I don’t even like writing this because it makes me feel selfish. There are so many people out there whose problems are much worse than mine. We live in a small, rural community and ten years ago we decided to downsize and move out of the city limits of our town. We got a good deal on a small, a-frame house that was a foreclosure. My wife was very happy because the piece of property we purchased directly bordered her parents’ property. Her parents owned about 12 acres of land and lived in a double-wide manufactured home. Two years ago this month, her mother passed away and then her father passed away one year after that. Throughout the almost 32 years we have been married, my father-in-law had told us many times that when they both passed, the house would go to my wife and the remaining property would be divided between his three grandchildren and he had all of their names on the property deeds. When we went through all of his documents and visited the local courthouse after he passed, we found that only my wife’s parents’ names were on the house and the property. Because of that, even though the will said that everything would go to my wife, it all had to go through probate first. My father-in-law had enough insurance money to cover his burial and funeral and the $3,500 charge to the attorney and we were left with enough to pay off some outstanding bills. The result of the probate was that a value was placed on all of his property, amounting to approximately $95,000. Before we knew this, we allowed our middle daughter and her husband and two children to move into my father-in-law’s house. They had been renting a house and we thought it would be good to let them move in to save them some money because we didn’t need the house for ourselves and we needed someone to take care of the property. We had no plans of selling anything because the property has been in my wife’s family for over 100 years and she promised her parents that it wouldn’t be sold. We knew that my father-in-law had some substantial credit card debt, which we would not have been responsible for if there had been beneficiary deeds in my wife’s name, but since a value was placed on the estate, that allowed the credit card companies to place claims against the estate in the amount of approximately $23,000. My wife and I both work and make a decent living but we are not wealthy by any means. We have our own debt, including a mortgage, two vehicle payments, medical debt, a payment plan for last year’s income taxes and some credit card debt. We do not have the means to pay my father-in-law’s debt. The only way to do that would be to sell his house and all of his property. We don’t want to do that because, as I mentioned before, my daughter and her husband and children are now living in that house. This is not something I have ever done. I don’t like to ask for help, but we have no other options besides selling everything. I will include my PayPal link but if someone were to donate to us for this purpose, we don’t even want to see the money. I would rather it be sent directly to the creditors but I understand if that is not possible. I will also understand completely if there is nobody willing to donate because, as I stated before, I know there are many people who are more deserving and have worse problems. Thank you so much for reading this and for your time.
https://paypal.me/jacooley68