This has very little to do with relationships. This is just regular life shit that I need to yell about. I'd cry too, but I'm so stuffed with the flu I'm not sure crying is possible.

Anyway, so I just got a call from my sister... wait, let's back track. Cliffnotes:

My mum is dead. She owned a house (technically bought with my biological father's money after he died). At the time of her death her waste-of-perfectly-good-toilet-paper schizophrenic (yes, diagnosed) boyfriend was living with her. I didn't like him then, I like him even less now. Mum made her will three weeks before she died. She was high on morphine. She loved this man, and she loved her kids, she never really believed that she wasn't going to win the cancer battle. In her will she stated that if he took care of all maintenance on the house, cared for her pets, paid insurance and rates, then he could live there without paying my sister or I a dollar for as long as he wanted to do so. Also stated in her will is that once he leaves we must sell the house. My sister or I am not allowed to keep it, and he is to receive 10% of what it's sold for.

He said at the time, he'd live there two years and then move on. It took him a long time to bother with the insurance and now he's got it, he probably isn't paying it. He damn near killed the pets and we had to rescue them (My sister had to move house, paying a lot more rent to get a place that allows pets in the city). The house is losing a lot of value as he lets it fall apart around him. He's been increasingly difficult.

Anyway, my sister got the solicitor to send a nice letter telling him he needs to go. We want to sell the house. He signs some document saying he will leave once the house is sold (seeming we can't throw him out unless he violates the will, this is good). Everything looked to be going ok.

But I just got a call from Australia telling me it's not ok. He asked us to fork over $22,0000 and he'll leave right now. Like we have that sitting around *rolls eyes*. Our lawyer guy is like "Just pay it to get rid of him, do up the house and you'll make the money back" because looking at the value of the house as it is, it's only 7 thousand odd more than he'll get when we sell anyway, with the house in its current state. This isn't taking into account how much money my sister would have to spend to do up the house though. Whatever.
My sister says no. And good on her. There's no justice in that. He reckons he loved our mother, but the way he treated her when she was alive, and the way he's treating her offspring and property now she's dead suggests otherwise.

Now he has himself a lawyer. (Quite possibly his mate who just finished law school.) He intends to contest the will. I know a little about Aussie law, I've studied it, but not enough to be confident. He's going to try to take our home. The home we grew up in. The place mum said no matter how old we got, there'd always be a room for us if we needed a place to run to. It's all we will receive from either of our dead parents. And if you think it's easy coming from a dirt-poor family and then suddenly having no one but an equally poor sister to run to, you're daft. This is the compensation we get for not having a mum there when we walk down the isle, from not having someone our kids can call nan, from not having someone who's there 24/7 no matter how badly we fuck up. It's not very good compensation, but he's going try to take it away.

He's claiming he was dependent on mum at the time of her death. As a dependent living at home with her, that stands him higher on the 'order of inheritance' (can't remember the legal term for it) because my sister and I were long out of home. But, he wasn't bloody dependent on her. She was on the pension too freaking sick to go to the bathroom alone nevermind to work. It was my sister's money (and the Australian government) that kept the roof over their heads. It was my sister that pulled mum out of debt when she nearly lost the house coz the rates never got paid. It was her who repaired everything, her that traveled the long distance to help out, clean the house, cook... And he just benefited off that the whole time.

And it was me that sat there for hours and held her hand, talked to her, made her laugh while they gave her chemo. Because he didn't like hospitals and couldn't man it up even once to be there while she was treated. It was me that failed my school certificate, too busy being with her. It was my sister and I who traveled 6 hours a day, every day for three damned months to see her in the RPA when they cut her liver apart. It was my sister who let mum move in with her and nursed her back to health - even though my sister bloody had cancer too! Not him. He was never there, never cared enough to try. Never tried to get her to eat....

When she was on her last legs and I showered her, she was so thin I could see the massive lumps of her tumors and the rest of her was so wasted. It was me that was there every day, it was me spoon feeding her at the end. It was me using a syringe to help her drink. Me on the death watch beside her bed while he was at home sleeping peacefully.
And it was my sister picking up the pieces, trying to help him heal. My sister paying for the funeral, paying the bills, settling all the accounts, and never being given time to grieve. Giving him thousands of dollars to waste on booze and smokes and anything else he wanted. She just gave and gave and gave.

And I'm angry and scared, and too far away to be any use. I feel like I'll never stop grieving. I feel like my sister will never get a chance to start! And it's just.. WHY? Why would someone do this to us? Had he just looked after the house as she asked we wouldn't care if he lived there til the day he died too.

This is all in my sister's hands, I have no authority. (My sister was the head of the family even before mum died, so it's her "job" to do it all, and Mum's put her in charge in the will too.) I'm not even asking for advice or sympathy. I just need to yell, and Obi's at work. I'll stop now.