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I’ve struggled with depression most of my life. I’ve been to therapists and was on Zoloft at one time. I stopped taking it back in 2001 when I was having a problem with my eye. Doctors were trying to determine the cause of the problem and one of the ideas was that it could be medications I was on. A friend of the family suggested that it could be the Zoloft, so that’s where we started. It wasn’t the case….one of the times I listened to her and shouldn’t have. I’ve struggled financially over the years as well. I bought a vacation home in Maryland in 1994. My sister and her husband have a house in the same neighborhood, which is how I found out about the house I bought. It was always a struggle for me to keep up with it. Between over spending and just having a lot happen I was just never able to build my savings back up. My Jeep was totaled not long after buying the house and I took out a home equity loan to help with a new car. I ended up getting a new home equity loan to pay credit cards off, pay the first home equity loan off, and paid my car off. Late 2003 I was starting to have trouble with my Mazda. It wasn’t cooling or heating. I didn’t have the money to get it fixed, so I just waited until spring to get my tax refund. I figured I could get my car fixed and inspected with my tax return. About March 2004 I got my car fixed. May 2004 was when things really started hitting. My car was starting to run hot and I was taking into the garage every few months for it. The garage kept saying it was something different (radiator cap, radiator, thermostat…). I kept pouring more and more money into it. My mother helped out a time or two. In December I took it in and only had it back about a day and a half and it starts running hot again. I took it back and they said it needed a head gasket costing $1,800. I didn’t have the money, so I just took it home and let it sit in the driveway. I started using my mother’s car. My mother’s Alzheimer’s was starting to become obvious as well as having other health issues, so she wasn’t using her car. My feeling was to sell my vacation home. The housing market was still in decent enough shape it probably would have sold fairly quickly. And I knew that with my mother’s condition she would only get worse and wouldn’t be getting down to my vacation home any more (she was only down once that year as it was) and I knew if I got my car fixed I’d only continue to have problems with it. Well, this friend of the family thought I should keep the house and get my car fixed. So that’s what I ended up doing….another big mistake. I continued to have trouble with my car throughout 2005 and my mother continued to get worse and never did go back down to my vacation home. My car ended up catching fire in January 2006 so I had to get a car. So I had car payments, mortgage payments, and a home equity loan in addition to all my bills (house and car insurance, oil, electric, credit cards….). I was also the one taking care of my mother throughout her Alzheimer’s. My brother and sister never bothered to help. The only time we saw my brother was when he needed money and my sister apparently didn’t have time. She only started coming to visit my mother during her last 8 months and that was only because she had been laid off from her job. The friend of the family was the only one to help with my mother. She’s actually my sister’s friend, they went to school together and would come and visit and end up spending the night and eventually moved in with us. With taking care of my mother I was only ever able to get down on Saturdays to mow the grass and come home. Nothing else ever got done. I was never able to get down to enjoy the place. I even asked my sister and her husband if they could help out. They had their house in the same neighborhood, so it wasn’t like they were going out of their way. I figured if they weren’t going to help with my mother, the least they could do was help out a little bit with my house. They only went over once and did a little cleaning and that was the end of that. Finally in 2007 I decided to put my vacation house up for sale. It went on the market in October. I also decided to have my mother’s house put in my name. Since I was living with her (and had her POA) I was able to have the house transferred under Medicaid’s child caretaker exemption rule. My brother and sister agreed to the transfer. It was also a way to keep the house knowing my mother would most likely need to be placed in a nursing home. My vacation home finally sold January 2009. By then I was just so deep in debt trying to take care of two houses. It took a good bit of what I got for my house just to pay everything off. I did use some money as a down payment on a new car. When she died in February 2010 the only thing she had was a checking account. It was a joint account with my name, so it automatically became mine. Well, a month after my mother died my brother starts asking when he can get his money. I was still running over to the lawyer’s office dealing with inheritance tax, not that I had to pay much but it was just a matter of going over what’s been paid, what needed to be paid, etc. He finally tells me he needs $4,500. He needed it for a new riding mower. I told my lawyer that I would give my sister $4,500 as well, but I wanted the rest of the money from the account. I was figuring on using the money to take care of some repairs. She was going to get a letter out to them but my brother and sister both started asking for money. I was trying to hold off giving them money until the letter went out, but the friend of the family ended up getting involved. I was kind of forced into giving my brother more money. I ended up giving him another $1,500 because he was behind on his property taxes. My sister, she said she wasn’t in any hurry for the money, but she just wanted to know how much she’d be getting so she could budget for it. I gave her $6,000 as well when I gave my brother his money. I was just so POed at the two of them for the way they were bugging me and the way they were when I was taking care of my mother (besides the fact nobody wants to listen to me) I told the lawyer I wanted the house. She said I had no legal obligation to give them any money from the house. So it was October 2011 my brother starts bugging me for money from the house. My sister said she eventually wants money from the house too, but she’s willing to wait. My sister and her husband along with this friend of the family were all figuring how to handle getting an appraisal, getting a mortgage, getting an agreement written up for my brother to sign, etc. In the mean time I talked to my lawyer about getting a letter out to them. Well, a letter never did go out to them. I’m in debt again, so I’m not able to get a mortgage on the house anyway. The friend of the family has finally started helping with bills. And the company I work for (for nearly 29 years) has been moving me around from building to building for the last 5 years or so. The building they have me working in now is just horrible. The jerks I have to deal with (to put it very politely), the working conditions (hot in the summer, cold in the winter), the work, just everything about it….I hate it. I’ve been there for more than 2 years now and I just don’t know how much more I can take of it. Between my job, dealing with my family, and being in so much debt….it just all has me so depressed. I can’t keep living like this. I don’t know what to do. I’m sorry for such a long post, but I just wanted to show what I’ve been dealing with for so many years.
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