dave_donhoff: "You can't lay this at the feet of the financial industry... the industry doesn't have the power to corrupt the natural constraints, to eliminate levels of competition, or to subsidize/lubricate one area of operation or another. ONLY governments have that capability." I disagree. The industry IS the power. This country is ruled by money and the ability to make billions...those who control that ability, control us....AND the gov't. While Wall St. was indeed enabled and abetted by lack of gov't oversight, regs, etc....they continue to hold the nation hostage by manipulating the market to drop anytime anyone even breathes the word "regulation". Case in point..the Dow rallied on the news of a bailout; as soon as noise was made about building in restrictions, oversight, etc...the Dow dropped. Message? Bail us out, but don't even THINK about trying to prevent us from doing this again as soon as we mange to cook up our next ponzi scheme. The entire finance system has been purposely and systematically engineered to operate covertly and in such a convoluted and often incomprehensible manner, with Gov't enabling and abetting the system...that most of the dirty deeds that generate millions or billions never come to light...or if so, it's too late..such as now. The bottom line is that "Wall St." has lost its credibility as the "experts" who are those best suited to choose their own SOP's. While I am hardly a fan of government regulation...I can't really see any other way to at least try to prevent them from screwing with everyone again at some point in the not too distant future....and most important, to instill some basic level of confidence in the system. Gov't regulates just about EVERY other profession much more stringently than this one...the SEC is pretty much a jokeÂand look what has happened. In addition, in respect to finance, the whole system is currently set up to foster and HUGELY reward fraud, deception and abuse...allowing penalty free activity that if you or I did the same, we would be charged with a crime. Case in point...CEO OÂNeal, formerly of Merrill Lynch, who presided over the company while all of these shenanigans were going on. He is either a moron ÂÂor a thief. Either wayÂhe ran off with millionsÂ....so far scott free...leaving us ALL holding the bagÂ.and he was THE key player in the ultimate demise of Merrill. I don't profess to know how to do it...but the double standard MUST stop. People and entities who know that they have little or no accountability should hardly be trusted with the finances that are the keystone to a healthy economy. Either that...or just give everyone a free pass on fraud and call it a day. Here is an interesting Op/Ed piece that is IMO, entirely on point: ******************************************************* Commentary: Blame boards of directors for financial mess Story Highlights Nell Minow: Wall Street directors ultimately to blame for financial crisis Boards approved huge pay unrelated to long-term performance, she says Executives reaped enormous sums while shareholders suffered, Minow says Minow: Shareholders should be allowed to vote on pay packages By Nell Minow Special to CNN Editor's Note: Nell Minow is editor and chair of The Corporate Library, an independent research company specializing in corporate governance. Minow was named one of the 20 most influential people in corporate governance by Directorship magazine in 2007 and "the queen of good corporate governance" by BusinessWeek Online in 2003. She has written more than 200 articles and co-written three books. Since 1995, Minow has also written "Movie Mom," an online parents' guide to "media, culture and values." Nell Minow says it's great when executives make a lot of money but only if they really earn it. As big Wall Street firms topple like dominoes, there is plenty of blame to go around. Failure this broad and deep takes a village, and regulators, lawyers, compensation consultants, auditors, executives, shareholders, and the press all played a part. But the people who are most responsible for the massive meltdowns of these institutions are the boards of directors. Their sole responsibility is to act as fiduciaries for the shareholders in managing risk. They not only failed to perform this task but indeed, in their approval of outrageous pay plans with perverse incentives, they all but guaranteed the current disaster. I am a capitalist. I love it when executives earn boatloads of money. But it infuriates me when they get it without earning it. If the executives' compensation is tied to the volume of business rather than the quality of business, we should expect dealmakers to be more attentive to the number of transactions than the value they create. This is the basis for much of the sub-prime mess, whose collateral damage is taking down the biggest firms on Wall Street. At Merrill Lynch, former CEO Stanley O'Neal received total compensation of more than $91 million for 2006, according to The Corporate Library's calculations. He was given that package based on performance numbers that came out before nearly $23 billion in write-downs by the company. O'Neal received more than $160 million in stock and retirement benefits while shareholders lost more than 41 percent of their investment value