Getting the Guilt Trip
QUESTION: Elena in Los Angeles says her parents lost their home of 27 years and are having financial problems. Elena has a $150,000 inheritance from her grandparents, and her parents asked for money from her. She's getting a guilt trip and isn't sure how to respond. Dave has some hard words for Elena.
ANSWER: Your father is a manipulator. We are not going to set up that opportunity to continue. I want you to read the book Boundaries by Dr. Henry Cloud. Your father violates boundaries pretty regularly. It makes you confused as to what your role is. You are a very bright and educated person, and yet this one part of your life makes you feel like you're six years old. That book will dramatically help you. It helps you realize you're not crazy.
Your brain knows what to do but your emotions have trouble doing it. You can do some short-term things to help them turn the corner and get them back on their feet. In return, they are going to change some lifelong behaviors that are destructive to them. You won't have any more private meetings with your father at his insistence; your husband will always be present. Your mother should probably also attend because your dad's schemes and scams are all on the side.
We really want to help them. We really love them. Participating in their wackiness is not helping. That's all it comes down to. You have to smile. Instead of this being "dad," you look at this as a person with a deficit of some kind. You just smile and nod your head and say how sweet that is and you figuratively pat him on the head.
Then you say how you will help. You take that position because that way, you are doing this from a nobility status, not a neediness or toxic family script status. You are not doing anything long term. It's short term. You buy the seed and they get to plant it. Then they must hoe it and harvest it. But you are not buying the seed and buying the tractor and hiring the guy to drive the tractor.
You are not getting involved in giving them $200 a month or $800 a month or $8,000 a month for the rest of their lives just because they had you. That's not how this works. That ongoing sense of entitlement has to be snapped in the conversation.
You love your family and you want to help them turn the corner on something. But when you subsidize them permanently, you take away their dignity, like a government program. You permanently change someone's dignity, their status and their ability to stand on their own two feet and do things. You don't want to do that with anybody you love or care about. Instead we want to buy them boots and teach them to wear them.
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ANSWER: Your father is a manipulator. We are not going to set up that opportunity to continue. I want you to read the book Boundaries by Dr. Henry Cloud. Your father violates boundaries pretty regularly. It makes you confused as to what your role is. You are a very bright and educated person, and yet this one part of your life makes you feel like you're six years old. That book will dramatically help you. It helps you realize you're not crazy.
Your brain knows what to do but your emotions have trouble doing it. You can do some short-term things to help them turn the corner and get them back on their feet. In return, they are going to change some lifelong behaviors that are destructive to them. You won't have any more private meetings with your father at his insistence; your husband will always be present. Your mother should probably also attend because your dad's schemes and scams are all on the side.
We really want to help them. We really love them. Participating in their wackiness is not helping. That's all it comes down to. You have to smile. Instead of this being "dad," you look at this as a person with a deficit of some kind. You just smile and nod your head and say how sweet that is and you figuratively pat him on the head.
Then you say how you will help. You take that position because that way, you are doing this from a nobility status, not a neediness or toxic family script status. You are not doing anything long term. It's short term. You buy the seed and they get to plant it. Then they must hoe it and harvest it. But you are not buying the seed and buying the tractor and hiring the guy to drive the tractor.
You are not getting involved in giving them $200 a month or $800 a month or $8,000 a month for the rest of their lives just because they had you. That's not how this works. That ongoing sense of entitlement has to be snapped in the conversation.
You love your family and you want to help them turn the corner on something. But when you subsidize them permanently, you take away their dignity, like a government program. You permanently change someone's dignity, their status and their ability to stand on their own two feet and do things. You don't want to do that with anybody you love or care about. Instead we want to buy them boots and teach them to wear them.
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QUESTION: Daniel in Buffalo says his mom passed away about a month ago, and he doesn't know what to do with her car and the debt associated with it. She had a retirement account, but it's being divided between grandchildren. If the car is sold, it'll break even. Dave has a warning for Daniel.
ANSWER: The first thing you must understand is that her entire estate, everything she owned, has to stand good for her debts before any grandchildren get anything. If she has any debts that have to be paid, those have to be cleared before the estate can be settled. You can't just write checks out of this and pay everybody and then not pay the creditors. They will come back after the entire gang.
It sounds like the retirement account and the car is her whole estate. As long as you can sell the car for a break-even price or better, you will be fine for distributing the retirement accounts to the grandkids as requested.
You have to get court approval here. Someone has to be assigned as the executor in order to sign the title. Then you can just sell the car. You just act like the owner of the car. Your sister has court approval to do business on behalf of the estate. She just has to sell the car for enough to pay off the debt, just like if you were the owner of the car and you sold it.
If you have to get something from probate court, that varies from state to state. Just get a motion from the judge. Since it's a very small and simple estate, if it's possible in New York state to avoid running it through probate, that might save you $1,000, which might be the difference in this whole thing working or not.
But you have to have a valid way to sign the title. You can't pass title if you don't have proper permission to do that. For instance, I bought a property in Tennessee not long ago from an estate. In order for the title company to give us title insurance, the court had to give approval for the executor to sign on behalf of the estate. We had to file a motion with the court. In our state, it's not that expensive, but we are a very low tax state.
You have to check on that and find out if there is a way to transfer the car title without running the entire estate through probate. I doubt there is, but I'm not an attorney, and certainly I'm not one in New York state.
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ANSWER: The first thing you must understand is that her entire estate, everything she owned, has to stand good for her debts before any grandchildren get anything. If she has any debts that have to be paid, those have to be cleared before the estate can be settled. You can't just write checks out of this and pay everybody and then not pay the creditors. They will come back after the entire gang.
It sounds like the retirement account and the car is her whole estate. As long as you can sell the car for a break-even price or better, you will be fine for distributing the retirement accounts to the grandkids as requested.
You have to get court approval here. Someone has to be assigned as the executor in order to sign the title. Then you can just sell the car. You just act like the owner of the car. Your sister has court approval to do business on behalf of the estate. She just has to sell the car for enough to pay off the debt, just like if you were the owner of the car and you sold it.
If you have to get something from probate court, that varies from state to state. Just get a motion from the judge. Since it's a very small and simple estate, if it's possible in New York state to avoid running it through probate, that might save you $1,000, which might be the difference in this whole thing working or not.
But you have to have a valid way to sign the title. You can't pass title if you don't have proper permission to do that. For instance, I bought a property in Tennessee not long ago from an estate. In order for the title company to give us title insurance, the court had to give approval for the executor to sign on behalf of the estate. We had to file a motion with the court. In our state, it's not that expensive, but we are a very low tax state.
You have to check on that and find out if there is a way to transfer the car title without running the entire estate through probate. I doubt there is, but I'm not an attorney, and certainly I'm not one in New York state.
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