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Ughhhhh….. I just spent the weekend visiting with my grandmother. Within hours of my arrival, she started going off about my mother's handling of my grandfather's estate. She even pulled out bankbooks and pointed out various transactions to me. There ARE some questionable things there: a withdrawal for about $2000, another for $3000, one for $5000 from my grandfather's account, 8 days after he died. I also found out that 10 days after my grandfather went into the hospital, about 6 weeks before he died, 2 cheques for $25000 were cashed. Evidently my mother talked my grandparents into giving her $50 000 to modify her home so that they could move in with her. (It's all very suspicious. Within 10 days she found out what modifications were necessary [I don't see why any were necessary], got quotes from contractors that just happened to add up to the nice round figure of $50K? I don't buy it.) But now that my grandfather is dead and my grandmother will be moving to an ALF, my mother doesn't need to fix her house, but it doesn't look like she will give the money back to my grandfather's estate.

Every time I told my grandmother that she MUST speak to my mother, demand a copy of the will (apparently my grandfather made all his arrangements in secret and my grandmother has never seen ANY of the documents), demand an explanation of the questionable transactions, she deflates and says "oh… no, I just have to trust her". I know that my mother and grandmother went to see a lawyer on May 9, but my grandmother doesn't remember what they discussed or if she signed anything. My mother is certainly behaving as if she has PoA for my grandmother but I have no idea if there are documents to show that.

So, it looks like my grandfather gave his daughter complete control and she's making a mess of it, and my grandmother's expense.

Over the weekend I was all riled up thinking I would call a lawyer on Monday to find out the options for protecting my grandmother. But on the long drive home I thought: I'm not responsible for this situation, no one has actually asked me to fix it, this is an extremely dysfunctional family, why should I take on the emotional cost of cleaning up its messes? If my grandfather wanted me to be able to protect my grandmother in some way, he should have made arrangements for that. And all of these people hurt my sister and me pretty bad and never tried to rescue us from anything, so what do I really owe them?

Please tell me it is OK to stay out of it! It's not going to be easy watching my grandmother get taken advantage of.
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If your mom and her parents had a dysfunctional relationship during your moms growing up years, then this will be pay back from your mother to her mother. It stinks, it's not right, but it's probably how it will go. Unless your mom has someone closer to her own age that she will listen to, you're a goner. You can teach a kid what is right and what is wrong when they're young, but once they're grown up, they'll do what they want. My advice, tell your grandma to talk to her daughter when she starts talking about money. In the back of her mind she's worried, but unless she changes POA etc, there's nothing you can do. Extricate from it, or you'll be sucked into the vortex.
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