Help me defend against elder abuse abuse & theft.

My biological mom was 27 when she developed a serious crack cocaine addiction and was accidently knocked up by what I'm told was her drug dealer. She kept the drug habit going through the pregnancy. The moment I was delivered I was taken by the state, as a result of her ongoing case file and the results of blood work at my birth.

 

She begged her mother to step in and prevent "the puppy" from being lost to "the system," and as such I was placed in the custody of my biological grandmother at 3 days old, the adoption being made official when I was 3 years. My biological mother became my "older sister."

 

For the first 10 or so years of my life, I was made aware I was adopted, as my parents were a generation older than everyone else I knew, but I was never told the specifics, and assumed I just had an older sister who greatly liked to visit and spend time with me.

 

My adoptive father passed due to cancer at the age of 80 when I was about 12, and while I have nothing but fond memories of him, we ultimately had little time together. My adoptive mother has effectively been the only parent I've ever really known, and she did her damnedest to give me the best childhood she could.

 

My other siblings have been varying amounts of vocal my entire life about their resentment and jealousy of me, as they grew up with less, often moving around due to our father's military career, whereas I enjoyed growing up with our parents in their retirement, when they had more to spend in both resources and time. My "other" sister has always been loudly forward with her opinion that I'm really "just" a grandchild, and should be treated and provided for as such. Her husband has been of a similar sentiment, albeit...angrier. My adoptive mother has warned me repeatedly over the years, as has by biological mother, that he's had something powerful against me since before I was even born.

 

...Which made it an odd choice for her to select them as my temporary guardians when she was knocked off balance by the death of my father, her husband of 60+ years. The sister and brother-in-law stepped in to offer to take me off her hands for a school year while she reestablished herself (along with the subtle assurance that the brother-in-law would be a real "male influence" and somehow "fix" me, as there were concerns I was going to turn out "weird." (Read: Gay.) Eventually my adoptive mother walked in on the brother-in-law hitting me in the face, and demanded my return to her custody, which they refused insisting that they depended on the stipend they had been receiving for my food/clothing/incidentals/etc..

 

Mom exploded after some back and forth that she'd keep sending the checks, if that's what it took, but she wanted her son - me - back immediately. They had little communication with each other afterwards, and it would only be a few years later that, this incident on top of many others going back to before I was born, my mom would update her estate plans to officially disown and disinherit the sister in question from the parts of the estate she had the right to remove her from. I was away at college when this was going down, and wasn't aware of it at all, but naturally, the only person they blame more for it than my mom is me myself.

 

There's also an uncomfortable undercurrent of racial tensions, as my biological father, the alleged drug-dealing sperm-donor, was African, whereas my family is Irish/Welsh. An oft-heard snide aside when I was younger was for the resentful sister to refer to me as being "off-color." There's also a powerful transference of scorn and resentment I've inherited that I assume is dis/misplaced anger at my biological father, who disappeared so quickly that it's unclear if he ever even knew he'd gotten anyone pregnant, but is clearly seen by the family as the force responsible for ruining my biological mother's life, which makes me a living reminder of what occurred, to them. My oldest brother has referred to my biological mother/our sister as a "victim" of my...well, existence.

 

Now our mother is in hospice and that same brother is both her trustee and power of attorney. He's committed an ongoing laundry list of frauds, thefts, abuses and breaches in an attempt to "fix" what he see as our mother's mistake disinheriting our sister while considering me a true son and intending to leave me an equal share.

 

In 2012 that brother requested I quit my job, break my lease and move home to caretake our mother. That same home our mom had written into her estate documents was to be left to myself and my brother in equal shares with me having the right of preventing any attempts at sale. After she began requiring help with bathroom and bathing tasks, she moved to be under the care of her daughter, my biological mother, and afterwards, around 2016, I expressed that if I wasn't actually looking after mom and was in fact just caretaking a house, I wanted to move back to where I'd been, see about getting my position back and restarting my life where it'd been put on pause.

 

He responded - threatened - that if the house was left vacant he'd sell it off, a violation of his fiduciary oaths to administrate the estate per the terms of its documentation. Nevertheless and not being fully aware of my rights, I remained there until 2020, when he decided to commit several crimes to sell the house out from under me before it could be left to me, effectively - and then later officially - turning the administration of the estate over to our sister - the disinherited one - despite the ridiculous conflict of interest and absence of oversight this represents.

