A Devastated Mother

Elanor is devastated.

Just after we came out of lockdown during the pandemic, the chain smoking widow and her daughter reached out for some advice regarding a granny flat arrangement.

The situation was pretty straight forward until she shoved her will under my nose while she darted outside for a bunger.

Here’s what happened…

About twenty years earlier, Elanor and her late husband gifted their son some money to buy a house as a wedding present.

Elanor disapproved because she despised her daughter-in-law to be with a mouth frothing passion and didn’t think the marriage would last.

But her husband was sick with cancer and wanted this to be his legacy.

So Elanor lit up another smoke and acquiesced with her husband’s wishes.

About a year after her son tied the knot, her husband took his last breath and according to Elanor,

“…I changed the bloody will the same day I got the old fellas death certificate!”

Put simply, Elanor removed the 50/50 distribution between her son and daughter and made her daughter the sole beneficiary of the house.

Any cash would go to her son.

But by the time Elanor was sitting in front of me, her home was worth about $3m…which was a lot more than her son received for his wedding present.

However, he’d also benefited handsomely from the Sydney property market thanks to a big leg-up from mum and dad two decades ago.

And this is where things got a bit curly…

To make the granny flat arrangement work with her daughter, Elanor had to sell her run-down house because she didn’t have any cash.

Consequently, I suggested she speak to her solicitor with the following instructions:

1. Get her will rewritten so her daughter received the proceeds from the sale of the house if Elanor wasn’t alive to gift the funds herself.

2. Get a Power of Attorney with a non-family member as the executor to pass the funds from Elanor to her daughter in the event something happened to Elanor while she was alive. E.g. stroke.

Elanor saw her solicitor after she sold the house.

And during the meeting, she complained of recently having a bad memory.

So the solicitor suggested she visit her GP in case it’s something serious.

And Elanor did, the next day.

Unfortunately her GP diagnosed her with dementia which rendered her cognitively incapacitated, effective immediately.

The problem was, this happened before her next meeting with the solicitor when she was supposed to sign her new will and POA.

Game over.

But Elanor just shrugged it off and lit up another packet of smokes.

Afterall, her house was sold and soon the money would land in her account.

And once it arrived, she organised the funds to be transferred into her daughters bank account as per the new will.

But her son didn’t approve. Mostly thanks to his gold-digging wife who was now dark green with envy.

They entered mediation to negotiate a split but her son’s requests morphed into unbridled, irrational, greed.

So his sister took her proposal off the table and walked out.

A few weeks later Elanor’s son subpoenaed his sister to court on the grounds of elderly abuse. He alleged his sister bullied Elanor into transferring the funds.

Elanor’s testimony meant nothing because of her recent diagnosis. She was devastated.

She had to witness false allegations being made about her daughter which knew weren’t true.

Her son knew it too.

But it was too late.

Thanks for reading and have a great weekend!

Adam

Back paddock – during the week I was swapping fun facts with a colleagues kids and they loved this one…

Is a dolphin a fish?

Can a dolphin drown?

A: the average dolphin can only survive 8-10 minutes under water because it’s a mammal, not a fish, otherwise it will drown.

Kids reaction: Oh wow…no way…that’s fully sock…I’m gonna Google it!