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I don't usually ask for help, but this time I don't have any choice. Two weeks ago, my SO's father killed himself, suddenly and unexpectedly and, even now, for no reason any of us can figure out. I've just spent those two weeks in New Jersey trying to help them sort out the legal and financial affairs, and we're both completely shellshocked and devastated here on top of all the procedural crap. Here's the rundown of financial facts:
-There's no life insurance
-The house is under water and on a reverse mortgage (more on this further down)
-The 401K's have all been drained
-$10,000 in back taxes owed
-There is no money, at all
On top of this, his widow has been mentally deteriorating for years now and can neither live alone nor can live with any of her children, none of whom have the space or are there all day to provide her the care she needs. The trauma of this event--she was there when it happened, in the house, trying to stop him--has accelerated her decline dramatically and she needs professional care. However, in most states her social security income is both woefully inadequate to pay for care and too high to qualify her for aid, because hey, I guess in the good ol' USA old ladies with dementia are also supposed to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, idek. I would be more furious if I had the energy for it.
Additionally, if the house sells for less than its appraised value--which it will, because who the hell wants to live in a house where something like this happened--she loses progressively more months of medicaid eligibility depending on how far under it sells for.
And even if she somehow kept her medicaid eligibility AND they were willing to cover her care--which they probably aren't--that 'care' would amount to them sticking her in a state-run institution, which is very close to being a prison. The only way out of this is to spend a lot of money now to get her situated somewhere nice, let the money run out, and bank on the government being reluctant to uproot and move her. But spending a lot of money requires having a lot of money, which we don't.
Add to this the fact that legally in NJ this kind of event requires sanctioned crime scene cleanup which charged such a grotesque amount of money I can't even type it out, and the fact that in order to keep the SO's mom from completely losing everything she had left I and the SO had to take on her two sick cats, both of which are chronically ill and one of which has diabetes, and build an outbuilding to house them in which runs somewhere around $5000 all told, and the SO's incoming MRI bill for unrelated medical problems on our end, and the fact that I had to spend almost my entire savings on last minute plane tickets to fly us out there when it was all I had to live off of for the next six months... and we are pretty fucking squarely screwed--me, the SO, his brother and his wife, their mom, the cats, everyone.
It is the perfect storm of misery and horrible life choices, and I need help, we need help. We need money to pay their bills, to pay the mortgage long enough to sell the house, to pay the backtaxes, to pay the ripoff cleanup people. We need money to guarantee their mother's care. We need money to pay our own medical bills, to pay for the cats' housing and bills, and I need money to fucking eat.
I know times are rough all around, and I know tragedies like this are happening every fucking day, but if you can help by donating even a tiny amount, I am swallowing my pride and asking. My paypal is etherati@gmail.com. If you can't, then if you could just pass this along I would really appreciate it. I really appreciate anyone even just reading this all the way to the end.
Thank you all.
-There's no life insurance
-The house is under water and on a reverse mortgage (more on this further down)
-The 401K's have all been drained
-$10,000 in back taxes owed
-There is no money, at all
On top of this, his widow has been mentally deteriorating for years now and can neither live alone nor can live with any of her children, none of whom have the space or are there all day to provide her the care she needs. The trauma of this event--she was there when it happened, in the house, trying to stop him--has accelerated her decline dramatically and she needs professional care. However, in most states her social security income is both woefully inadequate to pay for care and too high to qualify her for aid, because hey, I guess in the good ol' USA old ladies with dementia are also supposed to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, idek. I would be more furious if I had the energy for it.
Additionally, if the house sells for less than its appraised value--which it will, because who the hell wants to live in a house where something like this happened--she loses progressively more months of medicaid eligibility depending on how far under it sells for.
And even if she somehow kept her medicaid eligibility AND they were willing to cover her care--which they probably aren't--that 'care' would amount to them sticking her in a state-run institution, which is very close to being a prison. The only way out of this is to spend a lot of money now to get her situated somewhere nice, let the money run out, and bank on the government being reluctant to uproot and move her. But spending a lot of money requires having a lot of money, which we don't.
Add to this the fact that legally in NJ this kind of event requires sanctioned crime scene cleanup which charged such a grotesque amount of money I can't even type it out, and the fact that in order to keep the SO's mom from completely losing everything she had left I and the SO had to take on her two sick cats, both of which are chronically ill and one of which has diabetes, and build an outbuilding to house them in which runs somewhere around $5000 all told, and the SO's incoming MRI bill for unrelated medical problems on our end, and the fact that I had to spend almost my entire savings on last minute plane tickets to fly us out there when it was all I had to live off of for the next six months... and we are pretty fucking squarely screwed--me, the SO, his brother and his wife, their mom, the cats, everyone.
It is the perfect storm of misery and horrible life choices, and I need help, we need help. We need money to pay their bills, to pay the mortgage long enough to sell the house, to pay the backtaxes, to pay the ripoff cleanup people. We need money to guarantee their mother's care. We need money to pay our own medical bills, to pay for the cats' housing and bills, and I need money to fucking eat.
I know times are rough all around, and I know tragedies like this are happening every fucking day, but if you can help by donating even a tiny amount, I am swallowing my pride and asking. My paypal is etherati@gmail.com. If you can't, then if you could just pass this along I would really appreciate it. I really appreciate anyone even just reading this all the way to the end.
Thank you all.
