I had a giant breakfront cabinet that was my grandmother’s. It was beautiful but there was no where in my house where it would fit. I kept in in my garage and thought it was properly wrapped but termites got to it and made my decision to throw it out an easy one.
I hate clutter and owning lots of stuff. I don’t have kids. My only sister has a son and a daughter. Instead of me having a bunch of crap in a closet that will go to my nephew some day, I just let my sister keep it to give to him. I long ago threw away any yearbooks or photo albums that were mine. Who wants that shit?
My father, who died 17 years ago, was a commercial artist. He worked for an ad agency. He also worked as a portrait artist- Mostly he was commissioned to paint portraits of executives as retirement gifts - the Time “Man of the Year” Cover was a popular style.
He also sometimes painted portraits on spec, which he sold through word of mouth and sometimes magazine ads. He was a southerner and he knew his audience. He painted mostly Civil War generals and NASCAR drivers.
About 5 years ago our house burned down. With some tragic exceptions, like my mother’s wedding day portrait, most of his work survived. But there was a perception that it all been destroyed. And all his friends started graciously returning their portraits of Civil War generals and NASCAR drivers to us.
It was a gracious gesture, but highly misplaced. The reason most of his work survived was that it was wrapped in blankets under the bed in a back bedroom. I loved my father very much, but there isn’t enough irony in the world for me to hang those paintings in my home. And now I have even more of them.
My mom’s a furniture hoarder. I have a lot of furniture in my house that I wouldn’t have chosen and ought to get rid of, but man, furniture is expensive when you’re accustomed to getting it for free.
Having crappy taste in furniture and clothes is a huge money-saver.
I was going to post the same thing. Be rid of it, let other claimants figure it out. Nobody needs baggage like this, especially worthless baggage.
I guess I’m just not that sentimental. I’d trashheap much of the things mentioned here while carefully keeping one or two small things that reminded of gone family in a personal way. I have my father’s favorite hat; I don’t wear it, but would never part with it. Furniture and other stuff? Give it away or call a trash hauler.
An acquaintance has a massive gun safe in the basement of the house he inherited from his parents. It was in there when they bought the house from the previous owners and no one wanted to bother moving it.
In CA where the property is you have to pay a tax to file a quitclaim deed. A tax based on the value of the land. Land which has no determinable value since none similar has been sold in years if not decades. If you can’t determine a value you can’t determine the tax. So you can’t pay it. So you can’t file quitclaim. Catch-10648 (i.e. Catch-223
Of all the legit owners I’m sorta the official “adult in the room.” So I sorta owe everybody else, many of whom I care about and some whom I do not, an adult resolution. Or at least not a fresh big poop in the already putrid punchbowl.
As with everyone’s problems up-thread, the hard part isn’t the practicalities & logistics. It’s personal responsibility, personal guilt, and inter- / intra-familial relationships.
After my mother got Internet access, she went through a lot of old school photos, etc. that she got in Christmas cards over the years, and if she wasn’t still in touch with those people, looked them up and sent them back. She couldn’t believe how well that was received, and more than one person said that they had experienced a house fire, flood, or other disaster, and lost all their kids’ pictures up to that age, so they were really happy to have them.
Nowadays, young people don’t want their mother’s or grandmother’s china. It’s delicate and often can’t be used in the microwave or dishwasher.
Contact a sewing or quilt shop in your area and ask if they have a club. Believe me, someone will want that, because “icky 70s polyester” is hard to find and coveted by some quilters, especially the ones who make blankets that will go to areas where women do laundry on river rocks. They are almost impossible to tear when made from polyester.
I have a friend who loves to get pieced quilt tops, and put backs on them. She’s completed a lot of quilts that way.
Damn am I lucky that we’re not a sentimental family and we had so many moves plus my parents divorce when the kids were in adulthood means there’s not going to be tons of crap to deal with when they pass. The main albatross is going to be that I’m the adult in the room and I’m sure the deaths will happen at the worst possible times.
Well, let’s see what Mom left in her Trust/Estate:
Duplex/Condo with an $820/month mortgage note, and $150/month in Association fees;
$300/month 2nd mortgage on my sister’s trailer,
3 timeshares in Florida, with about $600/year fees/taxes on each
Ford Windstar minivan with a $400/month payment, about $8,000 left on its note, worth less than its Blue Book value thanks to the body damage my drunk/stoned brother inflicted on it, left to her SO who was legally blind;
4a. Said legally blind douche didn’t want the van itself, but he DID want the Executor of the Estate (Me) to sell the van for whatever we could get for it, give him the money, and the Estate could eat the loss;
4b; Said douche was granted 60-days residence rights in the Duplex by the Will, and he drug things out to the very last minute, and it was only after he was out that I could start clearing the Duplex and get it ready for sale;
An IRA with about $200,000 in it, split 8 ways; being an IRA, no one could cash it out without incurring significant tax penalties;
$5,000 insurance policy that didn’t even cover the funeral;
I forgot about the upright piano that belonged to my grandmother and my father thought would be great for my kids when she died, so transferred it to me at no cost. Well, my daughter did play it for a while and actually took lessons, etc. However, as she grew had little time for the piano and eventually stopped playing and moved on with college, etc.
I tried to offload it to my cousins since they have younger kids (by the same way of thinking my dad had), but none of them wanted it. Now it sits there as a dust collector. I forgot about it for this thread since it is so far out of mind, even if I see it every day. I dont think you can even give a piano away these days.
I don’t know what you can do if people are actually on the deed. If it’s a matter of multiple possible heirs, you can get a document refusing to accept the property and have everyone, or nearly everyone, sign it. Then just stop paying the property tax and it will eventually revert to the county.
We did that with a 2-acre undeveloped lot in the San Bernardino desert. Since it was in California, and Mom’s estate was being settled in Idaho, we could not pass the property on or sell it unless we did an auxiliary probate in California. Which would cost more than the property was worth.
We got a notice when the county sold the property and we’re in the process of claiming the excess funds that the county got in the sale. It’s been nearly a year since we sent in the claim forms and it will be another year before the county begins to analyze the forms. I guess the wait is to make sure other relatives don’t send in a competing claim. We’ll each get about $250.
You’ll probably get the best payout by selling the coins to a coin shop. You’ll get a % of the silver value and in our area, the coin shop gives a higher % than any of the pawn shops or ‘we buy gold/silver’ shops. The coin shops don’t sell coins to be melted down because the coins can be sold as-is for their silver price over and over without the cost of melting them down. Broken jewelry and gold crowns (teeth) get melted. The coins can just be resold.
We talked to the bank that held Mom’s retirement account. They were willing to roll the split amounts into individual IRAs, or to let us withdraw our share “with penalty for early withdrawal”. Is this likely to vary from state to state?
