Winding up mum's estate is like a game of whack-a-mole
Tuesday, August 10th, 2010 11:15 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lizziec...and the mole just whacked us rather than vice versa :/
Throughout mum's life she was always a bit scatty with money, with the result that she had multiple debts at time, and would occasionally put bills and demands in the bin or a drawer without opening them. This has caused us some difficulty when it comes to winding up her estate because although we have been through the house and every possible hiding place we can't be at all certain that we have found everything. In fact, I'm sure we haven't, because there was a serious amount of paperwork missing, but recently I have felt that maybe we're getting to the top of the mountain of stuff to deal with. The trouble is that every time I feel like we're getting to the top of the pile something comes that knocks us back and makes me doubt that.
Mum's cats need sorting out - we want them checked by a vet to make sure they're healthy, and get them microchipped so that when they move to their new home if they wander off and try to get back to Coulsdon we'll be able to track them down - or whoever finds them will be able to track us down. So we called the vet the usually go to to be informed that there was a £300 outstanding bill from when Tiptoes died. We had no idea that there was any money owing to them. There certainly had been no letters from the debt collector who'd been appointed in the months from April to now. Anyway, I tried to deal with the collector as an executor of the estate and was in the first stages of them dealing with it. I explained this to the Vet, who agreed to see the cat as long as we paid up front for the services we recieved from this point on, which, to get the cats seen to, we agreed to.
Took them to the vet yesterday and as expected they wanted to operate on Vi to remove the lump on her neck and booked her in to do it today. George needs his teeth doing at some point, after Vi's neck is sorted. They also need boosters of vaccines and the aforementioned microchipping.
This morning when we went in, we were told that they wouldn't operate on Vi until the outstanding balance had been paid, though they would provide antibiotics until such time as it was sorted. Having no idea when this would be, meaning Vi would be on antibiotics indefinitely, which is clearly not ideal as the lump is clearly bothering her - she keeps scratching it open.
I explained to the receptionist, who was talking to Phil and I about it in the public waiting room that this was mum's debt and that we were dealing with it as executors through the debt collectors, and we as people were seperate from mum's debt. That the cat was ours and we were dealing with it as people with a sick cat, not as executors of mum's estate, and that we had been told they'd deal with the cats so long as we paid as we went along. The receptionist said that she understood where we were coming from but that the vet said that unless it was paid they wouldn't operate on Vi today, and that if he had known how much was outstanding he wouldn't have booked her in for the operation. They also said that the debt collection company had advised them to deal with us like that.
So faced with taking her home again to stay on antibiotics indefinitely or getting her the operation she needed we paid it. But I'm really pissed. It's mum's debt. We were dealing with it through the debt collectors, going through the process we need to go through as executors, and they really had no right to force the issue like that, or to essentially make her debt our debt. It doesn't work like that FFS.
Really really angry right now, mostly at the vet, but at least a little bit at my mum for not dealing with this before.
Throughout mum's life she was always a bit scatty with money, with the result that she had multiple debts at time, and would occasionally put bills and demands in the bin or a drawer without opening them. This has caused us some difficulty when it comes to winding up her estate because although we have been through the house and every possible hiding place we can't be at all certain that we have found everything. In fact, I'm sure we haven't, because there was a serious amount of paperwork missing, but recently I have felt that maybe we're getting to the top of the mountain of stuff to deal with. The trouble is that every time I feel like we're getting to the top of the pile something comes that knocks us back and makes me doubt that.
Mum's cats need sorting out - we want them checked by a vet to make sure they're healthy, and get them microchipped so that when they move to their new home if they wander off and try to get back to Coulsdon we'll be able to track them down - or whoever finds them will be able to track us down. So we called the vet the usually go to to be informed that there was a £300 outstanding bill from when Tiptoes died. We had no idea that there was any money owing to them. There certainly had been no letters from the debt collector who'd been appointed in the months from April to now. Anyway, I tried to deal with the collector as an executor of the estate and was in the first stages of them dealing with it. I explained this to the Vet, who agreed to see the cat as long as we paid up front for the services we recieved from this point on, which, to get the cats seen to, we agreed to.
Took them to the vet yesterday and as expected they wanted to operate on Vi to remove the lump on her neck and booked her in to do it today. George needs his teeth doing at some point, after Vi's neck is sorted. They also need boosters of vaccines and the aforementioned microchipping.
This morning when we went in, we were told that they wouldn't operate on Vi until the outstanding balance had been paid, though they would provide antibiotics until such time as it was sorted. Having no idea when this would be, meaning Vi would be on antibiotics indefinitely, which is clearly not ideal as the lump is clearly bothering her - she keeps scratching it open.
I explained to the receptionist, who was talking to Phil and I about it in the public waiting room that this was mum's debt and that we were dealing with it as executors through the debt collectors, and we as people were seperate from mum's debt. That the cat was ours and we were dealing with it as people with a sick cat, not as executors of mum's estate, and that we had been told they'd deal with the cats so long as we paid as we went along. The receptionist said that she understood where we were coming from but that the vet said that unless it was paid they wouldn't operate on Vi today, and that if he had known how much was outstanding he wouldn't have booked her in for the operation. They also said that the debt collection company had advised them to deal with us like that.
So faced with taking her home again to stay on antibiotics indefinitely or getting her the operation she needed we paid it. But I'm really pissed. It's mum's debt. We were dealing with it through the debt collectors, going through the process we need to go through as executors, and they really had no right to force the issue like that, or to essentially make her debt our debt. It doesn't work like that FFS.
Really really angry right now, mostly at the vet, but at least a little bit at my mum for not dealing with this before.
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Date: Tue, Aug. 10th, 2010 11:04 am (UTC)Sorry you have to deal with all this shit on top on a horrible situation. *hugest of hugs*
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Date: Tue, Aug. 10th, 2010 01:03 pm (UTC)