a bitch on an anonymous forum?

If the family was genuinely dysfunctional then I think there's merit in being generous to Mary. Life is too short to be bitter.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm not sure why you feel so strongly enough to call another poster an absolute idiot and claim it's the dumbest thing you have ever read, simply for suggesting that it's possible Thelma wasn't all cracked up as a mother, unless you have anger issues of your own. I love my mother, we have a wonderful relationship, which is why I find Thelma's behavior a bit odd. Maybe I just don't understand dysfunctional family dynamics.

But it's pretty clear OP spun out a fictional story so all this angst is meaningless. We've given her a lot of amusement along the way and it's probably time to bring it to an end.

Anonymous wrote:

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?

I think calling a woman a bitch, that you have never met, over and over again, is idiotic, and reads as very stupid.

And yes, there are a lot of dysfunctional families in America, and until you have lived in one, or have lived with children that push you past your limits, you will never understand what it takes to survive in that family. And that is not a knock on you. But the problem with a lot of people is because they can't relate to something, they simply believe it doesn't exist. Which is moronic in itself. It would be like me saying, "I can't imagine being gay, so they must not exist" or "they can be changed, with just enough therapy or religion"....

Not defensive at all. It's an opinion. It was a post, simply meant to bash someone else. It is stupid. And the fact that it was a dysfunctional family is created by the fact that Mary was lazy and felt that she was too good to be in the workforce and work her way up, like most other people do... You know, building a career and not being handed something you haven't earned. I realize that might be a foreign concept to some people. And those people typically end up in the same situation as Mary. That doesn't mean that someone else should be "morally" responsible for bailing them out again.

Full disclosure, I was probably the Mary in this story. I was entitled, lazy, and didn't like working crappy jobs. My family disowned me when I dropped out of college. They didn't just let me sit on my ass. And because of this tough love, I went on to earn two degrees (which I paid for through student loans - which I am still obviously paying back). I have a successful career, and I don't live off my parents. Furthermore, my parents have made it very clear, that my brother, my sister, and I will not inherit anything. My parents are donating their estate to charity. And I am totally fine with that. But I guess that makes my parents assholes and bitches for not leaving their kids anything.

Simple fact of the matter is this. Parents don't owe their grown children anything. They spent tons of money raising them, trying to teach them values, caring for them, and than the child is supposed to grow up and go off into the real world. The obligation ends there. So, I really don't see why everyone believes that there is some moral standard to take care of 50 year old Mary.

Mary has two degrees. So obviously, she is a capable and intelligent person. Mary's problem is that she is spoiled, entitled, and no one held her accountable for her choices, which allowed her to end up where she is now.

If I were OP, I would evict Mary without hesitation. She had her whole life to figure out that she needed to be a responsible, contributing member of society. She chose not to. Anything that is happening to her, is her fault.

Change the narrative. You live in a country full of people who are outraged at the Affordable Care Act because they don't believe that they should have to pay money for less fortunate people to afford healthcare. Yet, everyone wants to say that OP should pay to take care of Mary by settling an estate? Come on. All of a sudden, there is moral responsibility when it isn't hitting your wallet?

Please.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I suspect someone is a little defensive, no? Why are you so bothered when an anonymous person calls an anonymous person in what now seems likely a fictional story a bitch on an anonymous forum?

If the family was genuinely dysfunctional then I think there's merit in being generous to Mary. Life is too short to be bitter.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm not sure why you feel so strongly enough to call another poster an absolute idiot and claim it's the dumbest thing you have ever read, simply for suggesting that it's possible Thelma wasn't all cracked up as a mother, unless you have anger issues of your own. I love my mother, we have a wonderful relationship, which is why I find Thelma's behavior a bit odd. Maybe I just don't understand dysfunctional family dynamics.

But it's pretty clear OP spun out a fictional story so all this angst is meaningless. We've given her a lot of amusement along the way and it's probably time to bring it to an end.

Anonymous wrote:

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?

I think calling a woman a bitch, that you have never met, over and over again, is idiotic, and reads as very stupid.

And yes, there are a lot of dysfunctional families in America, and until you have lived in one, or have lived with children that push you past your limits, you will never understand what it takes to survive in that family. And that is not a knock on you. But the problem with a lot of people is because they can't relate to something, they simply believe it doesn't exist. Which is moronic in itself. It would be like me saying, "I can't imagine being gay, so they must not exist" or "they can be changed, with just enough therapy or religion"....

Not defensive at all. It's an opinion. It was a post, simply meant to bash someone else. It is stupid. And the fact that it was a dysfunctional family is created by the fact that Mary was lazy and felt that she was too good to be in the workforce and work her way up, like most other people do... You know, building a career and not being handed something you haven't earned. I realize that might be a foreign concept to some people. And those people typically end up in the same situation as Mary. That doesn't mean that someone else should be "morally" responsible for bailing them out again.