 

July 2020 - and I have the documentation to prove this - my brother, sister and brother-in-law sought out and hired an attorney who apparently did not review the estate documents in question before taking action and who took the three of them at their word, apparently being deeply misled. Apparently, the story he presented to this attorney was that our mother had already passed away, the home had been left completely to him, and I was refusing to vacate. The three of them appeared at my home with a moving crew and a court officer who presented me with service of an ejection lawsuit.

 

The notice was simply to set a later date to begin proceedings to investigate the situation, and even if after that process I was ruled against, an individual has a period of time to make arrangements for their own property before it can be confiscated or forcibly removed. The same day I was presented with the service the moving crew was already completely emptying out the home, apparently misleading them to believe that it was a service of a notice to immediately vacate, which he claims would give him the right to to take possession of even my own property. The moment the house was empty he sold it to a house-flipping firm over a weekend. A $750,000 home sold for $580,000, which still remains unaccounted for. After allowing our sister and brother-in-law to pick through and separate out what of mine and my mother's belongings and valuables they wanted to keep for themselves, the rest was unceremonious dumped in three different storage units across town, which I'm required to coordinate with my brother-in-law to access and search through for even my own property, while they meanwhile have free reign to continue digging and stealing everything that catches their eye.

 

I don't know what to do at this point. It feels like the police won't help unless the crime happens directly in front of them and comes with a signed confession.

 

You can literally steal an entire house and everything in it and have hundreds of thousands of dollars disappear while stating in writing that you're doing it specifically to increase their own potential windfall and dismantle a specific person's inheritance to do so and the police will shrug. You can have people dead to rights on video threatening you, vandalizing your property, disabling your security cameras and stealing from your home, and the police will shrug. You can have people that abused you as a minor enter your home unannounced, and threaten multiple times to "put you on the ground," and be told that it's just "normal sibling stuff." You can have proof that they've committed massive frauds, violated court procedure, lied in court filings, etc., but you have to have a small fortune yourself to buy the chance to present this in a context it matters, apparently.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Oh, and then they can use the money they've stolen to fund the defense of their own actions as they continue them - it's pretty darn screwed up, and I don't know what to do. I'm drowning. This is a cry for help.

 

Now, while I lived at the home, the eldest sister and brother-in-law lived less than a mile away. Despite this, and knowing that they had been excluded from the estate and would not be inheriting the house I lived in, they sold their home and built a brand-new house even closer, literally only a block away from me.

 

During this, one or both of them began to show up randomly and tend to refuse to leave. Once, she appeared on the doorstep and rang the door bell non-stop for about twenty minutes straight until I gave up on pretending not to be home, and when I answered the door she was all smiles and poisoned kindness as though nothing out of the usual was happening. Note, at this point in time, and for the next several years, I wasn't aware that the disinheritance had been made official or put into notarized and filed writing. I thought this was just a long, loud, semi-public family feud that was continuing in the background.

 

The nearby sister would show up unannounced and randomly, refuse to leave, and spend literally entire days going through every box and drawer and closet in the house. I'd have to cancel plans or call in work because there was no way I was going to leave her unattended in the home to pocket what she wanted - our mother had warned me against exactly that, and instructed me not to turn my back on her.

 

Beginning in 2012, she began to contact me here and there attempting to talk me into gifting the house to her daughter, implying that the neighborhood was for some reason not a good fit for my "lifestyle." (READ: Gay.) I repeatedly shot this request down hard and it mostly disappeared for a handful of years. After all, how would it even work? Where would all of mine and mom's furniture go? How would I ever re-take possession of the house once I inherited it without massive amounts of resentment and hard feelings? The thread went quiet until...

 

Late August of 2019, after having not seen or heard from her for more than a decade, the eldest sister's daughter shows up in the driveway with her 9-year-old daughter I've never met before. She seems distraught, says she's going through a bad divorce and that she's "not sure she even wants to be here anymore," which I internally panicked over, as she seemed to be signaling suicidal ideation right in front of her daughter. (After the fact she'd claim that she literally just meant she was considering moving away.)

 

I invited them in to talk, and the moment we were inside the atmosphere became strange. This little girl I was just meeting for the first time began to look around the house and gush about it, telling me what sorts of colors and wallpapers she'd prefer for different rooms. Upon poking our heads into my bedroom, the girl exclaimed: "So this one will be my room?" I laughed uncomfortably, chatted with her mother for about an hour or so, gave her the card of my therapist's office recommending them, gave the young girl some art supplies I had no use for and she seemed delighted over and bid them good night. I felt that I'd already done more than could be asked of me considering our complete lack of any real relationship on top of her treatment towards me during the time her parents functioned as my guardians, as well.

