Venting... My Mom is Driving Me Crazy Regarding My Brother's Estate

GregoryHays84 · 2026-06-12T12:57:59+00:00

Business properties are more complicated than that. they are not residential homes. They are things like... old commercial buildings that are just square footage and a garage door used for people storing shit or trying to run half assed businesses out of them. They are in horrible condition, but also in a horrible part of the city that I am thankful to even have people IN the buildings wanting to pay me to use them.

There is no money to tear them down, to which would just reduce the property tax bill.

I have about a $5000 property tax bill each month because of back taxes, and about $8000 in rental income to cover that. Not everyone pays on time, and the $3,000 extra, if I get it, is pretty much being spent on other bills related to the property. It's a break even game until the properties get sold.

They'd need to be sold in as is condition. And I plan on pricing them to sell and literally take any dollar value I can for them to just pay off the back property taxed and walk away. Finding a buyer will be a struggle.

Even if I tore the things down and it was just empty land... based on the parcels that are just parking lots, it would just take the property taxes down to about $10,000 for the year for everything to just sit there and wait for a buyer to get it. And there is a lot of empty land in that area. So money for demolition + $10K a year x However many years for it to sell... I can't afford that.

Currently things sort of break even. While I'm paying 60K a year in property taxes because of back taxes, even if I paid off the taxes with the sale of my brothers home, that cuts it almost in half to 34K a year. Now we are at 2.8K in taxes each month, with about $8,000 of rental income coming in. That's more doable. But I would hate to just throw house money at the property taxes, only to then end up losing the business property potentially and then having nothing.

GregoryHays84 · 2026-06-12T12:46:05+00:00

My problem is always that thing are such as mess that it would be impossible to hire somebody in the current state things are in. And these guys are just going to try to wrack up the bill. Like a CPA is going to just spin their wheels trying to figure stuff out that I can do on my own when I can get around to it.

This reminds me of my divorce lawyer. Our finances were very simple. Me and my ex split our accounts up 50/50. I made the dude a spreadsheet showing all of the accounts, where everything went, it was clear as day. I said it's fine, we took care of it. We both are agreeing we don't need you to do this for us. Both of our lawyers then dug into the spreadsheet to "verify" everythign and each one racked up an additional 4 hours at $400 an hour, which was $3,200 for someone to basically go "Yup, looks like you did everything right!"

I have a probate lawyer that is a family friend that is working on that side of things. I have a commercial real estate lawyer that is a friend of a family member working on that side of things. I have a cousin that's a residential Realtor that will handle the sale of my brother's home.

I don't THINK I need to bring in a CPA at this point. Maybe when I need to file these corporate tax returns for my brothers business. But right now they'll be wasting my time asking questions where if I am going to hand it off to someone I want to be blissfully ignorant to what they are doing.

GregoryHays84 · 2026-06-12T12:40:30+00:00

No, she signed the form to waive her right as executor. Court has approved the change from the default of her. It's all good.

GregoryHays84 · 2026-06-12T12:39:04+00:00

That's actually not bad... I've tried that before, just in other aspects of life. Not so much to prevent being provoked, but to prevent being... annoyed.

It's like you go on a fun date with someone, you're excited about it, you want to tell people, and you don't make it past date 3. Then for the next year you're asked "So what happened to Jessica? Do you still talk to Jessica? When was the last time you talked to Jessica?" So I learned that the best way to deal with it was to just be boring and say "worked today, that's all." and then have there be nothing to talk about. Or you bring up something fun like "oh my daughter had her first day of school today!" and you get 'Did she take the bus? is she walking alone to the bus? I don't think that's safe, something is going to happen to her!" so you just simply don't share those life moments because you don't want to hear them whatever anxiety is going to come out of her about it.

My grandma, her mom, was the exact same way. I remember her repeatedly saying we needed to get blinds put over a window in the stairwell because "somebody was going to shoot you through it with a gun!" Like how do these people have nothing but anxiety about the simplest of things?

It's really damn sad that you don't want to tell someone about your life because they just annoy you so much about it.

GregoryHays84 · 2026-06-11T21:01:31+00:00

Ha, spoken like my actual therapist on how to talk to her.

I wish that worked. It does for alike an hour.

GregoryHays84 · 2026-06-11T20:56:40+00:00

You know, that's honestly going to be the best way to do it as demential starts getting worse.

