{"id":80152,"date":"2025-08-20T12:43:07","date_gmt":"2025-08-20T12:43:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/80152\/"},"modified":"2025-08-20T12:43:07","modified_gmt":"2025-08-20T12:43:07","slug":"what-this-retired-teacher-did-with-500000-and-cabins-inherited-from-her-mother","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/80152\/","title":{"rendered":"What this retired teacher did with $500,000 and cabins inherited from her mother\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

Illustration by Photo illustration by The Globe and Mail. Source images: Getty Imges<\/p>\n

The Beneficiary: West Coaster \u201cHelen\u201d is a 64-year-old newly retired teacher who has a complicated relationship with her family. \u201cMy sister was the favourite child of my mother, who didn\u2019t seem to like me at all,\u201d she says. Part of their problems stems from her mother\u2019s anger at Helen\u2019s marriage. \u201cMy husband is younger than me and his ex was younger than him, so my stepchildren are still teenagers,\u201d she says. Her sister, who was also their mom\u2019s caretaker and executor with power of attorney, has a son whom Helen says grandma considered her only grandchild.<\/p>\n

The Inheritance: When her mother recently passed, well into her nineties, Helen had minimal expectations for any money and, for all the reasons above, never asked. \u201cMom was a Depression-era baby, a bit of a hoarder who hung onto things forever, including money,\u201d she says. \u201cI thought maybe she\u2019d give me a little bit, maybe $50,000 or something. But not nearly $500,000, which is what I got.\u201d <\/p>\n

If Helen seems ambivalent about her money, it\u2019s because she is. \u201cIt felt weird to get this much money from her at this time in my life after everything that happened,\u201d says Helen. <\/p>\n

After digging deeper, it turned out mom had a new will that bequeathed far more to her other daughter, including a multimillion-dollar urban home plus all its contents. In that context, Helen\u2019s inheritance takes on a new meaning. \u201cI almost think the money is like a bribe not to sue my sister,\u201d she says. <\/p>\n

Complicating things further, Helen and her sister are now reluctant co-owners of a pair of derelict cabin properties that need a ton of love and care that Helen isn\u2019t willing to give. \u201cI just want to sell and walk away,\u201d she says. \u201cMy sister really wants to keep them for her son but can\u2019t afford to maintain them and pay property tax.\u201d Helen now has the liquid cash to help out but isn\u2019t particularly inclined to give away her already far smaller share of the pot. <\/p>\n

What she did with it: First, Helen hired a lawyer, who advised her against legal action. \u201cThey said I\u2019d got enough money, and trials are long and expensive and I might not win anyhow, so suing didn\u2019t make much sense,\u201d says Helen. The lawyer\u2019s advice was actually a relief, as Helen didn\u2019t want to make an already difficult situation worse. <\/p>\n

She\u2019s quick to acknowledge two sides to every story: \u201cMy sister did take care of my mother more than I could, and I\u2019m grateful for that,\u201d says Helen, who paid her half of the cabins\u2019 tax bill this year as a gesture of goodwill. She\u2019s also offered to help clean and sort the house (so far, no response). <\/p>\n

Could reconciliation have been her mother\u2019s plan all along? \u201cIf Mom gave me this money in hopes of bringing me and my sister together, it didn\u2019t work. I worry this is probably the end of our relationship.\u201d <\/p>\n

No matter how many problems her inheritance has sparked, Helen\u2019s trying to enjoy it the best way she can. \u201cI took my family on a cruise to Alaska, and I bought a new car,\u201d says Helen, though she couldn\u2019t bring herself to tell her sister about either. The rest has been put away in GICs for her stepsons, provided they do some research and do something wise when the GICs mature. In the meantime, nobody wants to talk about the money. \u201cMy nearest and dearest are unsettled by it. It\u2019s such an uncomfortable discussion now.\u201d <\/p>\n

What she learned: If Helen could go back in time and make her mother\u2019s decisions, she\u2019d have much preferred to own one of the two cabin properties rather than be a joint owner of both. The money also would have been far more useful earlier in her life. Being a joint executor with her sister and sharing executor duties would likely have helped them avoid this sticky situation altogether. <\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know, because we never talked about it, but I think my mother thought that any money she gave to me was ultimately going \u2018out\u2019 of the family,\u201d says Helen. In that case, suggests Helen, her mom might have skipped all ambiguity and bequeathed everything directly to her grandson. \u201cIt could go into a trust and help set him up for a better future.\u201d <\/p>\n

Some details may be changed to protect the privacy of the person profiled. We want to thank them for sharing their story. 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: Illustration by Photo illustration by The Globe and Mail. Source images: Getty Imges…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":80153,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[84,4176,4174,4175,11749,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-80152","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-personal-finance","11":"tag-personalfinance","12":"tag-r-fp","13":"tag-uk","14":"tag-united-kingdom","15":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80152","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=80152"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80152\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/80153"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=80152"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=80152"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=80152"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}