over the year. Three executives brought in to Merrill less than a year ago will share a $200 million payment as they turn over the company to Bank of America in a last-minute deal to help it survive. American International Group (AIG) replaced CEO Martin Sullivan after the company posted losses for two consecutive quarters totaling $13 billion. Sullivan's contract entitled him to about $68 million. His replacement, a board member who served as CEO for three months before the company was taken over by the government, will get as much as $7 million. The boards of directors approved pay that was completely disconnected to performance. This, after all, is the world of the ultimate oxymoron: the "guaranteed bonus." So we should not be surprised that executives took the money and ran. Fewer than 13 percent of public companies have claw-back policies requiring executives to return bonuses based on inflated numbers. All of the incentives are for them to inflate the numbers, take the money, and run. And that is why companies whose names used to be synonymous with stability and trustworthiness will live on through history and business school case studies as discredited, greedy and corrupt. The people who insisted that government regulation interfered with the perfect efficiency of the markets are now getting bailed out by taxpayers with some walloping welfare checks. I just hope that this time the government does a better job of protecting itself than it did with its bail-out of Chrysler almost 30 years ago and this time insists on a piece of the upside rather than a fixed repayment. If the government is going to run a business, it has to act like a business and make sure its interests are aligned with the executives. Despite the post-Enron adoption of the most extensive protections since the New Deal, a survey released this week by Kroll and the Economist Intelligence Unit found that corporate fraud rose 22 percent since last year. The option back-dating and sub-prime messes show that even the post-Enron Sarbanes-Oxley reform law and expanded enforcement and oversight cannot eliminate the severest threats to our markets and our economy. This proves that there are limits to structural solutions. Ultimately, markets are smarter and more efficient than regulation. What the government needs to do now is insist on removing obstacles to the efficient operation of market oversight. Shareholders must be able to replace directors who make bad decisions and they should have a non-binding "say on pay" vote on executive compensation as they do in the UK and several other countries. Our current system of executive compensation does not tie pay to performance, it does not provide an effective incentive to create long-term shareholder value, and it does not meet any possible market test. Executive compensation must be looked at as any other asset allocation. The return on investment for the expenditures on CEO pay is by any measure inadequate. Some have argued that the amounts at issue are so small in proportion to the assets being managed that they do not have any material impact. On the contrary, the CEO compensation in America's public companies is a leading indicator of serious problems -- and one reason my firm has consistently given most financial services companies "high-risk" ratings. And it is more than a symptom of the pervasive problem that is toppling our most respected financial services companies. It is a perversion of the market that imposes enormous and growing costs on America's working families -- as shareholders, customers, employees, and members of the community. These outrageous pay packages juxtaposed with losses in share value and jobs diminishes our credibility and increases our cost of capital. In today's global economy this is an expense we clearly can no longer afford.

My mom is 83,widowed, ,not in good health. My brother lives with her,rent-free. He's a dead-beat dad,owes thousands in back child-support. Mom bailed him out once, to the tune of $20,000 he owed his kids, who live in another state and are now over 18. He is also the executor of mom's estate. For many reasaons, I don't want her to die. She owns a home worth probably $200,000, a colonial in a good neighborhood but the house is a fixer-upper at this point. The roof is bad, water leaks in the basement, kitchen was never updated since 1963. She also has about $250,000 in savings. I am worried that when she passes, my brother may try to get more than his fair share of the estate. There are 4 kids, 2 sisters, myself (another girl) and brother. So a four-way split will be involved. I have two worries: that brother may try to get more his share and that his share will be snatched away by the courts. Further, there are a few household belongings I would like to have for sentimental reasons, not greed. I once asked Mom if I could have a pair of lamps that used to be in my bedroom. She said "no, those are mine" so I have never asked for anything else. I don't want to upset her in any way, so I plan to get an attorney after she dies and try to see if another executor can be named, and to see exactly how "probate' applies. Anyone know of a good book that explains wills and estates? I assume laws vary depending on the state. We're all in New York.

