Finally had some clarity about the sale of my mother's flat. Unfortunately.
The process around probate seemed to just go on and on, regardless of the pandemic. I rang My niece's husband last night for an update. I did not like what I heard, though if I can force myself to be pragmatic, I can at least say I now have a far better overview of the mess. It is being sorted out, but in a way I least expected. There is a tangle around freehold, a company that owned it but ceased to trade because the directors all died, the government taking over, the papers being bought back and finally the leaseholders getting access.
There is apparently a document with percentages that now apportion financial gains resulting from a sale. My sister, myself, and the step-relatives now have a slice. The initial impression was that just the two sibling offspring would inherit as Mum passed away intestate. But the taking on of the claims made the resolution a thing other than the predicted. It does not matter - nothing matters - but it'll be interesting to see what the drawers-up of the sharing decided. And if I disagree with the fractions involved would I possibly refuse to sign a document agreeing to it, so as to speed up this interminable process, or capitulate simply to have this hideous burden unloaded? I lay awake this morning contemplating this certain debacle with no solution offering itself. Hindsight is a marvellous thing, and I should have been more proactive in engaging an independent solicitor. It is too late now. This world is vile, governed by greed not need, but it cannot be helped. I just worry that an incidental spinoff will be that my sister and I will be riven apart. Again, nothing matters, but the anxiety rises to meet the occasion.
This may well be neither the time nor the place to expose these concerns, but no-one reads it, and once the distribution of ill-gotten gains is complete I may have to take back my words and my doubts, but i have seen how the world works... and it is poisonous. I am more focused on a possible memorial to Arthur Labinjo-Hughes, but that is not a particular safe arena to tramp. This little boy's death was, and remains, a paradigm for the vileness of the earth, far worse than anything Dante was able to conjure.