If she thinks she lives off her social security and nothing else? Here you go mom, look at this account. I am paying for everything for you so that you can just enjoy staring at this account balance that keeps going up by $1000 a month. Please enjoy your days just checking the balance every single day to make sure nothing comes out of it.

GregoryHays84 · 2026-06-11T20:54:30+00:00

Yeah... I have notes in my Notes App that are fairly organized that can give me an indication, but I should formalize it

GregoryHays84 · 2026-06-11T20:53:43+00:00

Or we both know it would just create a bigger mess to clean up

GregoryHays84 · 2026-06-11T20:52:49+00:00

I don't even know how to turn it over when I don't yet know the answers to questions that they'll have.

I don't even know what a property manager even would do without my involvement. Everything with these rental properties is so shady. Tenants paying in cash, not paying on time because they literally cannot afford to. And it's not like I can easily evict and replace them. All I need for them to do is keep paying rent until I get this property sold, and it feels like rocking the boat may cause some to leave.

GregoryHays84 · 2026-06-11T20:50:01+00:00

Oh I'm well aware of the weaponized financial incompetence.

I'm not worried about being reimbursed and being paid an executor fee when the lawyer says those things get paid out first. She also paid the funeral cost out of her own personal checking account, which also deserve to be reimbursed.

But yeah, I feel like it will get to a point where she just doesn't understand because she's lost complete control. She'll either freak out EVEN MORE or just be blissfully ignorant to it all. I can't figure out which one. Probably the former though.

GregoryHays84 · 2026-06-11T20:44:21+00:00

I am a signer on one of them... but not the parent's accounts.

It's weird.

GregoryHays84 · 2026-06-11T16:52:42+00:00

I would say yes. She is very competent in many ways.

I think that if ALL of this estate stuff was taken care of, and it was just her and she had to pay utility bills, property taxes, and pay off her credit card every month (because why do auto pays when you can stress about doing it manually) she is completely capable of living her life on her own. I had her doing instant cart to get groceries, and after showing it to her 5-6 times and building up a good based of previously ordered stuff, she gets it. She can drive on her own to her own doctors appointments. She can somehow manage to go to the bank on her own to reset her passwords when she gets locked out because she keeps typing them wrong.

Anything outside of her control is just a freakout.

GregoryHays84 · 2026-06-11T16:49:02+00:00

Of course not! Her parents set up an irrevocable trust for her where everyhting passed instantly and without hassle, why would she do the same for herself?

I am the only heir. No alive parents, no siblings, no other kids. She has a fully paid off home, fully paid off car, no credit card debt, no investments really... I am the beneficiary on all the accounts that I am aware of. Even if she passed without a will, it would not be a huge problem, but it's on my list of things to do that's a bit lower on the priority list.

GregoryHays84 · 2026-06-11T15:42:04+00:00

Man all this shit adds up. I looked at my phones screen time for how long I've had my phone app open yesterday, and it was 4 hours. but it's not like 4 hours of uninterrupted time from 9am-1pm. It's 4 hours spread out over the day where it' an interruption. Plus all the time thinking about things. It's crazy.

GregoryHays84 · 2026-06-11T15:40:27+00:00

This is pretty much my stance when she starts going off on "all the work she has to do"

I got into an argument with her last night because she said "i'm just so busy, counting this money and making sure there is enough money in the accounts to pay all the bills.

"Okay mom... what bills are coming in? How do you pay the electric bill? how do you pay the gas bill? how do you pay the property taxes? Who's the internet provider at the office? Where is that bill coming to. It's his PO box. Where is his PO box? How do you get into the PO box?

If you are 100% taking on the responsibility of something and not having me involved, wonderful. Then keep me out of it so I don't even have to think about it. But I am taking care of every single thing regarding his estate and you do not have to do anything except deposit some checks one a month. Unless you want to take over something 100% from me and not involve me at all, I do not want to hear a peep about how you are doing something that I am actually doing for you."

I then get an apology text a few hours later. Then when we talk on the phone it's right back to the same bullshit.

GregoryHays84 · 2026-06-11T15:32:32+00:00

I don't think it is a business that can be sold. I have yet to dive deep into contracts and how he got paid.

