This story started last spring, somewhere at the beginning of May, when my younger son came home for a couple of weeks, and I finally decided to make my move.
It's been almost 27 years since my dad passed away, and when I inherited a piece of land with a small cottage from him in the northern continental part of the country.
He gave me the whole property while he was still alive, and I regularly took care of it and used it. Unfortunately, this donation was not made in writing. At that time, I really didn't care about it, and even less could predict or expect that a sudden, short, but severe illness would take him away in less than two months.
And, of course, after his death, some greedy relatives who didn't care about my dad at all while he was alive suddenly felt entitled to ask for their hereditary share.
As usually happens in life, my father's death occurred at one of the most difficult times in my life when I didn't have the energy or even less financial strength to go through a long and exhausting legal battle, and they took what they could.
So, since I am not the only heir, for all these 26 long years, I have been waiting for the other two co-owners to show some interest and initiative about that property. But they didn't!
In their greedy miscalculation, they thought they had gained enormous wealth. However, they did not because the property's market price was and still is very low. So, all they did was break into the house (as they had never been in possession and never had the keys), take what they deemed valuable, devastate it, and leave the whole property abandoned.
Although the property doesn't have some significant market value, it has a considerable emotional value for me. At first, it has been in the family for ages. My father inherited it from his mother, and she inherited it from her parents, and so on. Secondly, and maybe even more important to me, my children have fond memories from their childhood when they spent time on the farm with my father, their grandfather, who led them through the surrounding hills, through the forest, taught them how to make a fire, chop wood, and much more.
Even apart from the beautiful nature of the location and the estate's surroundings, these two things would be my best answer to the question: Why?!
However, one co-owner died in the meantime, and its heirs are not interested in keeping the property. The other co-owner doesn't live in the country and hasn't visited it since 2009, when he left his last devastating touch on the property.
So, last spring, I finally decided to buy out the remaining parts of the estate this way or another, and while waiting for how all of these would roll out to start at least some crucial savings from the total ruin of the estate.
When we arrived there in May last year, it wasn't easy to see what the estate had become. The vegetation had turned into a small jungle, the house's doors were broken, and the whole house was open. There was a ton of trash and broken things in the house.
The roof was full of broken tiles from fallen trees, but luckily, it wasn't leaking. However, one tree was leaning dangerously against the house and threatening to collapse a good part of the remaining healthy roof.
Due to years of lack of maintenance and the proximity to the forest, moisture seeped into the house, seeping out of every pore, and the air was hard to breathe.
We also found out that some neighbors took the liberty (as nobody was there for ages) of expanding onto the property along the edges and even built a road down the very middle of it.
That was our starting point!
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