As the only adult child living nearby, I am the one who has cared for our parents as they have grown older. The past several years have been rough. Dad died in February and mom has been in assisted living since December. Maintaining their home as well as my own has been exhausting.
While I am glad that the discussion about selling the house has been started, I dread trying to figure out what to do with everything. The house is loaded with furniture including a few really nice family pieces, 4 china cabinets full of china and crystal sets, books, tools, etc. Lots of collectibles with a fair amount of hoarding as well. There’s a great deal of stuff that none of us will want but there are also some things that we will all want. With Covid, it will be harder for my siblings to get here. They both still work full time as do I.
Can anyone offer tips or strategies to prevent damage to sibling relationships?
Tell each of them to come in a pickup truck.
Set FIRM deadlines for getting their items and for the estate sale, else this process will NEVER END.
Be prepared for at least one person to get upset over something ridiculous. (a friend of mine tells of a HUGE fight among his aunts over an old butter churn)
I had a relative die recently. Her grandkids were her only heirs. NONE of them wanted to speak up and say "I want X or Y." It was like pulling teeth to get any of them to even show up at her house to pick up anything (she didn't really have anything valuable like antiques, crystal or silverware). Then, after X and Y were given to another grandchild, all helllll broke loose!
Meanwhile, there were numerous heirloom quality things she had sewn and crocheted that none of her grandchildren wanted. There were also boxes of old pictures from when she was a child. I delivered those items to her siblings and they were ECSTATIC.
The first one is don't assume anything. For decades, my DH lived with guilt and apprehension that, when the time came, he and his sibling would be fighting over a particular item from the family home. The sibling relationship was already strained and it certainly seemed plausible that this could happen. It was a good-quality item handcrafted by another relative, but I didn't think it was worth the hard feelings and I planned on advising DH to just let sibling have the item and get on with life. Well... sibling didn't want it. Period. No strings attached. All that time, worry, emotional energy, discussion and the sibling didn't bat an eye at DH taking the item. That said, there were a few other rather oddball things that sib DID want badly and we would never have predicted that anyone would want those things.
The next thing was that, with your siblings living further away, please don't get involved with storing the items/things for them. It sounds simple enough to hang onto something for someone or to arrange for paid storage, but I've seen it lead to very hurtful misunderstandings as to how long you agreed to store it, what was to be stored, who's paying the storage fee (if there is one) and also how and when the stored items would get delivered to their respective homes. And, there are also those folks who want something stored or "set aside" for them and they never ask about it again - let alone come and get it. So how long do you keep it for them? My advice is make it a clean break and stay out of the middle.
It's worth going through your old datebooks and putting all that time and mileage into an Excel spreadsheet and keep track going forward. You are not being an a$$hole for taking an inventory of how much caregiving cost you during 12 years. You and your husband may be surprised by the number.
Ask the lawyer if you can take a lump sum from the sale of the home and/or its contents. That way, you are compensated and, in the future, her estate can be divided evenly.
Each person was always free to trade with another for an item that they had missed claiming, but there were to be no arguments, since each could have claimed it when they had the chance. At the end of the process they put their own items in a special place and invited my grandmother's best friends to come in and look at what was left. If someone wanted a certain china pattern because they remembered the wonderful meals my grandmother served on it, they were welcome to it. Some very small, but especially nice, items were arranged on the dining room table and all friends who came to the house were invited to select a piece that would remind them of my grandmother. Anything that was left was given to charity.
I stood in for my father and selected items for him, since he couldn't be there, so I saw the process work from start to finish. Four siblings (plus me) from all over the country, over five days, going through a fully-furnished three-story house, yet there was not a single argument or even a cross word! Each item chosen evoked fond memories, people were telling funny and poignant stories, and what could easily have been a really terrible experience was actually made enjoyable and a tribute to my grandmother's long and eventful life.
one thing I have learned in life is families will get bitchy and gossip sometimes, if anyone really complains I would just tell them this needs to be done now because mom needs the money for her care.
Put slips of paper with numbers in a hat. If you are three siblings, then the numbers 1-3 go in the hat. Draw a number, that is your order to pick for the first 3 rounds. Then all the numbers go back into the hat and repeat.
This does mean everyone would have to be there, but with Skype, Zoom, Whats Ap, Facebook Messenger, it can be done remotely. They would each have to have a proxy, but it would be best if everyone could be on site, wear masks, have lots of hand sanitizer and work through it.
Before you start have a plan for the things no one wants. Also do not accept the responsibility of moving, storing or otherwise handling any of your siblings things. That can cause more unrest than the divvying up. I know of three people who are storing bulky furniture from estates for people who live out of town. One person is going on 4 years and really wants their storage space back. Another stopped receiving cheques to cover the rental fee at the storage company.
If some one has their heart set on Granny's China, or Dad's old tool box, and no one else cares, it is easiest to deal with those things first. But is someone is saying she wants all the crystal and china cabinets, then no, she can choose one set from one cabinet, and when her turn comes around, she can choose more.
Be ready for some unexpected bad acts. If someone in the “family circle” decides he or she is “entitled”, there’s really no way to protect your mother’s rights from it.