Dear all, Thank you for your thoughtful comments. I know I wrote a long post, but mkroopy, I do not expect everyone would understand my position in a short post. Thank you Sylviatexas, Readinglady and Justmetoo. You have been very understanding. In explanation to my position : 1. Before I got married, my parents had warned me that is anything were to happen (Inter-racial marriages in my country had boast issues like this before) I am not to return home crying when my marriage fail. I know my parents loved me and meant well, they only warned me of what would happen and they were absolutely right. but they are now retired, I cannot bear to burden them with my issues. If I am to find money, it will be on my own responsibility. 2. Like I mentioned above, by Muslim law, a wife can only divorce her husband for several reasons. You can refer to this : "Men have the right to divorce. If a man dislikes keeping his marriage for any reason, he divorces his wife and compensates her financially by paying her what is termed mut'a payment. This is in addition to the regular financial sustenance for her living, in case she has the custody of their children. Divorce becomes in effect once the husband utters or writes down any of the legal formulae of divorce such as: �I divorce you� or �you are divorced��etc. The husband can do these either by himself or through a messenger. In case it is the woman's desire to end the marriage, the situation becomes different. Her reasons might be that she has received ill treatment, the husband is unable to sustain her financially or he is sexually impotent. She can prove these defects in front of the judge, then the judge grants her divorce with a full access to all her financial rights. Also, if the husband was good to her but she does not want to keep on for an emotional reason, then she asks for what is termed khul'. This means to be granted divorce but without any access for financial rights, plus paying back the husband the dowry that he already paid on marrying her." I have made it clear to my husband that I don't want anything from him if he divorces me, but it seems like he is smart, he knows I won't be able to find a reason to divorce but for emotional reasons. I'm sure do hope that I'm wrong; I hope he doesn't want my money, after all his late wife did leave some for him. I am just like a pawn, I am only to suffer in a position where there is nothing I can do. 3. To Justmetoo, the solution you proposed was exactly what I did. Like I mentioned above, after my parents told me to ignore her coz eventually she will leave, I did exactly that. I ignored her. I stopped whatever I did before ie.plates to the dishes, pick up your mess, ask for permission first, spend your money wisely, you don't need another concert etc, MY HUSBAND DEEMED ME UNCARING. And again I say, I had established an understanding that I am not going to do anything anymore to make it better with her, unless she starts to do so herself. This are how things are now, she doesn't need my permission for anything, and in fact even if she does ask me, it is because she was told to by her father. And even if she did, it was, "I'm going out now, Ok Annie?" or "I'm going to borrow the bathtub, OK?" or "Can you send me to my friend's house later?" I know because her father asks her to do so, she knows I was the one who made the changes in the first place, so she behaves worst. 4. About her mother's things, you are terribly right. It was definitely my fault for clearing up the things. I just couldn't bear to live in the bedroom, which is the house under he name willed to the daughter (we are moving out sometime in 2013, AT LAST =( ) with no where to put my things. I felt really not at peace living here, everywhere I look it was just her possessions and reminders of her. Like I said, my Husband seemed very ignorant about how I felt. He had in fact mentioned I didn't know her and had no rights to hate her. She cheated on him and I didn't, I still don't understand why I get treated as if I was the one who did him wrong. I hate her terribly, It was because of what she did, that my husband is bitter and refused to clear up the mess. It was his responsibility and he dutifully neglected it and left me with the bitter consequences. I was told that the daughter was not very close to the parents. In fact, with both working adults and one spending too much time with someone else, a lot of things were left to other people to be responsible for. The maid handles a lot of things and she was given all she wanted so she wouldn't whine and cause troubles to her parents. Most definitely, I read her blog and she wrote that "my mum bullies me and don't support me" and "I didn't cry when mummy died." In fact, there wasn't an issue at all, until I came in the house. God knows what did she realize, but I doubt she appreciated her mother much until she realized someone else became the new woman in the house. The only thing I can think of now, is to live like nothing happened. Ignorance is not my forte, my blood boils to see her mess and her unthoughtful attitude about eating her share of food at home. It's makes me terribly sad that my husband says I don't care for either of them. I would have to save up my money wisely, study hard and start building a better life for myself in the future. Meanwhile, I would just have to take everything thrown at me. PS : My husband has mentioned in the past the one thing he wont tolerate is cheating and that consents a divorce. I can't do that, and even if I faked it, the bad would just be reflected on me. My husband is very smart of pretending like everything is beautiful and on cloud 9 in front of people. No one would believe of his character or assume something is wrong with our marriage.

