The attorney asked me whether my sister had ever signed anything giving her husband an interest in the storage unit. I said no, and I told him the unit had been rented in both my sister’s and my names since our parents died. He asked me to bring him the original rental agreement and my mother’s will. I found both that evening, and there was something I hadn’t noticed before. My mother had specifically listed the storage unit and everything inside it as property belonging to her two daughters equally, with her jewelry and documents to be divided according to a separate letter. Her husband wasn’t mentioned anywhere.
The attorney then told me something worse. My sister’s husband had already contacted the storage company two days after her death and claimed he was the surviving spouse and therefore entitled to access. They had refused because his name wasn’t on the account. He had apparently been telling his children what furniture and jewelry they would receive before anyone had even opened a box. I gave the attorney the messages he’d sent me about the items, and he asked me to save every one of them. Then he contacted the storage company and had them place a legal hold on the unit so nobody could enter without written authorization.
A week later, we opened it with the attorney and an independent witness present. Everything was still there, including the jewelry my mother had specifically left to my sister and me. My sister’s husband stood outside the entire time and kept asking when he could “pick up his half.” The attorney finally told him there was no half because the title and estate documents said otherwise. He became furious and said my sister would never have wanted him treated like a stranger. I told him she had spent thirty years making sure her mother and I would have that storage unit together, and three days after her funeral was far too soon to rewrite what she had left behind.