 

Literally the day I arrived in town and was picked up from the airport, she cornered me in my "new" bedroom to tell me that the only reason I was there was because nobody wants me, and she could have me sent away like that, should she have the whim. Picture snapping fingers along with that statement. Basically, I didn't feel like I owed much to this individual, but wanted to at least try to be decent and take the high road, since I have a rather deeply held personal belief that children shouldn't suffer for the unrelated actions of their parents.

 

I email my eldest brother to ask him if he'd had any idea what was happening with that branch of the family, and he responded that he didn't think anything could be done for them at the time, but offered the cryptic statement that, last he'd heard, our eldest sister had planned to install her daughter and grandchildren into the house "with or without" my being there.

 

I messaged the daughter to inform her that, since she already lived herself also only about a mile away in a 3 bedroom home, I couldn't see what the difference would be in where she was now or if she were to move in with me. Plus, it'd then be four people in a three bedroom home, and on top of that they have at least one pet they'd be bringing with them. I did voice how uncomfortable it made me that she seemed to have arrived out of nowhere but the expectation seemed to have been set somehow for her daughter that she was getting a tour of her new dream home, and I was being set up to either be guilt tripped out of my home or to unwittingly break the heart of a child I was meeting for the first time. I tried to be delicate as possible about it and assure them that even if I couldn't offer anything else I could offer my time and an ear to listen, but I received no further responses.

 

I believe having seen this plan to acquire the house fail and becoming increasingly desperate, the eldest sister "lost it" somewhat, and decided to go straight for the nuclear option, willing to commit massive frauds and abuses to wrest possession of the home by force or, failing that, to at least not allow anyone else to have the prize she had been denied herself.

 

I don't know what to do.

 

My eldest brother is 80 now, and it's unclear if he's in cognitive decline or simply doesn't imagine he'll ever be held accountable for his actions, but it is probably worth mentioning that he's been involved in several major car accidents, including one that put him in a coma for a bit and left him functionally without a short-term memory for quite a while.

 

Either way, he hasn't been the slightest bit coy about what he's doing or why he's doing it.

 

Some choice excepts from communications with him:

 

From emails from him to me on December 31st, 2019:

 

"... The house is being supported by the 4 of us from our inheritance. We have decided to stop this drain of our inheritance. ..."

 

"...the house costs between 9 and 10 thousand to maintain per month..."

 

"... In case you are contemplating a rebellious attitude remember I and the family are only complying with mothers wishes and contesting this will only cost you money you dont have and eventual loss of everything. ..." [sic]

 

When he refers to "the four of us," he's counting himself, myself, and our sisters - one of whom (my bio-mom) did not appear to be in support of the sale of the house and the other sister who is specifically excluded from the estate and who the estate documents goon to specify that she is to have nothing to do with the administration of the trust or any decisions made about it, being considered "predeceased" to our mom in any such matter.

 

Likewise, when he says "the family," he's really just trying to make himself, our eldest sister and her husbands sound like more of a quorum than they are, especially considering one of them is an unrelated bystander and another is specifically forbidden from participating in the capacity he keeps making it clear she is.

 

The only way the house cost "9-10 thousand per month" is if you multiply everything involving it by at least 3, and that's leaving a fairly generous margin of error.

 

From an email from him to me on July 15th, 2020:

 

"...I don't need your permission to remove anything from the house, your belongings included. ..."

 

From an email from him to our sister/my biological mother on August 19th, 2020:

 

"... Is [my name] really worth all this misery considering who , why, and how this is occurring? ..." [sic]

 

From an email from him to our sister/my biological mother on September 18th, 2020:

 

"Both you and [my name]. you should divide the contents according to your wishes soon, very soon "...Remember all this started with [my name] and is caused by [my name] and will end with [my name]..."

 

From emails from him to our sister/my biological mother on October 3rd, 2020:

 

"Personal property must be catalogued and evaluated for tax purposes.. I is easier and more correct to give the property in question to their proper heirs than go through the effort of cataloguing and evaluation." [sic]

 

"I didn't want this job [NOTE: in reference to taking up power of attorney and trusteeship for our mother.] but was forced into it by family politics, [my name] for example and his attitude that everything belongs to himself alone... ..." [sic]

 

So... He's stating that he became our mom's POA and administrator of her trusts because of his perception that I wanted or would receive more than he feels I'm due?

 

From an email from him to me on October 14th, 2020:

 

"You have been relying on conversations you have dreamed up to bolster your claim to the house.. Well, wake up . Mother has promised houses to all of us. ..."

