The Family Members Alert to Communal Property

All family members should know who has prepared the will for a parent, and where it is. If any family member is not given that information while the parent lives, then while that parent is alive is the time to take legal action to find out, especially if there is property involved. I will use myself as an example since my situation at the death of my mother was as traumatic as was her death. We will begin with property issues while she was living.

At that time, we owned a vacation home in Florida. The deed was prepared by the lawyer and the real estate agent that I found when I discovered the house. I had all the family members names put on the will although at the time I could have put just mine, I didn't think of it as I automatically (that means without any preconceived thoughts) thought that we were working as partners and this was just another one of the partners properties. Years after my purchase of that house, I bought several other houses in Florida as I had decided to live their with my husband. One day, my older sister called me and told me that she was going to put all of our properties under our mother's name for Florida tax reasons. The partners had also purchased a condominium at that time. Again, automatically, I signed the papers that our lawyer had prepared and mailed it back up to Ohio. The house that my mother lived in during her last years had been purchased by monies that my father had left her. My mother had been receiving a respectable social security benefit from my father's benefits for years. All of her checks were supposedly deposited in an account in trust to her children at her death under her request as she had ample funds left by my dad to cover her expenses while she was living.

At her death, I helped choose her casket and flowers. We went to the cemetary as a family. We returned as strangers. My sister barred me from going over to her house, that is, the house that she had lived in that we had lived in for more that 30 years. The property in Florida that my mother had assured me would be totally in my name at her death was also, suddenly , made off limits to me. Whatever monies my mother had deposited in her account were never brought up. My sister immediately following my mother's death had a very expensive roof installed in what was now her house. She had the basement remodelled with all new cabinets. She had gardeners install pebbled walks in the front of her house. She went to Greece and stayed for three months. She went to Florida and stayed for six months. I went home and mourned my mother.

My point in all this is that a family should make all of their loved one's estates and trust known to all members not just to the one who is appointed as executor as usually the executor is also a family member with greedy paws.