March 2026 Vortex of Power

I was enjoying my first duty-free weekend, when my family upended it again. Welcome to my life.

I am the holder of around ten boxes of my parents' paperwork related to everything from bank statements to tax statements to medical bills, to calendars, to everything related to a piece of property we're trying to sell. In a different state, my sister is dealing with our mom's estate and the real estate deal. This piece of property was my dad's life work. It belonged to my mom, had an unbreakable 75-year lease, and they intended for it to continue to pass down through the family after my mom died.

Out of the blue comes an offer. At this point we realize that there are two "outstanding" loans. I have all of the documents to prove that they've been paid off. My parents never filed the paperwork to make it official. Not sure why. They tried to get the official documents from the lenders, as my dad's correspondence shows, but he couldn't get it. In one case he had been paying the people who had the promissory note, and finally paid it off. The bank confirmed this, but the individuals who held the note did not provide the promissory note to my dad. Similar story with the other loan. Paid off, and didn't get the note.

I have been looking through the documents for weeks. And spending time at work to make pdfs. Last week I was so beyond frustrated with this whole situation, and I was asked to look again. I made a weekend of it, researching and collecting and then spending five hours scanning. I found a document that my mom scribbled on, giving the order of the lenders over a 20-year loan. None of the bank documents listed the address of the property, so if she hadn't jotted it down I would not have understood what I was looking at. 

This week our real estate attorney came over to double-check my work, at my request. He agrees that the docs are not there, but that the two loans were definitely paid off. I thought I was done!! argh.

This is the kind of stuff that has occupied some of my weekends. The requests for my time and effort from family are urgent and unexpected. I had hoped that this weekend would be free. And now we have a family meeting with lawyer tomorrow. 

My schpilkes have returned.