Goddammit Uncle!

[Nunavut Pants]

A few years ago, my grandmother died. She lived well into her 90s, and even though she was tough as nails we weren't surprised after her being on oxygen for the previous six months.

Gramma was, to put it mildly, well off. As in, owning lots of rental property well off. So Gramma's estate is very sizeable.

Gramma had several children. One, my father, predeceased her. My uncle was the only one of the kids still living near her. He never really grew up in a lot of ways. She left the bulk of her estate to him, and made him the executor of her estate. There is a defined percentage of the estate that each of the children and grandchildren are supposed to get.

Well, Uncle basically just sat and did nothing for three years. He claimed he was "waiting for the IRS to rule on the valuation of the estate".... which really meant that he had gotten appraisals for the properties which were much lower than their value so the estate would pay less taxes, and the IRS called BS on it and took a while to tell him how much they were going to tax him on.

Eventually, I asked him if he could distribute some of the estate because I had been laid off and would have no income. Nope, sorry. Finally, he did send a distribution, but a small partial one--and only after we had gotten a real estate attorney involved.

He is still dragging his feet. He has someone who is only sort-of qualified doing an accounting of the estate value, he is using the wrong values (no, it's the actual cash value that gets divided up, not the depreciated taxable value!) and he is taking his sweet time about it all. Meanwhile, the rentals are still generating income as well as the investments. If we get any of that, we either owe personal income taxes on it or capital gains taxes. But he won't tell us what if anything that we have gotten is from income or capital gains or what.

So we can't file our taxes, and the tax planning that we did early last year may well have made us pay more, or prevented us from getting deductions that we should have been able to get, or screwed us up some other way.

I know, this is the epitome of "first world problem". Many people would be tickled pink to be left a small chunk of a pretty large fortune. But that doesn't make this less painful for us. And it's my own goddamn uncle who is screwing us over, and not even maliciously (for the most part), just due to incompetence and laziness!!!

Gah. Dammit, Unc, if you had just figured out a rough amount early on and SENT IT there would be very very few complications and we wouldn't be going through all of this bullshit now! But no, you had to kick the can on down the road.

[Pixelated]

Has anything changed (read: improved) in the meantime?

Also, is there any way the rest of the family can retain a lawyer to light a fire under Uncle's a$$?

[protege]

I know, this is the epitome of "first world problem". Many people would be tickled pink to be left a small chunk of a pretty large fortune. But that doesn't make this less painful for us. And it's my own goddamn uncle who is screwing us over, and not even maliciously (for the most part), just due to incompetence and laziness!!!

IMHO, it's not a "first world problem" at all. Money issues suck. Been there, done that. But, at least the delays aren't intentional. Some of you from CS know about the drama and bullshit that my family has had to deal with starting in 2014.

For those who don't, my paternal grandmother died about midway through 2014. She'd been having some health issues, and after a fall in her driveway that year, her health rapidly deteriorated. A few months later, her younger sister (everyone's favorite aunt) died. She was loved by everyone, especially my dad.

By March, specifically 3/9/15, things were pretty bad. My father had moved out, and was living in my grandmother's then-vacant house. The bastard didn't even have the balls to tell my mom what was going on. Instead, he left a long-winded note tape up on his computer screen. But, I'm going off topic...

Several weeks after he left, my grandmother's will was unsealed. While the bulk of her estate went to my dad, and his half-sister (D), my brothers and I (who were her only grandchildren), got a small inheritance.

This is where things got fucked up. Rather than simply cut us a check...D decided to set up an LLC for the estate, complete with a checking account. To get this special check, I had to drop what I was doing, make an appointment with the estate's lawyer, and fill out some paperwork. Apparently, she was hoping that filing the "required" paperwork would drag things out further, and that we'd be on the hook for any and all taxes, which would reduce our inheritance to nothing

Keep in mind that my brothers and I were (and in some cases, still are) struggling financially. My dad and D became very wealthy overnight. Yet, we were the ones who they were trying to screw over

[Nunavut Pants]

Has anything changed (read: improved) in the meantime?

Also, is there any way the rest of the family can retain a lawyer to light a fire under Uncle's a$$?

Here we are, a year and a quarter later, and nothing has changed. Well, the previous attorney put together a list of expenses and such, and then quit. So there's a new attorney for the estate, but still no actual fiduciary accounting.

AFAICT, one of my aunts has been drawing money regularly from the estate (possibly just as management fees, possibly more), and the other is literally on the other side of the planet. Neither one seems likely to do anything to move things along. My two half-sisters seem content to just let things happen, so it's me alone on this (with my wife).

I am convinced that the only reason we have seen any disbursements of money so far is because we have an attorney that is communicating with his attorney. And, in fact, we have a court date coming up. We want a fiduciary accounting, not the half-assed crap that the previous estate attorney put together. (And from the list of crap, it looks like he charged a ton of money to do that.) We'll see how that goes.

[Nunavut Pants]

So, here we are. Unc is on attorney #3 now. Still no probate-compliant accounting, but they provided us with a ton of paperwork that is closer than the previous accounting. Attorney #3 deposed me via Zoom call. He tried putting some pressure on me ("Have you read all of the latest accounting?" "Are you aware that fraudulently suing can open you to penalties?") but my wife had advised me fairly well before hand, not to mention our attorney was also on the call. Kept him from trying to negotiate a settlement during the deposition, which apparently is a big legal no-no.

The longer this stretches, the more complicated it is. The estate had income after gramma's death (funny how apartment buildings do that!) and I should be getting a share of that, but how much of a share is affected by the amounts distributed so far. (E.g., at first my share was 5%, then they distributed 2% to me, so I should have gotten 5% of the income until the first distribution and then 3% after that--but the income was not distributed so my share may have gone back up by 1% and so I should be getting 4% of the income for that period, and then there were two more partial distributions, all of which were characterized as principal and not income.... Stupidly complex!!)

The next step is likely going to be deposing Unc, though my wife wants to get some stuff filed before then (probably won't happen) because that would put extra pressure on him. She figures that because of the 10% "off the top" that Unc and one aunt have been taking, plus income (above), plus extra tax burdens caused by the failure to distribute, that we're still owed about 1% more of the estate. Which is worth continuing the legal process.