It has been A little over 6 months since I was here asking about what you guys would do if you were given this property. I wanted to come back to update on what all has happened in the past 6 months!! A lot of information has been revealed / found out, when I first posted this on this site it was just a I didn't know what to do moment, and I have to thank every single person I'm here for all of their advice and opinions because I heard them all in my voices over the past 6 months as I have been spending cleaning out the home. I don't think I mentioned in my original post that my grandmother is home was also completely full of items from over 100 years of time if not more than that. Anyhow, so in order to get to see where the issues lie, I have had to clean the house out so I could have people come in! It has been fun, but hard, awarding but exhausting extremely emotional with a lot of anger and  tears... But I am very proud of how much has been accomplished in this time. I think I mentioned before that I don't have much family, so I didn't have a whole lot of help but grateful for the hands of the few that I had. Basically, it has become my full-time job to be at this lake house cleaning it out having things checked out making a budget and figuring out what to do and how I'm going to do it. Good news, the foundation is great, the plumbing had some very small minor things that I was able to fix on my own, that there was no issues, the well has been serviced, septic was inspected, electrical is good, some things don't make a sense with the electrical but it's up to code which is unbelievable considering how old the house is but evidently my grandmother kept up with these things that I just didn't know. But it's nothing that can't be easily fixed. The unit for the AC was made in 87, it cut on without any problems, I had thought that it was going to have to be replaced, and up until this week I've been working in this southern 90° hot weather with no AC for a good bit of time now coming to find out that there was one switch that I did not see that needed a flip, and Poof, I have air!! They service the unit, and said that everything looks great. I can't believe how often I have heard this phrase, and I'm asking myself can this be true? LoL,  There's no way everything is great!! Now they did have a oil burning furnace that they used for heat that she had cut off shut down drained out filled up whatever it is that you do to those things when you don't use them any longer. So there isn't any heat in the home as of now, but if that's an issue to deal with later on down the road. Honestly I don't feel that I need it especially with it being just myself, It doesn't get very cold here and a space heater usually will do just fine. The downstairs of this home is double layered brick so it stays cool in the summer and it stays warm in the winter, not to mention that there is a fireplace. Now if I was to sell the home I would definitely need to do something in the future. But I'm still not quite sure that's what I want to do. Because this timing that I've taken to just clean it out and have the basic things looked at and checked out it's not looking as if it's going to be a money pit after all it's going to be more of a what to do with it type of situation because the floor plan doesn't make a lot of sense. Yes, the outside of the home needs to be updated, painted / Hardie board plank whatever something of that nature but it's 3/4 of it is brick. The main issue here is what to do with the space and how to make it function for me. I don't see myself needing more than what I have available to me, and the fact that this property/land has such great value, it's never going to depreciate... it's an acre and a half of Lakefront property on Lake you can barely buy land on anymore much less find a house on for under a million dollars. I've had real estate agents coming out of the woodwork wanting me to sell as is sell for 500k buy something else, which would be easy to do am I crazy for not doing that should I take the money and run? Or should I hang on to this and make it work for me to live in the rest of my life, and have something to leave to my son to what he can do with whatever he wants to do with it. It took a lot of energy and balls, lol, for me to come here and start the process when I made this post I've only had been up here two times since she passed away because it was so hard on me. I still have bad days but I am enjoying being here, and when the work is over and calm down, it's nice to just float around on the water or fish My son comes here and helps every weekend does things to help me and enjoys being here as well. Anyhow I guess I'm kind of blabbing now I have the tendency to do that. I'm trying to get to figure it out what to do with the upstairs and how to make it functionable. **So first off I have realized that their original plan was to have a kitchen upstairs as well as downstairs, I'm assuming they wanted to have some kind of entertainment area or whatnot there is all brand new cabinets in boxes for kitchen the upstairs the floor is still all subfloor but I have found 1200 ft² of the original hardwood plank board with the hardware still in the boxes they just never got to putting it down... I have a lot of the bases covered and I have a lot of the materials to finish what they were going to do. I just have more questions and need more advice and opinions, and honestly coming on here for the first time with this first post got me as far as I am right now. I'm not sure if this is where I am supposed to respond or update what is going on so please it forgive me if I'm commenting in the wrong spot and send me to the right place to post on a new thread or whatever it is however it works please help me understand So I can put up some pictures of the inside and outside get some ideas and get some help, or drop a line on here and tell me I'm making a huge mistake It doesn't matter either way because I like to know the good and the bad. Oh and for everybody that had mentioned something about the tax inheritance laws and things in South Carolina they're very forgiving on that don't even have it... And we're not in that bracket of worrying about federal estate tax, sorry, not that rich!! But for the ones that were worried about the tax issues/finances, I have hired a financial planner that also comes with a text advisor/CPA. Once again thank you all who commented on this original post, I heard everybody's voices even though I don't know what you sound like but you all have a different voice in my head but I heard it in these past months and I just want you to know how much I appreciate every single person that commented because it helped me so much and y'all don't even realize it. This is amazing group to be a part of!! Let me know if you want to see any pictures and where I should post them... @flomangan.... I listened to your advice and I have taken so many pictures, I had to get another camera involved because it was killing my phone's storage, and transfer real quick enough, hahaha!!