Tag Archives: justsaying

May 26 2012

Unhappy Families – at least you can pick your friends – it continues.


I was all “Woe is me” recently, it’d been about 15 months since the mother died, and coming from a widely dispersed family settling the estate was proving a problem. The first problem was that there wasn’t a will.

The death was sudden and without suffering, and the fact that there was no will shouldn’t be a surprise. If you knew the family you’d know there was no surprise.

So as one of the furthest away from home  I’m also the one who makes the most noise. As you do.

Some of the family were so self absorbed as to be able to say “we don’t need the money it’ll work it’s way out”, and this is fine but alas things don’t just happen. I was a bit pointed when I remarked that the fact that although money might not be needed by them, it might be useful to someone else, like an old people’s refuge, or a injured service mans charity, for instance. Bit of a cad really.

I got a rightful serve by the family, who thought I was picking a fight and making an accusation of lazy, or worse. I felt a bit down about it to be honest. All I wanted was to resolve the estate and to let everyone get on with their disparate lives.

We’re not a  close family and despite a few attempts we are never going to have a reconciliation or a get together, just ain’t going to happen.

But wait…. since then, younger brother has got his wriggle on, and has sworn an allegiance to the queen or whatever it is you have to do in front of a judge, and has managed to secure a deed of probate which essentially means he is in control. FTW!

So the Letters of Administration will be issued and he will be in a position to make the Bank give up their secrets and allows him the power to withdraw the funds and that, essentially close the estate and divvy up the proceeds.

Except….. #1 sister is playing hard to get. This is the sister who spent a lot of time with the mother, and has made a big effort to make the funeral happen and to tidy up the edges. But at the same time #1 sister made some huge judgment calls about trinkets and trivia that benefitted those close. Don’t get me wrong these might have been the right calls and I’m not disputing or going to question it.

But there is some paperwork and some forms that need to be sent from A to B, and so far that hasn’t happened. Which is a can’t or won’t thing.  I’m not  saying that there is nefariousness or underhand at play, and I think that whatever is afoot is played out daily with family estates everywhere. nothing new, no new stories.

But what it does mean is that the mothers estate might only be a couple of months away from settled, and then the family can settle down to it’s own life again.

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Sep 29 2009

I read the news today. Oh Boy!


There were/are 3 things that prickled me this morning on the news, which in no particular order are

1. Roman Polanski. – Moral indignation from the elitist bleating about cultural significance of his works and how he should be granted clemency. I say “What about all the good things Hitler did?” It’s not good enough to claim it’s 30 years – it could be 300 years, 3 years, 3 days it would not make a difference, plying a teen with alcohol and drugs to have sex with them isn’t legal, wasn’t then, isn’t now. IF Mr. P had any backbone he would have stayed to clear his good name. He Didn’t.

2. Some Cellist is playing his thing in Auckland, and the advertising goes something like “acclaimed as a phenomenon by The Herald (a newspaper). Not, you note, acclaimed by Mr.Billy Perkins, Staff Writer, as a phenomenon, but hidden behind a facade that “The Herald” implies gravitas. The Herald speaks we listen!

3. Ministerial allowances. So an MP has been dobbed in for claiming an allowance on a house he owns and lives in. The bureaucracy that condones this is not configured to catch people out, but to ensure that the allowances are meted out to the claimants. The bureaucracy is in place to serve the bureaucracy, no other reason. They don’t check the validity of the claim, but only the receipts and mathematics are correct so they can process the claim. All care no responsibility.

As to claiming the allowance or perks, which employee for any company given a list of claimable things would not go out of their way to ensure they could claim everything, and which employee would be the advocate and loop-hole advisor to others to allow maximum claim under “the rules”

The only people going on about this are the indignant people who cry “public trough” at the drop of a hat – you know they typically are “I know my rights” type people.

Sure the allowance is a rort. It always has been. And this would be the top of a scary iceberg if we were really interested in looking in detail at everything that MP’s could and probably do claim from a daily newspaper, magazine subscriptions, stamps and a lot of other things.

Just saying.