 

What dreamed up conversation have I been presenting and why would I make them the crux of an argument rather than the witnessed, notarized estate documents that clearly state the intent for me to inherit half interest in a $750,000 home along with right to deny any attempts at sale? Is he honestly just hoping that the details don't come up, somehow?

 

From an email from him to me on January 23rd, 2021:

 

"...you cleaned out the stock account when you invaded mothers private papers and found the account she had set aside for your education. ..." [sic]

 

So, I definitely never did that or anything close to it, so... What's this account and who and how did it get "cleaned out?" This is actually a thread that kind of goes somewhere, so I'll spin that off into its own post later.

 

"...As for your missing property the thought that anyone would want you stuff is nauseating. ..." [sic]

 

I'm still missing thousand and thousands in electronics, equipment and collectables. Two different laptops, hundreds of games and a dozen or so systems, at least one a sought-after rarity. An iPad, cell phone, sound equipment, projector, multiple Chromecasts... Just off the top of my head and barely scratches the surface of just the electronics that are unaccounted for.

 

Of note, as my eldest sister flitted around the house "helping" the moving crew and helping herself to what the crew was moving...she taunted me and how I couldn't be everywhere at once while they were three people plus a crew of about five with "Don't you have electronics to be rescuing...?"

 

They coordinated and pillaged, and now he has the gall to pretend that I'm somehow so unseemly that even my belongings are too tainted to be desirable. At least, when he's not lying to the police and telling them that I'm just making up the property I'm reporting stolen in some kind of temper tantrum.

 

From emails from him to me on October 14th, 2020:

 

"...please do not contact me further with your fabricated protestations..."

 

"...Making false police reports about fictitious laptops was another aspect of your delusional state of mind, You are one sick puppy. ..."

 

...Which they took at face value? What the hell was that, honestly? An officer called him, my brother told him I was just...hallucinating things and claiming them stolen? I tell him I have photographs of almost everything I'm reporting sitting around the house just days before this all occurred. ...And the officer just shrugged and said something to the effect of "not being comfortable taking any action."

 

People stole literally everything I owned except what was on my person or in my car. The people who did it make no effort to hide what was done or that they did it - if anything, they're proud of it. I have the best proof I can offer that the things I'm missing existed and I know roughly where the property is being held.

 

A grand theft occurred, the culprits are all known, and the location of the stolen goods was narrowed down to the point of a few specific street addresses.

 

Over the course of the last year and a half or so, my brother has accused me of stealing all sorts of things, but when pressed to be specific about what it actually is he's accusing me of taking he changes the subject or runs away.

 

On January 23rd, 2021, my brother finally got more specific about things, attributing the accusation specifically to our mother's financial advisor at UBS:

 

"...you cleaned out the stock account when you invaded mothers private papers and found the account she had set aside for your education. ..." [sic]

 

"...It happened years ago and I found out about you habits from [Financial Advisor] who mentioned you got some 300 dollars that cashed out the account ..."

 

Suddenly it "happened years ago" and is over just $300? Not that $300 is a small amount of money, and the principle of the thing is important in that I've never done anything of this sort but he's been pointing fingers and booming like he believes I made off with millions.

 

...So I emailed the Vice President of Wealth Management at UBS' Burton-Sayler-Wood Group and asked if she had any idea what my brother was talking about. She flatly denied the whole thing, saying, among other things:

 

"...I have never spoken to [Elder Brother] or anyone else regarding you ever committing some kind of identity theft and have no idea where that information would have come from. I do not know of any information relating to you closing or taking any account balances that did not belong to you. ..."

 

"...I think your attorney would advise you to document your conversations, incidents, etc. ..."

 

My brother was included in this email chain, and he promptly, surreally responded, as though he hadn't just been caught in a serious lie and been instantly thrown under the bus about it:

 

"...Very interesting. He is trying to sow seeds of doubt. remember he is showing the same characteristics as a sociopath.. ..." [sic]

 

"...He has been carefully trying to cast an alternative history of events from the past. Please be careful of what you say to him. He will quote you and take things out of context or put his own meaning to your words. ..."

 

What here is even ambiguous enough to take out of context? It's verbatim statements and straightforward concepts.

 

I'm trapped in a living nightmare and it's almost won. I need the resources to defend myself and stop further abuses before they happen rather than trying to play damage control afterwards. I'm also behind on bills and debts due to the unexpected housing, relocating, replacement and other expenses that've mounted up in the meanwhile.