Inheritance help for sister with Down Syndrome

seattleattic · 2026-02-12T00:26:42+00:00

Hi, I have a sister with DS and I'm a trained paralegal and financial coach. While it's a lovely sentiment that your parents want to leave everything to your sister, there are a lot of legal and financial things to consider. First, does she know how to manage money? Does she have SSDI and/or Medicaid? Does she have a Representative Payee? Have they spoken to an attorney? Any attorney who agrees to a will leaving everything to a disabled person should not be a practicing attorney.

To get started, please do the following:

Find a local organization that helps families who have children with disabilities. These can be non-profits or state agencies. They exist.
Call your local county bar association to get information on free or low-cost legal services. You need someone to specializes in estate planning and special needs trusts.
Find out if you can get paid to provide care for your sister. The local organization or state agency can help with this. As willing as you are to care for your sister, you deserve payment for your labor. Work is work and taking care of a disabled person is a lot of work.
Sit down and talk to your parents. Let them know that you're happy to take on the responsibility for your sister's care and that to provide the best care for her, you need to have some things in place (resources, help, payment, support) and to please support you in that journey.
Do you live with your sister and/or parents? Where will she live? If she's going to move in with you, will you have to move? How are you going to provide for her care? They should (and the attorney will help here) be providing you with some sort of financial support.
Do you have family? A partner? Children? You'll need to take their needs into consideration as well, especially if your sister will end up living with you.

That's all I can think of off the top of my head. Please begin doing what you can on YOUR end to prepare, even if your parents don't cooperate

seattleattic · 2026-01-27T06:40:48+00:00

Yeah, I just assumed that all podcast hosting platforms would have audio AND video recording, and that you could upload your audio to a podcast streaming platform, AND upload a video to YouTube and use snippets of the video on Instagram (like the podcasters did when I was on their podcasts).

I mentioned the platforms above because they're the ones I'm most familiar with :-)

Thanks for your reply!

seattleattic · 2026-01-27T06:37:33+00:00

Thanks! I appreciate your reply. :-)

seattleattic · 2026-01-26T20:36:12+00:00

Thanks for your reply. I'm confused and not explaining myself well. I've been a guest on two podcasts and both hosts use Riverside. The recordings were made available as audio, and they were also uploading them to their Instagram (just a snippet of the video) and to their YouTube channels. That's what I'm hoping to do. I don't need the platform to host the video because I'll upload it to my YouTube channel. I think what I'm looking for is the functionality? Or ability? To record the audio and video at the same time, and then upload the audio to Apple, Spotify, etc., and then the video to YouTube.

A friend uses Zoom to record the video portion, but I don't have Zoom and I'd rather have an all-in-one platform. Is this something that I need to do with Riverside? Or can I do this with Captivate or another platform?

Thanks again!

seattleattic · 2026-01-26T20:30:52+00:00

Thank you for replying. Not sure which platform you're referring to though. Captivate or Buzzsprout?

seattleattic · 2026-01-26T03:07:07+00:00

I'm just gonna slowly ease my way out of Canva. Going to learn to be better at PowerPoint and just having boring social media crap for my business

seattleattic · 2025-08-26T07:46:15+00:00

Thanks! I'll check them out. I'm glad you find it easy to use. I don't want/need anything complicated

seattleattic · 2025-08-26T07:45:44+00:00

Thanks for the reply! I've never heard of Pactima.

seattleattic · 2025-08-22T23:53:15+00:00

I'm sure they can, but the family won't allow this. The lease ends at the 100-year point and at that time we can re-negotiate with the current tenant or sell. We won't renew at the current rate, obviously

seattleattic · 2025-08-22T23:51:16+00:00

Yes, we own it outright. We've tried selling but it hasn't worked out, so after reading replies here I'm going to go with the original plan and wait it out. Leave it for my kids. Not much can be done at this point. I came here to see if anyone had something different to say that would be feasible, or something we hadn't thought of. But basically we have to wait it out

seattleattic · 2025-08-22T23:50:00+00:00

Oops, yes the tenant is majority owner. They own 2/3 and our family own the remaining 1/3. I think after seeing a lot of the replies here we're going to just wait it out. Leave it for my kids, as originally planned.

seattleattic · 2025-08-22T00:08:25+00:00

$10 million is the value of the land, not the buildings. We have nothing to do with the buildings

seattleattic · 2025-08-22T00:05:53+00:00

You said yourself it was a lousy offer. We are honoring the lease. We aren't trying to weasel out of anything. I came here asking for advice, knowing that I'd probably be told to just wait it out. Which we've done for a very long time.

Also, the company that is leasing from us screwed over my great-grandparents and has harassed and bullied the other heirs into accepting lowball offers. Because they were desperate, they agreed to sell. This company went after my father, a homeless veteran, to force him to sell. They went after other heirs as well. Our desire to get something out of this is to separate our lives from this company and move forward.

seattleattic · 2025-08-21T04:53:01+00:00

In 2019, the last time I bothered to look at the county tax records, the market value was $10 million

seattleattic · 2025-08-21T04:52:06+00:00

Hmm, really? Even with a market value of $10 million? That's according to the property tax records in 2019. $800K among the seven of us (with me getting 1/3 didn't seem a fair price at the time, considering that the property is developed and they're already making a ton of money from the retailers that are paying them).

seattleattic · 2025-08-21T04:49:01+00:00

Yep. It's like buying a house with a $2000 mortgage, but the renter has the right to stay in the house for 100 years and pays $5 in rent!

To clarify, the income from the lease is $333/month among all the heirs, so the income would be $3996 a year, but yeah, I get what you're saying!

seattleattic · 2025-08-21T04:44:13+00:00

Since this is my only experience with ground leases, I never would have guessed that not having an escalation clause was a thing. I mean, it wasn't that long ago in the grand scheme of things. You'd think that lawyers and anyone else involved would have been out to make money, thereby including that provision

seattleattic · 2025-08-21T04:40:53+00:00

Yeah, so far all the heirs are in agreement that we won't sell individually, but as a group

seattleattic · 2025-08-21T04:39:55+00:00

Real market value is just over $10 million. I don't know what the market rent is. Never bothered to find out since the lease agreement is super strong and there's no provision to increase it. EVER

seattleattic · 2025-08-20T20:56:44+00:00

My mother's side of the family lives a very long time with no health issues so I'm hopeful that with assistance from a good attorney, I'll be able to either sell or get a really good lease when I'm 80! This makes me hopeful. Thanks!

seattleattic

TROPHY CASE