A Single Day Scheduled Off (work)

Just means I don’t have enough time to travel to visit my daughters. Later in the week I have two off in a row, I plan on making the trip, most likely having to bring along my two dogs.

Cody has been to the farm several times, but little Duke (prenamed) is an unpredictable anxious little critter …. not sure how he will take to a 2 hour road trip.

Things aren’t going well for the girls. Now that their father has died, their father’s sister has inherited the farm in it’s entirety with the exception of the 12 acres that he owned outright.

Due to a long history of bad blood between sister and brother, the sister is now taking her anger out on his daughters (brother and mother was suing sister for misappropriating funds when she was acting as Power Of Attorney for her mother. Somehow approximately half a million dollars just evaporated in a period of 6 years… that POA was revoked in an earlier hearing back in 2004, and the district attorney’s case was heard and dismissed by a judge who happened to be a personal friend of the defendent … I was never sure if this was really true, or if there was another reason … but it angered my ex-husband who was bound and determine to seek justice, and he immediately filed a civil suit agasint his sister on behalf of his 91 year old mother, who claims she now wants the farm back and would drop the case if her daughter would just sign the farm back over into her mother’s name (obviously so she could have given it to her son outright … or now that he’s gone, to my eldest daughter who has been farming it with her father for the past 7 years.

But justice doesn’t work that way. I tried to explain to him over and over again that he might be best to accept his sister’s offer to divide the farm in two …. he could have the lower 56 acres, house, barn, chicken house, out buildings, tractors, equipment, animals, orchard and a small pasture ….. and she and her husband would have the upper half of the farm (divided by a state road) which is all pasturland and woods. That is what she wanted. She never wanted to discuss the legal issues, nor would she ever account for the money spent when she was POA for her mother …..

So he wouldn’t even consider it. Told me over and over again that he HAD to fight for justice for his ancestors …. 7 generations of family had passed the farm from generation to generation, and he wasn’t about to let his sister develop her half for profet and insisted that the farm had to stay intact. He was 61, she 70. Which ever sibling passed first inherited the farm in entirety … I believe he was thinking he would outlive her based on the age difference … or that his and their mother’s law suit against her would somehow make her back off and hold up a white flag of surrender and defeat.

But life isn’t always fair, and things aren’t always black and white …. we may never know what happened to Nana’s money, we certainly aren’t going to get the money back … or the farm … which Nana gifted equally to both of her children back in 2002 ….

Now his sister is visiting Gary’s 12 acres and his house repeatedly, her and her husband descending like a pack of wolves … insisting that she come into her brothers house to see her mother, wants to take her mother here or there (so far she hasn’t been allowed) says that my daughter’s and her brother have been holding her mother hostage (there was a lawsuit that revoked this woman’s POA … she could have visited any time provided there was someone with her and it was supervised.

She claims that her mother suffers dementia and should be in a nursing home and she still has the nursing home insurance …. (does she really? … that’s odd, she cashed out all of Nana’s life insurances years ago as well as her stocks, bonds, investments, savings and checking accounts as well …

At least that is what I’ve been told.

I can’t do much to help my daughter. I divorced her father 18 years ago and his family’s dynamics were one of the many reasons why… how we even managed to remain lifelong friends is a mystery to me … I suppose it’s because our eldest daughter wanted to live with him during her nursing school years … how he and I managed to become friends after the divorce is more a testament to how much I love my children as opposed to the awkwardness that generally follows divorce.

But I can help with Nana … run the laundry, make a meal, and I can help with mowing and feeding the livestock and gathering eggs, and I can mow.

I can hug my daughter and tell her I understand how helpless and terrified, angry and indignant she is feeling. I can remind her over and over again that it was an instant death, there was nothing she could have done to prevent it even if she had been right next to him at the moment the tractor tipped over … and that it’s okay that she screamed so loud that neighbors could hear her a mile away ..

But I can only imagine the horror she is now living with day and night, having found her father that way, having to deal first hand with the insanity of the remaining vultures of his family, having to make decisions about Nana and where to live and what to do with her horses and her father’s cows, goats, and chickens in the event her aunt decides it’s her farm and there will be no sharing of anything even for a time.

I need to remind Janelle that she needs to set up a small barn or some kind of shelter for her horses quickly, and see that the 12 acres her father has his house on is fenced adequately enough for her horses to pasture from time to time. I don’t think 12 acres will support 4 Herefords, 4 Horses, and 2 goats …. she may have to sell off the Herefords and goats.

She needs to prepare for the fight to come …. I know how his family works, it will NOT be gracious or nurturing or sharing or loving …

Even his last will is screwed up, he had it written back in 1994 and named his sister as executrix …. then instead of having the will updated, he simply crossed out his sister’s name, wrote in the names of his two daughtes, initialled and dated the change and never even took it to a notary ….

I ask myself all the time …. this question: When we were married, did I really do everything I could to try to make him understand how important it is to keep your business affairs in order at all times?

How many times did he forget to pay the auto-insurance? Enough that we were once cancelled for several consecutive late payments. Even then he wouldn’t let me handle the bills.

How many times when we were married was our water turned off? Our electricity turned off. Our cable turned off? All because he didn’t understand “surcharges” and refused to pay any amount he hadn’t been quoted would be the extimated charge.

How many times after we were divorced did he miss his own mortgage payments? Enough that they almost forclosed … which lead to serious trouble with him find another way to re-mortgage … though he is dea, he put all his money into a farm that only belonged to him halfway … his house still has an unsatisfied mortage of over $100,000.00 and back taxes to boot.

I need to remind Janelle that her priorities have nothing to do with the farm, but to her Nana, and to keeping the 12 acres and house her father built ….it will have to be enough …. that 12 acres were protected … but she’s going to have to fight to figure out a way to protect it … and herself … and her horses …

And I really wish she would stop spending so much time trying to take care of her boyfriend and his family …. a man 52 years old with two children …. and a divorce that is in progress but not final by a long shot.

If it’s really love, they will figure it out later, but they each have loose ends to deal with themselves before they can be of any real help to one another.

But that’s just my opinion ….

So sorry I keep venting and venting about all this crap … my real life, the one I lead away from all the above fuss … is so simple and peacful that I’d forgotten what its’ like to live in continual chaos of a dysfunctional family ….

Well …. must do some laundry to be ready to pack for Wednesday …

Hopefully I’ll eventually have something better to write about sooner rather than later.