Could I Get Caught Up

Location: Idaho

I will try my best to make this as quick and precise as possible.

Anyone who has the time of day to read this and give me some advice will be greatly appreciate. I’m hoping I’ll be able to get some sleep tonight considering this is stressing me the fuck out.

My wife’s grandparents over the years bought 10 properties. Before grandpa died, they made a revocable trust, and put all the properties under the trust. They also set what children get what properties after both grandparents die, there are 4 siblings these properties will get split between, one brother and three sisters. Grandpa eventually dies a few years after trust being completed.

In the original trust had each sibling getting 2 properties each out of the 10. The 9th and 10th property would be sold and split evenly 4 ways to keep everything fair. There was also a large amount of cash in the estate that was to get split 4 ways.

Fast forward 15 years. Grandmother is still alive, but getting to the point where she knows she will pass soon. She gets the bright idea for whatever reason to change how the entire estate will get split after her passing.

She almost writes out the 3 sisters. The Son gets 7 properties assigned to him and the entire lump some of cash. While the sisters each get one property. Grandma then dies like 6 months after making all these changes official.

That son is my Father in-law. And this is how my wife and I get wrapped into all this.

All 10 properties had tenants when my wife’s grandmother died. My father in law did not want to have to manage all 10 properties while the trust was being executed. He offered to pay my wife to manage the properties.

I did not like the idea of it, sure the extra cash sounded nice but I did not want to get wrapped up in all the lawsuits I knew were about to be coming from the 3 sisters who had their share of their inheritance handed over to their brother (my father-in-law).

I told her if she’s going to do it, she needs to get a real estate license, and create a LLC to separate our assets from any tenant or family member trying to wrap her up in litigation. I also told her not to let a penny of the business’s money ever touch our accounts. I wanted everything as separate as possible from the bullshit I knew was coming.

Father-in-law seemed to think nothing bad could happen. He thought there was no way the trust could be contested because there was a “no contest clause”. I kept telling him that doesn’t mean they can’t contest the trust, if anything it doesn’t really mean anything if the trust was rewritten.

He continues to spend every dollar he inherited. He is spending money left and right, not a care or worry in the world.

On the other hand my wife’s doing very well managing the properties. She even increased cash flow by a very respectable amount.

My father in law gets slapped with lawsuits from all three sisters like 6 months after the grandmother died, on top of the trust being contested. He now has to fight these lawsuits with his own money and the cash flow from the properties because he spent the entire amount liquid funds he inherited.

I wasn’t worried because as far as I knew, what my wife was doing did not concern her. She is just a property management company running the properties.

There was one instance where a tenant paid for a months rent to my wife’s personal Venmo. She then transferred the funds from her Venmo into our personal checking account, and then she did one final transfer to the business checking account.

This upset me because I specifically told her not to let any amount of money for the business hit our personal account. She said it won’t happen again. But it did happen again, 3 more times. I told her she could get us in serious trouble for mixing up these funds. She told me I shouldn’t worry because we have nothing to do with the lawsuit, and if they were going to try and get something out of us they would have tried by now.

It’s almost been two years since the original lawsuit between my father in law and his siblings had started. It sounds like they are getting close to either a settlement or a judgement.

For the month of June, my father in law for whatever reason couldn’t have any of the money from the properties. The payments where set up to ACH deposit directly into a account he had set up. My wife, without telling me decides that because the money from the rental properties can’t go into her dads account, she will just have it go into OUR PERSONAL ACCOUNT. Without discussing any of this with me!

I only find out when I see the money transfer in. It’s over $10,000 a month they collect in rent from all of these properties. And I explicitly did not want even a penny of it associated with us. I was livid. This was at the beginning of June.

Today we get a message from her 3 aunts lawyers. They want all of the financial records for the business and for each property.

For now it’s not involving us in the lawsuit, they just want a bunch of discovery.

I am stressing the fuck out. I already know as soon as they see money from those properties hitting our personal accounts, they are gonna rope us right in.

How can I get prepared for the worst case here. Or am I being a overwhelmed baby. I seriously don’t know what to think but I wanted nothing, absolutely nothing to do with this shit. And now my biggest fear of us spending thousands and possibly losing our house to one of her aunts, or some current tenant filing a suit.

Anyone who has made it this far thank you. I greatly appreciate any responses given. I hope I communicate the story in a way that’s easy to track.