If you can afford it, why not do a what do they call it - second something. ACT! If there is something else you would like to do. University jobs have already taken a turn for the worse, have they not? Nobody gets tenure, non-tenured part timers teaching students, and now they have everybody's classes recorded. Who knows what the future holds? It may be wise to get out while you can. And you are so disciplined - not a layabout like me - and have so much to contribute. Be the change you want to see in the world. Come back to the U carrying a whip.

Is it a viable option to stay there? I mean, in terms of, can you legally stay there, etc., vs. having to sell the house for the estate (just thinking of what my mother dealt with with her mother's house and the assorted sibling drama that dragged on....).

Is it possible to do a sabbatical sort of thing, take a year off? And if not, if you quit, would that hurt you in finding future work? I don't know how the academic world operates in terms of things like that.

I actually have not known many academics who didn't want to quit and walk away from academia for any number of reasons. And they were valid like yours are. Even my person kept threatening to walk away (and she loved the scholarship -but hated teaching even though she was a great teacher (not just love bias here - she got student award after student award and all of her graduate students got jobs -she had a 100% record with her grad students getting teaching jobs soon after graduation) and become a gardener (ugh- I don't like gardening).