So my weekend was the most crazy of my life which started at 12:30AM Sat morning when we were doing our Kara raid. It was the police asking Melanie to come to the hospital. We get there and find out that Melanie’s dad had died on arrival and there was no way to resuscitate him.
Sat morning we go to his house to look for the will and collect important documents etc. We don’t end up finding a will, but do start the process of getting to know Melanie's little (8 and 10) ½ sisters.
We end up going back to Melanie’s Aunts where we try to find out of there were pre arrangements at a funeral home. I call and cancel his credit cards that I can (visa and Amex) it turns out the store credit cards (Future shop, wall mart etc) are not open on the weekend (?!) even to report a stolen / lost card. So first lesson learned this weekend don’t have your wallet stolen on a weekend.
We don’t find any trace of life insurance or a will, and with Melanies 2 cousins we go back to the house to do a double check. When we get there we see the house is FULL of people. To understand the whole house situation is a little complicated but there are 2 older girls (17 and 19) who have no relation to Melanie’s dad who are the daughters of the two little girls mom. These older girls live full time with their father but spend a lot of time at Melanie’s dads with the 2 little girls. Upon showing up and seeing a ton of people Mel asks essentially everyone who isn’t involved in the welfare of the children to leave. We talk to the little girls who you can imagine are scared that we are going to take them away from everything that they know. The little girls are staying with the neighbor upstairs who has 2 other kids and is used to watching the girls. The 2 older girls are also there and we honestly believe that the 2 little girls are in good hands right now.
The next day (Sun) we wake up and go to funeral home A they had told us on sat when we had called that he had pre arranged a lot next to his GF (the dead mother of the little girls) we all thought well at least there is that. So we arrive to the place and the first thing they tell us is that nope there is nothing pre arranged at all. That they had the body and whatever we want to do is ok. We go through the process when we get to what things are going to cost Mel’s Aunt starts going WTF when they want to charge $2500 for the whole in the ground for his ashes and the plaque. She had just buried her husband’s sister at another place and knew it was less then a thousand. We then basically tell them we are going to go elsewhere.
We decide to go see the girls as it was her birthday, we had a Melanie’s mom go get her a present. It seems as though a few of the girls relatives in Quebec city didn’t hear that the birthday party was cancelled and showed up. We got to the house and Melanie’s aunts speak to all of them and the posturing for the kids begins.
We end up going to the funeral home B which I like a lot better anyways (much nicer environment) and all the arrangements get done.
We go back to see the girls with Melanie’s brother (oh hes 17 I know I haven’t mentioned him. He has the same parents as Mel.) he stays there and Mel and I come back to my place and we have a few hours to relax.
Today I wake up to a flurry of calls. Melanie’s Aunt was in contact with a notary who has more or less cancelled all of our plans for today which were to go to the bank and see if their was a safety deposit box and the balances on his accounts (to see if he had any money after all.) The notary said that if the government sees you taking an interest they defacto make you executor and therefore responsible for any debts. Since we don’t know if he has any money and we know there is credit card debt, and a line of credit we don’t want to adopt a huge debt.
The 19 yo has thus far indicated she wants to take the kids, with the help of the neighbor upstairs. The notary has indicated already that that is very unlikely going to be a permanent situation. They also advised that Melanie and I go visit the girls daily to make sure that the situation is a good one and see if anything changes. The girls have some family on the mothers side including a grandfather who previously wanted to take the girls but everyone who takes care of the girls now are very much against that and the grandfather and Melanie’s dad apparently were not very fond of each other.
There also is some aunts of the little girls on that side. On Melanie’s side there is of course Melanie, and her Aunts /uncles.
For the time being the kids appear to be in good hands. They finish school in 3 weeks so our intention is to have them finish their school year. I suspect government agencies to get involved soon in fact via a friend of mine I have a backdoor number to a friend of a friend at youth protection services who I will probably speak to today.
So lessons for all of you with kids
- Get life insurance!! If you have it make sure that the policy can be found
- Make a will, make sure it indicates who you want to take care of your kids if you croak.
- Funeral pre-arrangements are a good thing. If you want to make sure everything happens as you want, and make the life easier for the people you leave behind do it.
