August 13, 2010

• Family issues, pt. 1 (first email)

  8/12/10 3:44 AM

  Okay. So I’ve spent the last month moving numerous times from room to room and to different places. The biggest reason behind all of these moves (aside from going to visit my college for half a week) is because my mother wants to make money and live closer to work. She intends to do this by renting out our current house and moving to an apartment near her workplace–a smart idea because I no longer need to stay in the school district for high school and I am not going to even be around most of the time. This was going relatively smoothly until we hit a big obstacle: the deed to the house is not in my mother’s name. Instead, it is still left in Dad’s name, which would be fine if he did not pass away in 2007.

  To try to fix this problem, we got a lawyer to try to fix the deed so that we can get the inspection done and the house ready for the tenants to move in. Our lawyer told us that after Dad’s passing, the house’s ownership was divided three ways: 2/3 to my mother, 1/6 to me, and 1/6 to my half brother, S. I relinquished my ownership to the house as I find no reason in keeping ownership of something I will gain someday when I can actually do something with it, and we expected S to do the same. And for the strangest unknown reason, he refused. Even more awkward, he asked for $8000 from my mother to BUY his share of the house. My mother and I do not even have $8000. If we did, we wouldn’t have had to decide to rent out the house and I might not have decided to go to OU.

  Here’s some background on the situation: S hasn’t lived in this house in over 25 years, and he never helped with the hundreds of thousands of dollars of medical bills or funeral costs for Dad, and mother (from what I’ve heard from family friends) once gave him an interest-free $30,000 loan to buy his first house in California when nobody else would loan him any money. After all of this, he comes back and asks for money from the family when we are living paycheck to paycheck when he has enough money saved up to buy another large house in a nice part of town.

  To S, $8000 is not even a significant amount compared to his other savings. Mother was going to give him part ownership of the house in her will anyway, so I don’t see what S’s intentions are. And since he is refusing to let her change the house deed unless she pays him money she doesn’t have, we can’t even rent out the house. This means we’re losing time and money (and potentially, our tenant). If this keeps dragging on, there will be a foreclosure and NOBODY will have any money left to fight over.

  I’m going to email S about this and state the facts and ask him why he is choosing to refuse to help out our family for such petty and insignificant (to him) monetary gain. I’m going to try to stay civil because I still don’t know his side of the story yet. I do have to say that, from where I’m standing… he’s not lookin’ so good…

   

  -b.

   

  -UPDATE-

  Here’s the email I sent S:

  Hello there.

  Well, this is strange. I’ve been hearing all kinds of things about what’s going on lately, and I’m not quite sure what to think yet. I decided I’m better off asking you before I start judging and possibly taking sides.

  What I’ve heard (and please correct me if I’m wrong):

  • Mother needs to fix the deed in order to get the housing preparations to go through so we can actually rent out the house to help pay off the house.
  • Lawyer says me and you each own 1/6th of the house. I relinquished my ownership, you refused to.
  • You asked for $8000 for your share of the house.
  • You pissed mother off. (Okay, that’s not what I heard. That’s something I experienced.)

  What I understand about what happens if we don’t get the deed fixed:

  If we aren’t able to get the deed fixed

  a) we will not be able to rent the house, meaning mother won’t be able to keep it much longer and it’ll be foreclosed upon and nobody will have any money

  b) we will not be able to rent the house, and mother will decide to get vindictive and refinance the house over and over like Dad did and let us end up with our share of house payments instead of an    actual inheritance.

  What I’m confused about (please enlighten me if you can):

  • Why you are asking for the money now when you have significant savings already while we are living pretty much paycheck to paycheck
  • Why you are asking for money now when if you relinquished your ownership now, you would’ve gotten a larger share in Mother’s will that she’s in the process of writing out
  • If you realize we don’t have the money to pay for your share at the moment
  • If you realize that if we don’t get this to go through soon, we won’t be able to rent out the house
  • Why now? Why not another time when there is actual money to fight over?

  Like I said, I’m trying to get more information on this before I decide to judge anyone or take sides. Some thoughtful discussion on what the hell is going on would be nice. Hope to hear from you soon.

  -b.

  I suppose it’s now time to wait for a response.

  • 5:12 am
  • 9 Comments