Brought to you by the EveryDollar app. Start budgeting for free today. The basic question I have is what I should do with my mother-in-law's situation. Man, if I could answer that, I'd be rich.
My in-laws gave us a piece of property in 2006. We couldn't afford to build on it at the time, so we saved. And we ended up building our house in 2012. After a couple of visits from my in-laws, they ended up asking us if they could build a small home on the back of our property.
The property that they gave you? Correct. So it's titled to you and your husband? Correct.
Okay. They were living in upstate New York. It was a lot for my mother-in-law taking care of her home and my father-in-law. And she was talking to my husband daily, multiple times a day, about what a struggle it was.
So we felt like, yes, this was a good idea. We could help them when they live here. And so they sold their home in New York and used that money to build a house in the back of our property. Well, during the building process, we kind of all realized at the same time that technically they did not own it, that we owned it because it was on property in our name.
It caused a huge fight. My father-in-law stopped the builder from building, and we had a couple of days of discussions. I'm sorry, why was this a surprise? I guess because we never really had conversations about it.
You didn't need a conversation. They deeded the property to you. Did they just forget that they did that? Hey, it's George.
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Or did they think when they were building on the property that automatically the land under that is theirs? Is that what they thought? Right. That's the assumption, yes.
Because they were paying for that house. They didn't think about the land underneath the house. Yes. So this was 10 years ago.
Every six months for the past 10 years, we've had a fight about ownership of their home. My father-in-law passed away about three years ago. My mother-in-law since then has just become more and more angry about the situation. How old is she?
She is 80 and in very good health. In January, there was a huge fight where she accused us of doing this on purpose for the sole purpose of taking her home, in essence, taking her money. She wants to be able to leave this home to her kids equally and who will. So we assured her we were never going to deny her access to this home.
Like she said, you could kick me out at any time. Well, we're not going to do that. But it's just constant, the fighting. So now we haven't spoken to each other since January.
And she got a lawyer to send us a letter accusing us of elder exploitation and demanding $180,000 from the table. And what is your ultimate worth? A net worth probably over a million. How much land is involved in the total tract?
An acre. No, no, no, no. I mean the whole property, including yours. Yeah, an acre.
How do they build on the back of an acre? It's an accessory dwelling. It's just a one-bedroom, one bath, 900 square feet. And that's how the county defines it as well.
We share all the utilities. She built a tiny house on the back of your acre? Oh, yeah. I should have clarified.
It's a tiny house, yes. Oh, jeez. So she's not only not speaking to you, she's in your back window. Oh, yeah, eight feet away.
Sorry, Jamie, that's not funny. No, every lawyer I talked to said the same thing. They laughed at first. Every lawyer I talked to said the same thing, which was what?
Basically that, yes, she may have improved the property. This is the exact words of one. The value of those improvements is largely offset by her continued occupancy, meaning that she's gotten $180,000 worth of money. There's not a tiny house in the back corner of an acre on no planet is worth $180,000.
True. It's just, oh, my God, the drama of some people. Okay. I thought there was 100 acres and she was in the back 40 or something.
No, she's in the back window. This is bizarre. Oh, my God. So what are you going to do, Jamie?
We don't know. Morally, I feel like I should give her money. No, I don't morally give her anything. Okay, okay.
No, you didn't do anything wrong. I agree. And the funny part is the son-in-law stopped construction on the tiny house in the corner of the other house. Oh, my God, the brother-in-law.
Her son-in-law. Her son, yeah. Because he lost his cut of the tiny house. No, no, the husband.
The husband. The mother-in-law. The father-in-law stopped construction. He's mad at them.
The father-in-law? I thought you said it was the son-in-law. No, father-in-law. Okay.
He stopped the construction, yes, yes, of the tiny home. So what a horrible trying-to-do-something-nice-it-went-bad story. Correct. So, no, you know what I'm going to do?
I'm just going to hire an attorney. You've got the money. Go give somebody $10,000 and keep her tied up until she dies. Oh, wow.
I mean, that's really all you can do here. Because she's not going, you're not going, this relationship's not going to be healed. This woman's lost her marbles. And we can't find them.
They're somewhere in the backyard near a tiny house. Near them, near Jamie. It's right next to you, Jamie, wherever they are. That's where the marbles are.
Oh, shoot. I mean, really, there's not a... I mean, the perfect world is that there is reconciliation. Is your husband, Jamie, is your husband on the forefront of this emotionally and in it?
Or do you feel like you are more holding the pieces together of everything that's happening? Do y'all both have emotional ownership in it? Or is it more you, more him? Well, no, we're kind of equal in that.
But I'm kind of the go-between right now because he has completely written the wrong. That's for signs. It's like his weight in this. He needs to make the decision because it's the most painful for him.
But if it was my situation here, I would just say, you know, you hired a lawyer, so I guess we've got to. And I would just stall in file continuances and do in-depth depositions with every expert on the planet and just tie it up for five years and then it won't be there. It's awful, but that's what you can do. Other than try to make an angry old woman that did a crazy bad deal happy, I don't know how you do that.
I don't know how you do it. For the rest of you listening, don't do this. Ever. Create your free every-dollar budget today.
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