Should me in-laws seek legal recourse?
by LondonDomer (2019-06-21 14:07:47)
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My in-laws have been in the process of selling their house and down sizing to something smaller as they enter their 70s. The house they ended up purchasing belonged to an elderly woman who had passed away and the estate was to be split equally between her three children.

There were some all-too-common issues as the sale progressed with the property lines not matching the survey and stuff like that, but things seemed to be going ok overall. However, there was one of the children who was raising a lot of red flags throughout the process. She somehow got my in-laws' realtors phone number and was texting her multiple times a day asking if they people buying the house were good people and that it was "my mother's house" and she wanted to make sure they take care of it, etc. It got so constant, she finally had to reach out to their realtor and have her ask the daughter to stop. She also was very, very difficult in agreeing to terms.

Fast forward to yesterday at closing. My in-laws went to the seller's lawyer's office to sign the papers and about half-way through, the daughter shows up (was not supposed to be there). She said she had changed her mind about the curtains and the curtain rods in the house (which were to be included with the sale), and that she wanted them. Sensing her craziness, my in-laws said "fine." However, the daughter then stated she also wanted all of the flowers and bushes that were planted in the beautiful gardens. My in-laws said no way are you digging up the entire garden.

The daughter flew off the handle. She said the sale was off then and stormed out of the room. The lawyer representing the seller side said "I am pretty certain she is on drugs" as her behavior was so erratic. He was able to chase her down, calm her, and got the sale to proceed (without giving up the flowers/bushes). She left.

My in-laws finished signing and decided to go straight to Home Depot to get new locks. When they arrived at their new house, they were shocked to see the garden was completely dug up. In the time it took to run their errands, she had gone to the house and dug up all of the flowers, probably half a dozen bushes, and taken a bunch of decorative landscaping materials. If I had to guess, I think it would probably cost around $1500-2000 to replace everything with flowers and bushes (like peonies) of equal quality and maturity -- that doesn't included any labor of actually planting them.

This lady is obviously batshit crazy. I hesitate to tell my in-laws to do anything, because I do believe she is on some serious drugs and is unstable. Who knows what kind of crew she associates with.

On the other hand, she certainly trespassed and stole from them. Their garden is now a disaster and was a big selling point of the house. I am also concerned about her continuing to cause them issues moving forward (showing up the house, etc).

Such a crazy situation. What would you do? Contact the police? Or should they just file this in the "people are insane" bin and move on?


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