- One day, I'm visting him in the evening and a family friend of his also comes and visti. It's getting a bit late in the evening (it's like 7pm-ish) and I had a small errand to run so I tell my grandpa that I'll see him tomorrow again and I encounter that family friend who'd just found her way to the hospice area of the hospital and I go to Publix to get a few things I needed (and stop by GameStop to buy myself a video game - don't judge me) and then I head home and I'm putting the groceries away and then I sit down to relax a bit before making dinner when I get a phone call at 8:42 pm.
He's gone. My grandpa just died. 4 June 2024 at 97 years old. I won't ever see him again, not tomorrow, not ever.
- Well, I tell my mum what happened and she has to plan to come down here to help me out with everything (funeral, wills, etc.) Especially so after a couple of weeks where word gets out to my grandpa's credit union that he's died after a couple of weeks and they close his account which means now I have literally no way to pay for groceries!!!! (My mum and her husband order me some grocery delivery from Walmart + I still had food in the house, wasn't like I was out of food entirely)
- My mum flies down from upstate New York and arrives here on my birthday (25 June). Yay! Unfortunately, we couldn't go out for my birthday dinner that evening because my grandpa's car was dead too.
- My grandpa's funeral is the following day. We decided to have him cremated because it was cheaper, even though his wish was to have a proper burial. Of course, in the end, it turned out that there was a complete misunderstanding of his burial arrangements and his entire funeral had already been pre-planned and almost completely pre-paid for (literally the last payment due in order for his funeral to be completely paid for...was June 2024). But what's done was done, he was cremated, a bunch of people from his church attended the funeral, and they put his urn in the same plot as my grandma (the issue is we didn't realize until we were planning the burial at the cemetary itself that my grandma's plot was a double depth plot - it was supposed to have two caskets on top of each other - my grandma and grandpa obviously). (And then we have my birthday dinner/lunch after the funeral, yeah I know it was weird to do so but like...life doesn't stop going on)
- A couple days later, we go and see the lawyer who's the executor for my grandpa's will. This is what he tells me: my grandpa set up a trust for me and the way the trust works is I have access to 1/3rd of the trust starting at age 25, 1/3rd at age 30, and 1/3rd at age 35. I turned 28 on my birthday so I will have access to 1/3rd of this trust. Then comes the discussion of the properties my grandpa owned - my grandpa owns three properties: my dad's home (my dad passed in 2018), a summer cottage in Massachusetts, and the home that he lived in (and the home I live in). I am adamant that I want to keep the summer home and my own home, my dad's home? I don't really care, that home can be sold. The lawyer tells me he thinks I'm not being realistic considering my financial situation (again - no job and no money)
- We pack up some of my things in the rental car and my mum drives me back up to New York with her. We hit a fuckin deer on the way when we were like an hourish from where she lives btw.
- I'm in New York now and we've still been talking with the lawyer and such and we are operating under the assumption that he cannot touch either of the homes in Florida until we have time to go back down there again.
- Then we learn that he's put my dad's house up for sale (even though I have things in that house that I need to get out there, the lawyer doesn't understand why I care so much about some of these things but I do)
- About a week later, we learn that they've put the other home, my home, up for sale. I start freaking out because uhh HI ALMOST ALL OF MY ******* STUFF IS IN THAT HOUSE. Literally this is what I had brought with me basically: my laptop, my phone, my tablet, my Switch, my 3DS, all my Switch games (not hard considering I only had like three physicla games), some of my 3DS games, two of my TVs (that at this point were now set up in the den by my bedroom at this house and in my bedroom), my plushies, some DVDs/BDs, a small number of books and manga, and a small number of figures. Also my clothes of course.
- WELL eventually my me, my mum, and her husband all fly back down to Florida in mid-September to pack up my belongings so they can be shipped up here, as well as well as seeing the lawyer for more discussing about y'know the trust and stuff. The sale on my dad's home has already closed but I'm told the stuff we told them that needs to be taken out of the house was moved to the other home.
- When we see the lawyer, he tells us that my dad's house sold for more than they were asking for. Listed it for $285k (my grandpa bought it in 2002 for $100k...yeah you can cry now, buying a whole ass home for $100k, can't do that now unless you wanna live in the middle of fuckin nowhere in a rural region lol) and it sold for $335k. He also tells me about the trust and the money.
He tells me that he believes that I will be able to keep the summer home in Massachusetts but here's the thing: we'd been discussing giving me monthly payments of $1500/mo from the trust but it would actually be $700/mo payments because out of the $1500/mo, he would take $200 to pay for any expenses at the summer home and $600 would be given to my mum to reimburse her for the costs of food and jive for me. And also if there were any purchases I needed to make that were too much for my limited budget (like say if I wanted a TV for my room or a new bed or whatever), we could contact him with what I needed and he would pay for it out of the trust money. He also wants this money to last me the rest of my life so he is going to be investing some of it so it can grow.
But here is the other thing: remember what I said earlier about how I have access to 1/3rd of the trust at age 25, 1/3rd at 30, and 1/3rd at 35? Yeah, legally speaking - I am completely entitled to just be given 1/3rd of the trust all at once as a lump sum. But as the lawyer explained - that means that like everything would be responsibility. Keeping up with the payments of my summer home, any potential investing, etc. If I blow all the money on something, that's it, that's all my money gone until I turn 30 and get access to another 3rd of the money. So we decide to just do the monthly payments because, while I'm not a total dumbass who'd blow all her money at once - I also know jack and jive about investing and we're given our first checks right then and there (with some discussions about my monthly income possibly increasing in the future)
So anyways, we also pack up belongings from my home (including things from my dad's home that were brought over from there before that sale closed - which was literally just 'a late 90s gaming PC from like 1998 and 1999 with accessories and a bunch of floppy disks and two TVs from 1982 and 1986, although I made the decision to only pack the 1982 TV and leave the 1986 one. If the situation were different, I'd have brought both and sold off one of them to some other fuckin dorkus who's into vintage tech like I am but yeah), it's like 20 boxes consisting of a mixture of my own things, some tableware we wanna keep, Barbies my older sister wants (and that my grandma promised her apparently), photos of my grandpa and his medals and jive from his service in the military, a model boat that my great-great-grandfather from....uh well he was from Newfoundland but he was actually born on a ship that was sailing from Ireland to Newfoundland during the Irish Potato Famine built himself that was a model of the fishing boat he worked on, an antique musket from the 1840s we've got, etc.
BUT I WANT TO MAKE ONE THING CLEAR THOUGH - I did not want my home sold. I never did. I never agreed to them putting the home up for sale, it was not anything I wanted. I made it very clear that I wanted to keep my home. My home was put up for sale without my permission and, as far as I am concerned, my home - WHICH WAS PROMISED TO ME BY MY GRANDFATHER MULTIPLE TIMES BEFORE HE DIED - was stolen from me and fraudulently sold. I don't care what the law says, I don't care if the lawyer as the trustee legally could have sold my home. I don't give a jive. I don't, I don't care if he thinks he was doing this to ensure financial stability for me because my inability to work. Keeping my home was more imporant than any amount of money.
