My Heritage

First in a Series:

My brother called yesterday with some news. He and my sister are the executors of our parents will. He had news that the estate will be settled next week. With the settlement comes the final step of knowing that our parents farm that they worked so hard on, will stay in our family. The farm is a beautiful piece of land in southeastern Pennsylvania. The house was built before the Revolutionary War.

It was a working farm; my Dad raised Holstein cows, chickens, and hogs and farmed the land for crops.

The farm will stay in our family due to the foresight of three of my brothers. They put their heads together, looked at resources, talked to lawyers, etc. You see, my parents did not believe in doing what so many families have done over the years with their farms. They did not believe in taking steps to “protect” it from a nursing home eventually taking the farm. We tried to tell them that if they wanted the farm to stay in the family, that it likely would be impossible because none of the 6 of us would be able to afford to buy it with the skyrocketing land values in that area!

When I would be home visiting I would bemoan that fact to my Mother, and she would tell me, “well, what will be will be, the farm is for Dad and I to get us through our old age, and if it needs to eventually be sold for nursing care, that’s what will be,” she would then say, “We do not believe that we should depend on the taxpayers to pay to take care of us, when we have an asset, that is just not right”. Well, I always commented that “Yes, Mom, it’s really not right, but everyone else takes steps to protect”… “Well,” she would say, “we are not everyone else, we do what’s right”.

Many times I would cry when I was home, looking at the land and realizing someday it most likely would be owned by “strangers”. I always thought this would be especially hard for our youngest sibling, my sister, who had purchased a piece of the farm from Mom and Dad, right up from the house, along the road, and built their home. I knew my brothers were concerned about losing it too. Mark still lived there, and took over the farming when Dad couldn’t anymore, due to health. All the boys hunted in the woodland. They all cut wood every fall to supplement heating costs at their home, and one of them always expressed interest in living there someday. None of them would be financially able to purchase the farm.

Well, as I said, they did look at the future and did some “legwork”. They worked with my parents on what the lawyers would call “estate” planning. The farm would be subdivided, with the knowledge that none of the land would be sold until Mom and Dad needed the money, then each piece would be sold and that money used, when that money was depleted, another lot would be sold. It was agreed that only a family member would purchase the “pieces” when the time came, if at all possible. Two of the boys eventually would want to buy a lot, and the third brother was definitely interested in buying the lot that the house was on, IF financially he was able. He would be the first to take a mortgage and make the purchase, as he and his wife were interested in living there and making improvements on the house. The wooded land would be the last to be sold.

Our Mother managed the finances for the farm and managed the money. She was always a smart money manager, and made a little go far. She had foresight that none of us would think of and when she told us about it we thought she was very foolish. One time back in the early ‘90’s, she told us that she had been paying a few years on what she called “Nursing Home Insurance”, now it is more commonly called “Long Care Insurance”. She told me what she paid a year, (a lot!) It was quite a struggle for her to come up with that annual premium, but she always managed. We questioned the wisdom of spending so much money for something that might never be used. She told us that it would provide two years worth of nursing home care, for each of them. I guess she really was thinking of protecting the farm, and this was their way of providing 2 years worth of protection, against it having to be sold. Well, she was the smart one after all! Both Mother and Dad needed to enter the nursing home due health reasons. Much as we tried to keep them out, Mother was right in saying “everyone is living longer these days, and so many end up in a home”. Dad was not in the home 2 years, before passing. Mother started private paying, I believe about 6 months before she died, and wow does the money go fast with private pay! We could see down the road that the first piece of land would soon need to be sold.

The last lot to be sold would be the wooded land. Since probably none of us would be able to afford that piece, we all hoped that the money from the other lots would last, before having to sell it. But, if so, we would deal with it at the time and if none of us could afford it, we would offer it to other relatives. If it needed to be sold to strangers, so be it, as our Mother said. We would be doing what they wished, and we would have to accept it.

In the next week, I will blog more about the farm, its past and its future.

I should tell you, that Mom and Dad both knew of the estate planning and approved of it.

We admire our parents that they refused to live out their lives on the taxpayers’ money. They always set a good example for us, and this was another example of the right attitude to have. As I’ve said before, we had wonderful parents who were good role models for their children. Thank you Mom and Dad!