The attorney asked me whether my husband had any written authority to sell or transfer the lake house. I said no, and he told me not to confront him yet. My father had left the property to me in his will, and the deed had already been prepared by the estate attorney. My husband knew none of this because my father had told me privately that he wanted the house to stay in my family. Then the attorney asked me one more question: whether anyone had recently requested a copy of my father’s property records. I checked, and someone had requested them two weeks before he died.
I asked the county office who had made the request, and the name wasn’t my husband’s. It belonged to the real-estate agent my sister-in-law had mentioned at the reception. The agent had apparently been given the property address and told that the family was ready to sell. My husband had been discussing a sale before the funeral had even happened. Then I found an email on the shared computer in which he told the agent that “the owner” would sign once the estate paperwork was finished. He hadn’t asked me because he assumed I’d eventually agree.
At the estate meeting, the attorney read my father’s will and confirmed that the lake house belonged entirely to me. My husband couldn’t sell it, borrow against it, or promise it to anyone without my signature. I told him I wasn’t selling it, and the agent’s contract was canceled that same week. My sister-in-law apologized, but she admitted they had already planned what they would do with the money. I changed the locks and kept the house exactly as my father had left it. They were discussing how to divide the money from my father’s house two days after his death, but the one person whose signature they needed hadn’t even been asked what she wanted.
