About eleven years ago, my parents went bankrupt and were forced to give up our home and property. So that we would have a place to live, my uncle gave us an acre and a third of his land for us to put a mobile home on. The area of land we all live on had originally belonged to our family for ages and ages, upwards of a hundred acres. It extends back off the road about a half-mile, and we have two neighboring families that live on bits of the land that were parted with over the years. My father had owned 22.66 acres, until he had to file bankruptcy. My uncle owned another 22.66 acres, and my aunt another few acres, and the neighbors the rest.
Anyway, my uncle had 1 1/3 acres plotted out and surveyed off for us to put our home on. We cleared the land, moved the mobile home in, and all that. The land was given to my father, but there was never a separate deed drawn up, as there was no need to. It was an agreement among family. My uncle was the most stolid, fair, trustworthy man I have ever known, and likely ever will know. All was well until 2003, when my uncle contracted cancer. My uncle had already made known that he was leaving his house and land to my older brother by this time. On one condition, though: it is never to be sold, mortgaged, or otherwise leave the family.
My uncle was in and out of the hospital frequently by now, and decided it would be best to go ahead and have his property put in my brother's name while he was still of sound mind, as he had brain tumors. My brother was supposed to have a new deed written up, to exclude the land my uncle had given my father. Instead, he just had the existing deed copied, into his name. He was supposed to go back and change it, but he never did. As my uncle's health faltered more and more, my brother and his wife eventually moved in with him to help him out.
Well, a month or so passed, and my uncle continued to grow more and more sick, and eventually agreed to move into hospice care. He died the next day. This was mere days before his birthday, in November. My brother's wife immediately started changing my uncle's house to suit her likings. The night after the funeral, they were ripping up the living room carpet. Now jump ahead a year. For various reasons that I won't go into here, as this is going to be long enough as it is, my brother and his wife have had a falling-out of sorts with my parents, specifically my mother.
My sister is siding with him, and now won't talk to us either, having reasons of her own as well. All of it utter bullshit. My sister-in-law gives birth to a son. Around this time, my mother fell out of our front door, breaking/spraining both of her feet and chipping her jaw. Despite numerous phone calls to my brother, who lives only 100 yards away as the crow flies, he couldn't care less. It is left to me and my blind father to take care of her. For two weeks she cannot move from the foldout bed in the living room, and all she can eat is scrambled eggs and soup.
My brother makes no attempt to help whatsoever, but at least my sister does start speaking to us again, but it doesn't last long. She has kids, and it kills my mother not to be able to see her grandchildren. Jump ahead another year. My brother announces that he is going to sell the land and move to Canada, to be with his wife's family in Ontario. He only tells me this, though, as he is still not speaking to my parents. Still not having told my parents, he puts up a For Sale sign at the end of the driveway.
Come to find out, though, he never did fix the deed, and is in fact trying to sell OUR land and home as well. As if that is not enough, when we protest, his wife files an eviction notice against us, trying to have us evicted from our own home, that we own. Not only that, but she lies on the paperwork, claiming we could not be found to tell in person, so it had to be done through paperwork. Even though we rarely leave home and live right behind their house. [O_o] We now have to get a lawyer, to counter this to prevent being kicked out of our own home. Meanwhile, the land is still for sale, so we have to file a counter-claim, asserting that all the land my brother is trying to sell is not, in fact, his to sell.
This stays locked up in court until earlier this year, when my brother pulls a fast one, or tries to, by filing a lawsuit that goes behind our backs by putting a notice in the local paper, which he knows we do not get, that would have, through some form of sneaky legality, allowed him to continue with the selling of the land if we did not respond within a certain period of time. Again, he had to lie and say that we could not be contacted in order to file this. Luckily, my aunt found the notice in time. Then, just being greedy apparently, my brother illegally took out a $75,000 loan on the property, which he shouldn't have been able to do with a lawsuit in progress, but the loan company didn't do a title check.
At this point, it is still locked in court, and my brother has committed perjury so many times that it's pathetic.