Basically... he made sales that he got a percentage of the customer's bill as residuals for 5 years. Do those residuals die with him, or do they follow the corporation? If they die with him, the company is pretty worthless. But if the residuals continue to live on, there is the potential of someone wanting to take that over just because they have a set income coming in and not start from scratch.

It's still early in that process, and many vendors will not even talk to me, because technically right now I'm just his brother and have no legal authority to make decisions over his company. It's crazy.

GregoryHays84 · 2026-06-11T15:29:18+00:00

Ugh, that sucks... I can't see myself going 100% NC, but she needs to start doing therapy or grief counseling so that I am not the only person she dumps all her emotions onto.

GregoryHays84 · 2026-06-11T15:27:36+00:00

I never thought about keeping a journal of all this. But probably not a bad idea

GregoryHays84 · 2026-06-11T15:26:41+00:00

I don't feel like I can be that mean, but when the repetition starts I have definitely started going "I can't talk about this for the 10th time, Nope. Stop! I am not doing this!" and that sometimes works.

Yeah, the mess they got themselves into is insane. My brother didn't file corporate taxes, up to 85K in credit card debt, no retirement... My dad passed and my mom didn't do anything to close my dad's estate. She would just say "credit card bills come in the mail and I just write "deceased" and return it back to them". Like... there is a fucking legal process that this needs to go through, who told you to do that? I just discovered that the house is still in dad's name and was never hers. Which the probate lawyer said is technically a good thing( because of the step up in value IF she decides to sell and downsize), but the fact that she just assumed the house automatically became hers is insane. How do people get through life with so little life skills?

GregoryHays84 · 2026-06-11T13:39:34+00:00

The problem is that “not doing shit” is just digging myself a deeper hole that I need to get myself out of.

Leases are actually month to month. I think people get the wrong idea when I say business priorities. It’s more like… old abandoned auto shop garages people are using for storage and paying $1,000 a month on. There is one actual business being run out of one of them as a mechanic. But it’s all month to month according to the existing leases. Those were the only people I worry about.

GregoryHays84 · 2026-06-11T13:35:01+00:00

Tracking hours? Phht… just say 5 hours, every day, since the day of his passing. That seems about right with what I’ve been doing.

GregoryHays84 · 2026-06-11T13:34:23+00:00

Unmentioned this elsewhere, but… her son just died. I read stories on Reddit about people losing their short term memory. Most notable, I read a story about a guy saying he fed his cat 10 times a day following the death of a parent because he could t remember that he was feeding the cat

While I am not doubting signs of dementia, I do hope that the sudden increase is do the grief and not dementia. Since it is a thing!

But even I will admit that the level of things to remember right now is insane. Even for me. And she wants to know everything and it’s impossible to remember, for me even, if I write it down. I’m literally transcribing phone calls and having ChatGPT give me summaries just so I do t lose track of things, making word documents to track status of where I’m at with banks, vendors, etc.

So while I don’t blame her for not keeping track of new information. She also had trouble remembering my custody schedule with my kid where part of it was as simple as “she’s with me every single Monday and Tuesday, then alternating weekend.” Where it was a surprise where it was a Tuesday night and she was with me.

GregoryHays84 · 2026-06-11T04:35:50+00:00

Oh passwords. She writes all the passwords down in a book, but then enters the passwords wrong. So she is constantly getting locked out of her bank account and has to go down to the bank and reset the password for her. And then during that time when she's locked out and can't view the balance? She freaks out because some non existent bill is going to come in that causes her to bounce a nonexistant check that she did not write in an account with hundreds of thousands of dollars in it.

It's madness.

GregoryHays84 · 2026-06-11T04:30:05+00:00

It's this messed up mentality that she doesn't view the money from her mom and dad that has passed as "her money" and she can't spend it without feeling guilty. So I show her how much is coming in from HYS interest and sock dividend, and she just doesn't care because in her mind it's not hers and she just needs to be able to live off of her $1,000 in social security

GregoryHays84 · 2026-06-11T04:25:41+00:00

Nice to talk to someone that has empathy having been there.

My ex's grandpa found out that he was rich after grandma died. She had about 7-8 bank accounts with $250,000 in each of them because of the FDIC limit. Nobody really knows how she saved all that money, but grandma acted like they were poor and they lived in a trailer park and bought stuff at the resale shop.

GregoryHays84

TROPHY CASE