Thanks for the replies.
No, I am not looking for legal advice. Just sane opinions from honest people who are outside of the situation.
Sorry about using “War and Peace” mode - I’m sure there’s a quicker way but it didn’t come to me.
It all began 16 years ago. My grandmother, who is now 103, had remarried in her early 80’s, and had just become a widow again. Because she was alone and not comfortable with that, it was decided that my mother would look for a house that could accomodate the three of us: my grandmother, my mother and me.
We found a very nice house (S Florida) on a quiet oak-lined dead end street that had plenty of space and privacy for us all. It even had a quasi-guest house in back for me. It was much more expensive than the out-in-the-boonies retirement community that my grandmother had come from, but we discussed the finances and agreed that her contribution was to be $1200 per month. Since her income was approx $2000 per month, that was not a hardship for her.
She also gave my mother $50,000 for a down payment. However the house was a serious fixer-upper and we had the interior and exterior painted, purchased a new roof, new carpet, a handicapped toilet, and had two small bedrooms converted into one huge one so that my grandmother would have a wonderful private space.
My grandmother also made a promise to my mother that she would leave her everything she had in exchange for Mom taking care of her until the end. That was our working agreement.
OK, so far so good. My mother was a very kind and generous person by nature, (as am I) and was always doing things to make my grandmother’s life more pleasant. She took her to thrift shops once or twice a week, out to lunch or dinner often, a cruise every so often, and even paid for many dinner theatre outings which my grandmother greatly enjoyed. And of course, many gifts.
Now the problems began almost immediately. My grandmother’s constant theme was: “I’m paying too much.”, “I’m not getting enough for my money.”, or “YOU DIDN’T NEED A POOL!” (It’s a very small one) She turned out to be a very nasty and demanding person who expected us to kiss her feet, almost literally. Her basic attitude from the start was that if she did not get her way on everything, no matter how petty, she would punish my mother by threatening to disinherit her. This was not stated directly but was made clear nonetheless, as you will see.
Another key way that she would punish my mother was to stop talking to her altogether and basically sequester herself in her room. This effectively cast me in the position of go-between, and also required me to serve her meals in her room, and to listen to her hypocritical “I’m praying for Jesus to take me” claims. These “freezout” periods would last up to 3 months at a time, usually ending if there was a holiday coming up.
Besides that, my grandmother did not wish to be left alone in the house, and my mother - who had spent her career as a hotel manager and had an active life - was not allowed to have any kind of outside life. My mother’s way of coping was to believe that “This won’t last forever.”
During this time, my mother was working as a hotel manager, even into her late 60’s. That is a very tough thing to do, especially in a smaller hotel with no budget for assistant managers or department heads of any kind, and a job like that usually requires long hours that would burn out a younger person. Her secret of success was that I worked for her as an unofficial assistant for a nominal rate of pay, and filled in for all the low-paid derelicts who were incompetent, quit with no notice, etc. I was glad to do this, since it was temporary and helped my mother very much. So, with her job reduced to a survivable schedule, my mother could have kept going even further, but at my grandmother’s “Don’t worry, I’ll take care of you.” urging, she retired.
That promise was empty, of course, and at the next disagreement over nothing, my grandmother decided to leave us altogether. No concern for the financial hardship this would cause for my mother. No recognition of her promise, “I’ll take care of you.” Anyway, using her standard trickery she arranged to go back to her home state to “visit” her sister. Her sister was shocked when my grandmother showed up with all her belongings to move in permanently. That sister was able to tolerate my grandmother for about 3 months before transferring her successfully to another sister. That sister put up with my grandmother for 3 months also, until I got a phone call, “Do you still have my room available?” Of course, an honest person would have had the decency to talk to my mother directly, to apologize for the trouble she had caused.
So she came back, and resumed life as it had been.
Well, this wretched walking-on-eggshells way of liveng lasted for about eleven years, ending when my mother died from lung cancer. My grandmother had brought so much constant petty misery into our lives -even during my mother’s sickness - that at one point on her deathbed my suffering mother cried out, “I HATE HER, and I don’t care if she hears me.”