Full disclosure, I was probably the Mary in this story. I was entitled, lazy, and didn't like working crappy jobs. My family disowned me when I dropped out of college. They didn't just let me sit on my ass. And because of this tough love, I went on to earn two degrees (which I paid for through student loans - which I am still obviously paying back). I have a successful career, and I don't live off my parents. Furthermore, my parents have made it very clear, that my brother, my sister, and I will not inherit anything. My parents are donating their estate to charity. And I am totally fine with that. But I guess that makes my parents assholes and bitches for not leaving their kids anything.

Simple fact of the matter is this. Parents don't owe their grown children anything. They spent tons of money raising them, trying to teach them values, caring for them, and than the child is supposed to grow up and go off into the real world. The obligation ends there. So, I really don't see why everyone believes that there is some moral standard to take care of 50 year old Mary.

Mary has two degrees. So obviously, she is a capable and intelligent person. Mary's problem is that she is spoiled, entitled, and no one held her accountable for her choices, which allowed her to end up where she is now.

If I were OP, I would evict Mary without hesitation. She had her whole life to figure out that she needed to be a responsible, contributing member of society. She chose not to. Anything that is happening to her, is her fault.

Change the narrative. You live in a country full of people who are outraged at the Affordable Care Act because they don't believe that they should have to pay money for less fortunate people to afford healthcare. Yet, everyone wants to say that OP should pay to take care of Mary by settling an estate? Come on. All of a sudden, there is moral responsibility when it isn't hitting your wallet?

Please.

Anonymous wrote:I suspect someone is a little defensive, no? Why are you so bothered when an anonymous person calls an anonymous person in what now seems likely a fictional story a bitch on an anonymous forum?

If the family was genuinely dysfunctional then I think there's merit in being generous to Mary. Life is too short to be bitter.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm not sure why you feel so strongly enough to call another poster an absolute idiot and claim it's the dumbest thing you have ever read, simply for suggesting that it's possible Thelma wasn't all cracked up as a mother, unless you have anger issues of your own. I love my mother, we have a wonderful relationship, which is why I find Thelma's behavior a bit odd. Maybe I just don't understand dysfunctional family dynamics.

But it's pretty clear OP spun out a fictional story so all this angst is meaningless. We've given her a lot of amusement along the way and it's probably time to bring it to an end.

Anonymous wrote:

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?

I think calling a woman a bitch, that you have never met, over and over again, is idiotic, and reads as very stupid.

And yes, there are a lot of dysfunctional families in America, and until you have lived in one, or have lived with children that push you past your limits, you will never understand what it takes to survive in that family. And that is not a knock on you. But the problem with a lot of people is because they can't relate to something, they simply believe it doesn't exist. Which is moronic in itself. It would be like me saying, "I can't imagine being gay, so they must not exist" or "they can be changed, with just enough therapy or religion"....

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm not sure why you feel so strongly enough to call another poster an absolute idiot and claim it's the dumbest thing you have ever read, simply for suggesting that it's possible Thelma wasn't all cracked up as a mother, unless you have anger issues of your own. I love my mother, we have a wonderful relationship, which is why I find Thelma's behavior a bit odd. Maybe I just don't understand dysfunctional family dynamics.

But it's pretty clear OP spun out a fictional story so all this angst is meaningless. We've given her a lot of amusement along the way and it's probably time to bring it to an end.

Anonymous wrote:

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?

I think calling a woman a bitch, that you have never met, over and over again, is idiotic, and reads as very stupid.

And yes, there are a lot of dysfunctional families in America, and until you have lived in one, or have lived with children that push you past your limits, you will never understand what it takes to survive in that family. And that is not a knock on you. But the problem with a lot of people is because they can't relate to something, they simply believe it doesn't exist. Which is moronic in itself. It would be like me saying, "I can't imagine being gay, so they must not exist" or "they can be changed, with just enough therapy or religion"....

Anonymous wrote:I'm not sure why you feel so strongly enough to call another poster an absolute idiot and claim it's the dumbest thing you have ever read, simply for suggesting that it's possible Thelma wasn't all cracked up as a mother, unless you have anger issues of your own. I love my mother, we have a wonderful relationship, which is why I find Thelma's behavior a bit odd. Maybe I just don't understand dysfunctional family dynamics.

But it's pretty clear OP spun out a fictional story so all this angst is meaningless. We've given her a lot of amusement along the way and it's probably time to bring it to an end.

Anonymous wrote:

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 wrote:

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 wrote:

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 wrote: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 wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I can't see this mom knowingly giving away the roof over her daughter's head...

I can see the mom gifting the house to the Op with the hopes that Op take care of the maintenance and make sure that the utilities/taxes are paid until the daughter either moves, dies, whatever. It's possible that the daughter is collecting some sort of subsidy which would be lost if the daughter were gifted the house. That is why Op was gifted the house instead.

I would suspect that there is more going on here than meets the eye. Tricky situation.

Agree. It is extremely rare for an individual to gift large assets to people outside the immediate family. Charities, yes, but individuals, no.