Hypothetical will issue of doom. OR "interesting times"Follow

Person D is screwed.

Person D just has to hope that Person A gets hit by a truck that may or may not be being driven by Person D and/or any of his/her friends/family.

Could you look into the whole legitimacy of the deal without "disputing" it and forfeiting the share?

******* is the only solution.

How easy is it to get your hands on a hypothetical handgun and kill them all?

I think it's important to keep in mind that the farm was not acquired by any of the four siblings. So, whatever they get due to the death of their parents is like a bonus. Presumably, none of the sibs, excepting maybe c need the income that the farm might bring in to live on.

In the long run, I'd think family ties and peace of mind more important than real estate. It sounds like Sib A has taken on some responsibility for the safe-keeping of Sib C. As sibling D, I'd want some assurance of this. If Sib A gets something extra but Sib C is in good hands, well, maybe Sib D and Sib B just need to make make peace with that. Sure, they should express their concerns, gently, to Sib A, but if they try and dispute the will, likely a costly and toxic legal battle will ensure...and in the end they may all lose out.

...hypothetically.

Edited, Sep 23rd 2010 6:34am by Elinda

All I can suggest is that person D consult a lawyer on what chance they have in challenging the trust.

I have a friend who mom has dementia and has a 3 siblings of which 2 are near her age, and the youngest is the same age as her daughter. Two years ago her brother developed money problems and ask if he could to move in with his wife and son into the home their parents had paid off years ago, where she lives with their mother.

None of them were helping her much with their mom's care and didn't want to place their mom in an nursing home of paid for outside help to come in and help her, she was very worried about becoming ill again. She has several health problems on top of being bi-polar and was doing well on managing her health, but clearly if she didn't get some more help taking care of her mom soon, she would easily become very ill herself. So she felt pressure to allow her brother and his family to move in, though it meant a major upheaval with having to move her mom and her bedrooms downstairs, plus major work remodeling the house to make his wife happy.

Now after 2 years where she hasn't been getting as much help as she hoped, with taking care of her mother, she suddenly became very ill when her doctor changed some of her medications. She became too weak to walk and had to spend a month in the hospital and physical therapy. The day she went back to were she was going for mental health therapy, her brother expected her to also be able to be able to care for their mother again, though she was still weak and barely able to walk with a cane. Their mom by this time unable to do anything for her self and started to ask who my friend was. (the mother had completely forgotten she had a son and kept asking who he was, around the time they had moved in with them.) At the same time he was telling her that she would have to pay a larger share of the household bills or move out.

When she brought up the fact that she couldn't care for her mom, and still could use a lot of help herself with the her whole family there, she found out that her brother had taken out a mortgage on the house to pay for the remodeling. It's unclear if they had just kept this from her, or if he hadn't also told their other 2 sisters. What I do know is that she was very upset, as she thought the house was agreed on as her home, since everyone else were still able to work and their sisters and their husbands, had money to retire on, while he was still young enough that if he paid off his bill would have plenty of time to still save for when he was ready to retire.

Though she had work some, she was only able to afford to live with her mom, was the fact that the house was paid for and a little she got from her former husbands retirement. When I saw her last, she was just out of the hospital and moved in with her daughter. Right now all I can do is offer her emotional support and pray that she recover from the deep depression that all of the stress was cause her. When I was her she had lost all her self confidence and look as she had aged a good 10 to 15 years suddenly. I'm scare that like my father had, she has lost what will she has to live, since she can't shallow anything solid and seems defeated. Specially since it seems that the doctors still haven't been able to get her medications adjusted, were she can start to mentally adjust to no longer being independent.

My health problems last year wasn't quite as bad, but then I recovered quickly due to the huge amount of support my family gave me and was able to stay on all of my medications while hospitalized, so I never got very depress over the changes to my diet realizing how I have to be far more careful not to over do things.

Plus, one must always stay away from Evil Gazebos.

No, almost certainly not. A and C both currently live in the general area, B and D both live several hundred miles away or more, so proximaty could have been a factor, but the timing of the change still seems odd.

Another factor is that Pinochle was Grandma's absolute favorite game, which she enjoyed playing above all other activities right up until a couple months before when the dementia started to occur. Person D was the only one of the 4 siblings who would even play, and Person D also enjoys playing Pinochle. I mention this because they would literally spend 4-6 hours at a shot every day, every visit playing, so it was a major enjoyable activity and a bond that they shared, and Grandma often expressed some dissappointment that Person A and Person C wouldn't play. Seems silly over a game, I know, but thats mainly to illustrate that if anything Grandma and person D (I should just say my mom and hypothetical aunts and uncles and get it over with) was very close dispite the distance.

See a lawyer. Dementia raises questions about whether she really understood the changes. Since things kept moving to A, there may also be questions of undue influence. Checking into either should not be a direct challenge to the trust and if the penalty is so broadly written that it is, that too might raise questions. YMMV, it depends on the relevant state law.

Sounds like a similar situation to my in-law's extended family, only it was siblings A-G, and they were supposed to split things equally, but persons B+C colluded and convinced Husband's Grandfather to sign over a significant portion of his estate to them, without his knowledge. He died two months ago.

It's still all tied up in probate court. Land valued at about three million dollars is at stake.

There are now two factions within the family - siblings B+C and their children and grandchildren, and everyone else. I'm part of Everyone Else, being a marital addition to Sibling A's family, and Sibling A was the one who got screwed the worst - as the oldest, he was supposed to inherit the slice of land right next to his house, and he already had plans for it.

If there's a way around it, the lawyers will have to do it.

Moral of the story: Write your will while you are still in sound mind and body, and require that any changes not only be witnessed, but also notarized.

It's a shame when family can't trust each other. Friends come and go, but family is forever.

Person D should either move on and forget about person A, or try everything they can do legally get what is theirs. I believe in loving your family members no matter what, but if a family member does something wrong, then its whole family's responsibility to stand up, and work together to make it right. Hopefully person D is not on their own, and the rest of the family does not just sit around and tolerate the betrayal.

Huh?

Have you completely dismissed the notion that your grandma, in sound mind, changed the will because it was what she wanted?

People can still be horrendous douchebags, regardless of blood.

If it was what she wanted, maybe her reasoning went this way: Person C is the least able to look after themself, and also probably has much higher cost-of-living and medical bills than the other three. Therefore person C gets extra.

However, to minimise financial losses through incompetence and State seizure, person A holds person C's assets and funds in trust. Person A is going to have to run around for life doing financial paperwork for C, and generally be their lifelong accountant and hand-holder. Hopefully they will do this faithfully, without embezzling person C's assets (in-spirit, but not in-law). In recompense for this extra work and stress, Person A also gets extra for themself.

While person A appears to walk off unfairly with the majority of the inheritance, in actual fact, Persons A, B and D have been sacrificed for the good of person C, who is in desperate need in comparison to the other three.

This will work, as long as person A doesn't get lazy, incompetent, avaricious or criminal in funding person C from of their "secret from the government" share.