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I Inherited a House: 5 Ugly Financial Truths Nobody Tells You About
By Nicole Spector,
1 day ago
stocknshares / Getty Images/iStockphoto
In 2022, my amazing, hilarious and real-life-fairy of an aunt died. Her death was sudden (a stroke) and she was only 61. When I found out she died, I was crushed. All I could think about was the things I didn’t get to tell her and the experiences we’d never share, including her getting to meet the child I was then pregnant with.
A week or so after she died, I received some unusual mail. Her estate plan, replete with a will and trust . She left me her house, a three-bedroom in Los Angeles, where the average home price for a house is currently $972,829 .
Learning of this inheritance was shocking. My husband and I (who had always been renters due to financial constraints) sat on our bed, gobsmacked, going through the documents over and over. Did we miss something? Was this really happening? There felt to be something new and sharp in my grief: the guilt of feeling happy that I’d received a million-dollar gift as the result of a loved one dying.
Later that week I met with an estate lawyer to get a better grasp of the situation, which, I learned, was more complex than I’d ever imagined.
It’s been nearly three years since that day. Here’s what’s happened since then — and a look at the five ugly financial truths that have come to light.
In California, you have 120 days from the day a will goes into probate to contest it. On day 119, a former friend of my aunt — let’s call her Gladys — who’d been named the heir of the house in a previous version of the will but was later removed, filed a contest. She argued that my aunt was in too poor a mental state to revise the will and name me as the heir.
My aunt had revised the will over two years before her death and was cognitively sound at the time, but Gladys insisted that my aunt was incapacitated after experiencing mental health troubles that occurred after the final version of the will was executed.
The Legal Bills Landed Me Tens of Thousands in Debt
I would now have to battle Gladys in court to keep my inheritance. My lawyer was confident that Gladys didn’t have a chance. Even my aunt’s lawyer, who oversaw her estate planning, agreed that there was no way my aunt wasn’t in a sound enough state of mind to execute her final wishes.
This would be a slam dunk, right?
Even had it been a slam dunk (which, as I will explain, it wasn’t), it would be an expensive legal fight. Unless I wanted to represent myself, which I didn’t feel confident doing (Gladys had a lawyer), I would have to retain my counsel. I did that. The retainer fee alone was thousands of dollars.
And the legal fees didn’t end there. The judge overseeing the case kept adding more hearing dates to go over evidence, which meant multiple meetings with lawyers, who also had to attend the in-person hearings (think $5k a day).
The hearings went on for two years. Every few months, there would be another hearing and another round of jaw-dropping legal bills. I paid very little of my balance and not often. The interest piled up.
I Had To Settle — and Pay Up
You can spend years going to court and fighting someone for an inheritance. Eventually, it’ll go to trial.
Trials can be long and almost always exorbitantly expensive. Additionally, as my lawyer said, you can get a “bad judge.” In my case, that would mean a judge who sided wholly with Gladys, for whatever reason, leaving me with nothing and Gladys with everything.
Mediation — where the two opposing parties come together to work out a settlement — was the best option in my situation. Gladys and her ambulance-chasing legal team agreed. We spent 10 incredibly expensive and emotionally draining hours in separate rooms with our respective lawyers going over, essentially, what it would take to make Gladys go away.
As the day swept into the night, it became clear that Gladys wasn’t walking away without a boatload of money. We’re talking tens of thousands of dollars. In cash. To be wired to Gladys ASAP. It was, in my counsel’s opinion, the best-case scenario…in a worst-case situation.
I agreed to pay the money and wiped out my entire retirement savings.
There Are Years of Back-Owed Property Taxes and the Risk of Foreclosure
Fortunately, my aunt’s home doesn’t have a mortgage. So I don’t have to worry about those payments. But the house is hardly in the clear. Once I finally got the deed, I learned that my aunt hadn’t paid property taxes in years. The house was at the risk of foreclosure. I would have to come up with $20,000 immediately to salvage it.
There went my and my husband’s emergency savings.
The House Needs Extreme Repairs
Last month I finally got the keys to my aunt’s house, effectively now my house. The first visit was tough. Not only was it emotionally charged, but it was, frankly, sort of scary. The house has been dormant since my aunt passed. There is no electricity. I wandered through cobwebs by the light of my phone and held my breath amid the skittering sounds of mice. Or rats.
Though I have yet to hire an exterminator or contractor to check out the place, it’s overwhelmingly apparent that the house needs major work. I don’t know how much it’ll cost, but I have more than a hunch that it will be too much.
I Want To Keep the House but May Have To Sell It
My aunt loved her house and she loved me. I want to keep the house and nurture my family there the way she nurtured me throughout my life. I want to keep her bird feeders in the trees and her books on the shelves.
I’m still working out the best possible plan with my husband and lawyer. Maybe I can rent the house out — but I would still have to make the repairs. Maybe, I will sell the house as is, and finally pay my lawyer in full.
It’s all still up in the air — much like it when this all began. And the tears still flow.
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