Background: My grandfather died a month ago, my mother (only child) is the sole executor of his estate and trustee of the trust he set up for my grandmother's care. Grandma has dementia. My mother is not a trustworthy person in general and DEFINITELY not when it comes to money. (So why did my grandpa pick her as executor and trustee? Denial, and a victim mentality - he let family members screw him over financially all his life.) I am in touch with my grandmother but estranged from my mother.
Current situation: My mother is wasting no time in calling the shots for my grandma. Whenever I talk to my grandmother, she says various things about her finances without any prompting from me. Some of it is worrying, but I have no idea what bits are true or what the complete story is. Even if I weren't estranged from my mother, I couldn't rely on her to tell me the truth, so asking her won't do any good.
I *could* possibly get a lawyer and start asking serious questions, but that is the nuclear option, and it's only been a month. So I don't feel I can go there quite yet.
Ugghhhhh.... it feels horrible. I'm torn between saving my sanity by just ignoring my grandmother's comments and letting the chips fall where they may, or doing the right thing by paying attention and looking out for my grandmother's interests. Plus, I'll admit that I have some resentment that my grandfather evidently did not even mention me in his will. I've pretty much been shut out. Yet during some of my last conversations with him, he did express concern about how my mother would treat my grandmother. He even commented that he was worried that my mother would "eliminate" my grandmother. (I think he meant something along the lines of "not really take care of grandma properly".)
So it's a mess. And I'm doing the typical thing for a child of a dysfunctional family - trying to be its conscience. Help? Do I tune it all out? Or keep emotionally engaging with it?
Every time I told my grandmother that she MUST speak to my mother, demand a copy of the will (apparently my grandfather made all his arrangements in secret and my grandmother has never seen ANY of the documents), demand an explanation of the questionable transactions, she deflates and says "oh… no, I just have to trust her". I know that my mother and grandmother went to see a lawyer on May 9, but my grandmother doesn't remember what they discussed or if she signed anything. My mother is certainly behaving as if she has PoA for my grandmother but I have no idea if there are documents to show that.
So, it looks like my grandfather gave his daughter complete control and she's making a mess of it, and my grandmother's expense.
Over the weekend I was all riled up thinking I would call a lawyer on Monday to find out the options for protecting my grandmother. But on the long drive home I thought: I'm not responsible for this situation, no one has actually asked me to fix it, this is an extremely dysfunctional family, why should I take on the emotional cost of cleaning up its messes? If my grandfather wanted me to be able to protect my grandmother in some way, he should have made arrangements for that. And all of these people hurt my sister and me pretty bad and never tried to rescue us from anything, so what do I really owe them?
Please tell me it is OK to stay out of it! It's not going to be easy watching my grandmother get taken advantage of.