[SeaGypsy]

Having worked with frail aged people I know there is damn good reason workers in aged care are forced to sign contracts forbidding acceptance of any kind of gift without approval of the employer.
It is rediculously easy to manipulate people in early stage dementia who have landed in a nursing home.
Whoever spends the most time with them carries the most sway. Fair or unfair, that's the way it is.

[threadbare]

SixStrings--I am so sorry to hear about your grandfather's will. It seems odd that the sole beneficiary, your uncle, is also the executor? My mother just died and there hasn't been any difficulty. It's pretty straightforward. Nobody was forgotten, no hard feelings. Everything is cool. All of us kids are very lucky.

If you find out you have a strong case, you might approach your uncle about a mediated settlement that excludes huge payouts to lawyers. Nobody deserves to be forgotten, in the way you have. Perhaps your gramps was a bit of a psycho. They can fool you, these old codgers, gumming their peas, afghan quilts warming their laps. Most people mellow with age but some just become more rigidly awful. By the time they die, their personalities have become as calcified as their arteries.
All the best to you. Make the goof roll over in his grave! Hell no, make him break dance!

[threadbare]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('SeaGypsy', 'H')aving worked with frail aged people I know there is damn good reason workers in aged care are forced to sign contracts forbidding acceptance of any kind of gift without approval of the employer.
It is rediculously easy to manipulate people in early stage dementia who have landed in a nursing home.
Whoever spends the most time with them carries the most sway. Fair or unfair, that's the way it is.

[scas]

I got cut out of the parents will when I pulled the atheist card. Apparently its religious law? I don't care though, religious people are irrational.

[Sixstrings]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('threadbare', 'S')ixStrings--I am so sorry to hear about your grandfather's will. It seems odd that the sole beneficiary, your uncle, is also the executor? My mother just died and there hasn't been any difficulty. It's pretty straightforward. Nobody was forgotten, no hard feelings. Everything is cool. All of us kids are very lucky.

[vision-master]

6, don't feel bad, before my dad died he put the cabin ($250,000 vaule in today's market) into the youngest brothers name and left the other 4 of us out. Not only that, but the younger brother got everything up there too. On top of that he wuzn't suppose to get any other funds like t-bonds or cd's. Well mum changed that, so he got a cut from that too. The 4 of us are trying to sell her condo now and if's were lucky we may get about $15,000 each. On top of it, the younger brother will most likey die within a couple of years from being totaly overweight and drinking like a fish for decades.

Guess who got to take care of mum - me. The brother wuz busy getting hammered everyday.

Oh I forgot, he put a bunch of money into the place and then went broke. Now a friend of his bailed him out and is half owner. So, it's gonna be gone.........

[Queaks]

[As a moral question, I wonder if I'm wrong to feel cheated? What I'm wondering is how most families handle this when there's a decent sized estate -- if one of the two sons pass before the elderly parent, is it common that everything is left to the surviving son even though if my father hadn't passed then 1/3 of his half would have eventually passed to me.]

Six, I am a new member, but I have seen your posts for the past few years as I read the site . Sorry for your loss and feelings of being cheated. It could be more simple however, rather than a "cut out".

I lost my father several years ago at 84 (good for our family). He left everything to us siblings equally. However, it was even in the will that should one child pre-decease the others his/her portion was to be split with the other kids, not passed on to their children. I even remember talking about it with Dad a decade or so earlier, who remarked that each of his kids were loved , as were the grand(and great) kids, but that he felt the distribution should only go to children, not grandchildren. That it was up to us as "kids" to take care of our own rather than him.

So maybe your grandfather was just "oldschool" and only believed that things should pass to his kids, not to grandkids, as my father believed? In any case, sorry for your loss.

[Sixstrings]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Queaks', 'S')orry for your loss and feelings of being cheated.

[Ayoob]

Make your own damn money you bunch of girls, and decide who you will give what you want.

"Oh, I deserve to be an heiress" indeed.