{"id":256208,"date":"2026-01-21T13:57:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-21T13:57:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/256208\/"},"modified":"2026-01-21T13:57:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-21T13:57:07","slug":"waiting-for-1-million-what-this-55-year-old-project-manager-learned-from-getting-stuck-in-inheritance-limbo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/256208\/","title":{"rendered":"Waiting for $1-million: What this 55-year-old project manager learned from getting stuck in inheritance limbo"},"content":{"rendered":"

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

The Beneficiary: \u201cCharlotte\u201d is a 55-year-old divorced, single mom of two teenagers who lives on the West Coast and loves her job as a project manager. Her beloved father, who\u2019d long retired and moved with Charlotte\u2019s equally-beloved stepmother from Canada to their second home in Ireland, became a widower in 2018 and himself passed at the beginning of the pandemic. Charlotte\u2019s father didn\u2019t either make her or her brother the executor of his will, in hopes of sparing them any extra hassle. Unfortunately, it didn\u2019t work.<\/p>\n

The Inheritance: With good relationships enjoyed between all parties, Charlotte\u2019s inheritance \u2013 her half of her father\u2019s estate, which had a total value of about $2-million \u2013 sounded easy and straightforward. But following a lacklustre Zoom funeral, details revealed the estate to be much more complicated. \u201cHe had financial accounts and assets in Canada and Ireland, a Canadian lawyer, accountant and financial adviser, an Irish accountant, a pair of Canadian executors and a pair of Irish executors,\u201d Charlotte said. <\/p>\n

Nobody on either side of the pond knew where or how to start \u2013 beginning with the death certificate. Here, the luck of the Irish delivered a terribly-timed cyber attack on the Irish Institute of Public Health. \u201cWe couldn\u2019t get a death certificate for eight months,\u201d Charlotte said. Probate took nine more months. <\/p>\n

Only then could her father\u2019s house be sorted, packed up and sold \u2013 from the other side of the world. \u201cNeither my brother or I could pack up for two months and just leave, obviously,\u201d said Charlotte, who\u2019s eternally grateful for extended family in Ireland who stepped up to help out. There was an Irish real estate agent and tax to be paid, naturally, at which point Charlotte finally received a cheque \u2026 for the Irish half. <\/p>\n

How a retired accountant spent his frugal father\u2019s inheritance meaningfully<\/a><\/p>\n

They inherited $900,000 from their dad. Here\u2019s how two siblings split it with a brother who\u2019s bad with money<\/a><\/p>\n

On this side of the pond, Charlotte next waited patiently for a certificate of clearance \u2013 proving all taxes, interest and anything owed has been paid \u2013 from the Canadian Revenue Agency, which was filed incorrectly by the Irish. \u201cCanadian assets controlled by an Irish estate further delayed filing taxes on both sides,\u201d Charlotte said, \u201cand our government doesn\u2019t have a lot of personnel who are literate in two countries\u2019 laws, so this took another year.\u201d And just when the certificate was mailed, another surprise: the Canada Post mail strike slowed its arrival yet again. \u201cAs a project manager, the whole experience was infuriating.\u201d <\/p>\n

What she learned: As a beneficiary, but not an executor, Charlotte spent four-and-a-half long years in frustrating limbo. \u201cDad didn\u2019t want to burden us with the responsibility of being executors, but it was far more difficult to not be executors. It didn\u2019t feel ethical to get too involved, so I asked questions every few months but basically I was waiting \u2026 and waiting \u2026 and waiting,\u201d said Charlotte, who vowed never to put her kids in a similar situation. \u201cMy kids aren\u2019t even of age yet but they already know they\u2019re going to be my executors and also I\u2019m deliberately setting up my estate to make things as easy as possible for them.\u201d <\/p>\n

Among the information her children\/executors have, whether they want it or not: The location of her will, names and contact information for my bank and financial institution, logins and passwords for e-mail and bank accounts as necessary. \u201cWe talk about it so often now that it\u2019s not a morbid conversation any more. It\u2019s nothing to be weird or sad about.\u201d <\/p>\n

What she did with it: Once Charlotte finally received the last of her inheritance, before she did anything else and since Ireland doesn\u2019t automatically pay executors like Canada does, she gifted the Irish executors the equivalent of what the Canadians received for all their hard work. Next, she paid off her car loan and her home mortgage. Each of Charlotte and her two children chose a charity to donate to in her father\u2019s memory. Then she gifted herself \u201c1 per cent to play with however she wants.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t want or need a lot of stuff,\u201d she explains, \u201cbut I\u2019ll spend to make memories.\u201d Since both kids\u2019 RESPs are already fully-funded and they\u2019ll be off to school soon enough, Charlotte decided to let each child (and her mother) choose their dream vacation. Three bucket-list trips later, Charlotte\u2019s now seriously contemplating retirement to travel even more\u2013a full decade before the conventional 65. \u201cThis inheritance was never my retirement plan, but it means I can implement my plan much earlier\u2026if I want to.\u201d For now, she loves her job enough to stay put for now, but pending the go-ahead from her financial adviser, Charlotte\u2019s Freedom 55 may be impossible to resist. <\/p>\n

Some details may be changed to protect the privacy of the person profiled. Have you recently received an inheritance and would like to participate in Inherited? Send us an e-mail<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Open this photo in gallery: The Beneficiary: \u201cCharlotte\u201d is a 55-year-old divorced, single mom of two teenagers who…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":256209,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[72,176,61,60,174,175,4925],"class_list":{"0":"post-256208","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-personal-finance","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-finance","10":"tag-ie","11":"tag-ireland","12":"tag-personal-finance","13":"tag-personalfinance","14":"tag-r-fp"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256208","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=256208"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256208\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/256209"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=256208"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=256208"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=256208"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}