Make or Amend your Will

Nothing to do with COL but I got ripped off big style by a family member some years ago after the death of a mutual Aunt who was childless and unmarried. We were both in the will for an equal amount but the other family member was the named executor because was closer on hand geographically.

A few months later I got a cheque written out for an exact sum of money with no odd pounds or pence with a letter saying that was my share and there were no accounts supplied or anything and given I had no reason to believe that family member was dishonest at all I just banked it and thought that's very nice. I did think at the time that I should have had accounts and that my proportion of the estate could not have come to an exact round figure like that and also that it couldn't have all been sorted and administered in such a short period of weeks. Not wanting to cause trouble in the family I just let it go but it was only a couple of years later when I was speaking to another family member that I found out how much the deceased had left and how I had basically been conned big time and that the executor had been on a big spending spree and bought an expensive new car etc. I had basically been conned big time.

Obviously I have never had any further contact with that person and it is telling that they have never contacted me and any subsequent communications I attempted went unanswered. But it just proves the point that in terms of family you can trust nobody when money is concerned. I suppose luckily for them I am not a litigious sort of person but several people have said to me over the past few years that I should have got on to a solicitor about it. It was clear that he thought that by sending me a cheque for a few thousand I would be happy and not realise that my Aunt was actually worth quite a lot when she died on account of a house she still owned when she went into a nursing home that was subsequently sold. It is true that I had only seen my aunt about 2 or 3 times in the previous 10 years because she lived in a different part of the country to me and so I did not know about her affairs but nevertheless I found out she had written her will out such that both of her nephews got an equal share and I found out that I got massively less than my share and was ripped off for an estimated 100 grand.

My conclusion is that the early cheque for an exact round sum of a few thousand I received was a bit of a tester to find out if I knew that she still owned a house and when I didn't respond immediately and say what about the house I think he then went on to put it on the market and sell it and kept the full proceeds.