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This one is irritation by proxy, an ongoing saga that's happening to my mother...
So my grandmother died about 7 years ago, and my mom has been managing the paperwork of my awful, inept step-grandfather ever since. (They were together for 30-plus years, but NO ONE ever liked him or considered him really a part of the family--he called my grandmother "lover" and is a supposedly-professional poet who has never been paid for his poetry but also never had any other job. Dude's a loser.) Why my mother feels the need to care for people just because no one else will is a whole separate issue. Bottom line, he's massively in debt, largely because he keeps getting suckered into old-person scams, all of which have to do with either tantric sex or stock-trading tips. For real.
ANYWAY. He'd gotten it into his head that he could do this weird home-equity-refinance-not-quite-a-reverse-mortgage-but-effectively-the-same deal that some advertiser sold him on. My mom's in favor of it because it gives him money for longer than he'll live, and nobody wants his trash condo, they can just repossess it when he dies and everyone's happy.
They'd gotten all the way to closing, then when they sent the final paperwork, my mom noticed that my grandmother's name is all over everything, about how she has to sign here and there to relinquish "her half" of the condo in this process.
She calls and tells them, "No, no, she's dead. It's all his."
Well, come to find out that's not the case. You see, she died without a will, meaning it didn't go to him, by default it got split evenly between her husband, and her children outside of the marriage, of which there are four. So my mother and her three brothers all own 1/8th of this stupid condo.
First, they have to issue a new title in the name of all five of them. Then they have to officially sign paperwork deeding their part to him. Then they have to issue a new title in his name. Then he can do this deal.
One sibling lives in California. The other is in Vietnam. All sibling signatures have to be wet, meaning actually signed and mailed. Oh, and the one in Vietnam is going to have to go to the American Embassy to find an American notary to make his pages official, at a cost of $100 per page. Twice. And they can't just say "fuck it," because if he dies, his half goes to some random fucking cousin of his in West Virginia, who may or may not still be alive at all, and if they decide to, say, open a meth lab in the place, my mom and uncles are potentially liable.
Don't die without a will, people. Even if you have no kids, no spouse--just get yourself a boilerplate will online, and name a charity as the recipient of everything. But don't die without a will. It's such a huge fucking hassle.
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