Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP, you are right that this family is dysfunctional. One sibling is trying to take money from her siblings to keep what she feels she is owed. The other siblings are trying to keep what little was left to them in the name of "fairness". These people need to hash it all out honestly. DD1 wants to be able to keep the house. Why doesn't she just say that? Something along the liens of "I've been living here with mom for 10 years and taking care of her for the last 2. I can sell this house to pay the debts, but I would really prefer to not have to move. How can we come to some sort of agreement that keeps me living here?" Siblings can either come to an agreement or they can say "Sorry sis, you knew this was coming. Sell the house."

In any case DD1 really needs to talk to an attorney to figure this out and see what her options are.

But...didn't DD1 forgo employment in order to care for the mother? Basically DS2 got his money in real time and DD1 was going to get her money in the future. Confident that DS2 doesn't see it that way, but that would be the outcome if all this were put into a spreadsheet.

I can't remember DD2's circumstances, but if she didn't really contribute to the care then that's the breaks.

DH should let go of his feelings about getting money to cover trip expenses, etc. Yeah, it sucks, but it is what it is. The important thing here is that he is modeling behavior for his children, especially how they will treat each other and him and his wife going forward. I learned this from my parents and our kids then saw that with how we treat(ed) our parents and siblings in these final years.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You've already established that it's a mess. It's your choice to continue to engage in the mess. There is no obligation to continue to engage in the mess. You clearly want to engage in the mess. Go see a counselor for your grief and to learn why you are attracted to and can't pull away from this.

You act like OP is on the call with the siblings egging on her husband. Clearly she is the sounding board for her husband and looking for help. Your attitude towards OP is gross.

Anonymous wrote:You've already established that it's a mess. It's your choice to continue to engage in the mess. There is no obligation to continue to engage in the mess. You clearly want to engage in the mess. Go see a counselor for your grief and to learn why you are attracted to and can't pull away from this.

Anonymous wrote:OP, you are right that this family is dysfunctional. One sibling is trying to take money from her siblings to keep what she feels she is owed. The other siblings are trying to keep what little was left to them in the name of "fairness". These people need to hash it all out honestly. DD1 wants to be able to keep the house. Why doesn't she just say that? Something along the liens of "I've been living here with mom for 10 years and taking care of her for the last 2. I can sell this house to pay the debts, but I would really prefer to not have to move. How can we come to some sort of agreement that keeps me living here?" Siblings can either come to an agreement or they can say "Sorry sis, you knew this was coming. Sell the house."

In any case DD1 really needs to talk to an attorney to figure this out and see what her options are.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This sounds like tiny amounts of money. If you aren't in serious need, I'd just stop paying attention. It's not worth the stress. Let the siblings duke it out. Your DH has no responsibility and even less so since his kids were excluded, so he has no need to pay attention on their part.

He should try to take on a minimal role, participating calls and calmly stating reality. F not it will just be a bigger mess.

He should point out calmly that the life insurance benefits are not part f the estate and can not be used for estate debts to protect estate assets. When his sister suggests that everyone privately give their share back to pay off the car, I would point out that there is no reason for all the siblings to donate 3K to secure a used car for a 30 year old who already has one and a 16 year old who just got their license. Be clear that the car is an asset. The value of this asset is only its current market value minus the remaining loan balance. Sometimes pointing out the absurdity of someone’s manipulations makes things very clear to all.

Anonymous wrote:This sounds like tiny amounts of money. If you aren't in serious need, I'd just stop paying attention. It's not worth the stress. Let the siblings duke it out. Your DH has no responsibility and even less so since his kids were excluded, so he has no need to pay attention on their part.

Anonymous wrote:The sister is being very manipulative. She wants to keep the house so she keeps trying to take funds from her siblings to make sure that happens. Your husband was correct to tell her that she can’t take the life insurance payouts left to her siblings to cover estate debts. By asking her siblings to privately give their share of life insurance payments to pay estate debts she trying to manipulate her siblings into paying the debts so she keeps the house.

Anonymous wrote:OP here- well this just keeps getting messier.

DH (aka DS1) had a call with his sisters (DD1 & DD2) today to check in and see how things were going. Youngest brother (Ds2) declined to join. It looks like there may be more debts than expected (Christmas loan from bank, store credit accounts etc). And the balance of the checking account will go down because MIL received a social security check just before she died. So that will need to be paid back.

Executor (DD1) hasn’t opened probate yet because she doesn’t have the receipt from the funeral home. They were filing to get paid directly from the life insurance.

DH was expecting the call to be about what had to happen next about gathering info, notifying people of death etc. But executor has proposed that she change how the life insurance is paid out to go to the estate so that the car loan can be paid off. DH said he didn’t think that was possible after death, so executor then suggested each sibling privately pay their share of the life insurance to pay off the car loan before probate starts so that things are cleaner.

I feel so bad for DH, he wasn’t expecting that at all. The life insurance money is likely to be 3k at most per child, so these aren’t huge dollar amounts. He was thinking that it would cover his travel costs and part of the money we lost when we cancelled our spring break trip for the funeral.

But now DH is dug in on the principal. He just noticed that our kids are the ones who aren’t in the will at all. Before this I had just assumed he wasn’t bothered by that. But now he’s bothered.

How do I talk him down? I had shared the comments from the PP about being ready to set aside the land because it would likely cause hard feelings no matter what. I think that was helpful. But this feels different.