1834 Shakeup

Monday, June 2, 2008

Today has been an up down all around shake it up day. I'm completely worn out.

I mentioned that Jay's father died a few weeks ago. Turns out there were some very sneaky and even illegal things done concerning his estate. It's turning into a real snakepit.

Piper predicted that stuff like this would happen, he sees it all the time, and I naively said no, not with these folks. He shook his head, and said that the larger the estate, the nastier the people.

Well, it's even worse than he figured.

No details, but let's postulate, just for sake of argument, that a second will has appeared, postdating the "known" one, and the second one was signed after someone was declared incompetent, without the knowledge of certain of the siblings, and threats have been made that if anyone fights it, the entire estate will be spent defending it and there won't be anything left for anyone, so shut up, and so on. Oh, and the house was cleaned out by some siblings without the knowledge of the others. Without any appraisals. And of course no one has any idea where the Academy Award went.

If there happened to be someone concerned who has been damaged by the new will, which she believes does not reflect his expressed wishes, and that particular someone would not have minded if she got nothing in the will if that was his desire, since she is only the widow of a deceased son, but had been told that she would get the deceased son's share in appreciation of what she had done for him, and that's what was in the first will, but she has been thrown a sop in the new will apparently on the theory that she's as greedy as the rest and will accept a pittance rather than the nothing she might get if she blew the whistle, well, if there happened to be someone like that,

THEY GROSSLY OVERESTIMATED HER GREED AND UNDERESTIMATED HER CAPACITY TO STAND UP FOR MORAL PRINCIPLE AND THE RULE OF LAW !!!
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1243 SOS - Please, Someone, Save Me!

Saturday, May 12, 2007

I'm sitting in a hotel room in Rochester, NY, suffering an optical migraine, and wishing I could be anywhere else.

I arrived about 7 pm and went directly to the father-in-law's house. Jay's father. I guess he's technically not my FIL any more, I don't know, I sure can't call him my late FIL, and "my late husband's father" is so awkward. Well, anyway, most of the first and second level blood clan was there. Youngest sister (YS) and her husband (YSH) and two daughters, middle sister (MS) and her husband (MSH) and two daughters, and eldest sister (ES) and her husband (ESH).

Of them all, I like ESH best. He's smart and reasonable. ES is also nice, except when she gets insistent, and usually any unpleasantness blows over quickly. She's very like her father - figures that once she's thought something out, she's obviously right and any additional information is superfluous. She'll ride right over objections. Other than that we get along ok. She appreciates all I did for her little brother.

MS I don't know at all. Oddly, Jay didn't seem to know her well, either. It seems like they would have been close in age (ES and I are the same age), but I get the impression there may have been some odd family dynamics. MSH is nice, but I have had very rare opportunity to talk with him - I don't push in, and he's reticent in mixed male/female company. MS completely ignores me.

YS and YSH and their daughters seem to dislike me strongly. I do hold some very small animosity toward her from back when Jay was ill. They live only 30 minutes down the road from us, and several times when Jay fell during the night and I couldn't get him up, I called them to ask for help, and not only did they not answer the phone, but they didn't return the call. (That was before I invented my version of the fireman's lift and could get his 6'3" 245 pounds off the floor and onto the bed myself.)

Before Jay and I were married, when Jay's father came down our way to visit, he always stayed with them. After we were married I suggested that he could stay with us half the times. Pow! We got him 100%! YSH didn't like him, and grabbed the opportunity to pass him off entirely on us.

When I took Jay to the hospice wing when he was in the final stages, I called YS and said that if she wanted to see him before he died (she didn't visit him at home the whole last year) she should come now. Her response was "Oh, well, we've heard that before", and she didn't come.

Jay always said YS seemed to have no opinions of her own. She is in thrall to her husband, and likes or dislikes as he dictates. Jay and I found the two of them incredibly boring. Their only topics of conversation are their girls and not-so-amusing stories abut their animals - an iguana, somewhere between five and seven cats, and three greyhounds - and the three greyhounds go with them everywhere, regardless of their host's preferences.

I wonder if they've ever had an original idea between them.

Anyway, they weren't as polite in their ignoring of me as MS. MS simply didn't see me. YS and YSH, and their daughters, actively shut me out. They didn't look at me, literally turned their backs, ignored any comments I tried to contribute to conversation. It was a very obvious shunning.

Ok, I can see where there might be some old wounds that haven't healed. Jay and I did not initiate contact, back when, as much as maybe we should have (but good grief, they're so BORING!), and there were a few incidents. But nothing that should earn me this animosity.

There's only one thing I can think of, and it bothers me that I even think it, but it's there. I am in the old man's will to inherit Jay's share of his estate. I have not seen the will, so I don't know whether the estate is distributed among the four siblings (three sisters and me), or whether it's shared among the grandchildren, too, and I have no idea how much is involved (although I suspect it is considerable). Worse, ES and I are named as the executors.

I know enough about YSH to know that this galls him to the core. That I am in the will, set to inherit as much as his wife.

I really think that's it.

Happy 90th birthday, Dad. Please have many more.
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