Making the wrong decisions can be costly

They say truth is stranger than fiction, and in my family, that's true. My mother did not leave her house to anyone when she died in 2003. Her home became heir property to be split between my younger brother, me, and the three children of my middle brother, who had died in 1992. 

These children were minors, and their mother had said she would get them to sign their share over to my grandmother after they all turned 18, but she did not. I thought about pushing my grandmother to remind my sister-in-law of her promise, but I never did. This was the first decision that made everything worse. 

My grandmother died seven years after my mom. Immediately, one of my nieces began saying she wanted her inheritance. Her siblings, who were twins, said they did not desire anything.

My husband and I had been paying the taxes and paid off the last four years on the mortgage because my mother allowed her homeowners' insurance to lapse. We did this to keep my grandmother in the home she had lived in for twenty years. Looking back, I wish I had made a different decision.

My mom probably never thought her mother would outlive her, but she had. My aunt (my father's sister) told me that when her parents' home was sold, a judge said the $5,000 she put into repairs was considered as helping the family, and she did not get it back.

She told me that we would not recoup the money we paid on the mortgage and taxes, and advised me not to put my money into the house for repairs because I would not get it back when it was sold.

The water heater began leaking, so we turned it off when no one was using the water. The leak seemed slow and harmless, but my decision to listen to my aunt was going to cost us a lot.

I did not purchase a new water heater, and one day the lights in the house did not turn on. I knew immediately that the leaking water had shorted out the ground wire.

We did not have the money for an electrician, which I was told would cost aroud $2,000. To replace the water heater would have only been about $200.00. I did not desire to spend more of my money only to not get it back and watch my niece, who never put a dime in the house, receive an equal share of the proceeds from selling the home.

As we waited for a buyer, we had to clean the house out during daylight. One day, I went into the kitchen, and as I walked near the sink, the floor gave way, and I fell into the crawl space. The leaking water had rotted the floorboards.

I was able to put my hands out on the floor in time and pull myself up before I fell all the way down. I cried because my decision to save a few hundred dollars made everything worse. It was now going to cost thousands and decrease the money we got for the house.

I was later told I could have purchased a used water heater for about $75.00. If I had done that, the electricity would not have gone out, and I would not have fallen through the floor.

The house was finally sold for practically nothing, and my brother and I never saw a dime. His share went to the unpaid court costs and fines that he had accumulated over the years. My paid share paid medical bills that I thought had been paid years earlier.

Our niece, who never contributed financially, received $4,000. The money that was spent on taxes and the final mortgage payments was just gone. All because I did not tell my grandmother to make sure my sister-in-law kept her word, and I decided not to replace the water heater. My decision made the situation more complicated.

Had the house been sold before the repairs were needed, there would have been more money, and it would have been split between my brother and me. After the fines and medical bills, we would have had some cash, which would have been better than nothing. This is my saga of how everything was made worse because of my decisions.