My Brother Was Next Of Kin For Our Brother He Suffers From Health Issues Our Brother Died Suddenly

[cosh28]

When the police were informing my brother of his death he is in a care home his wife was there the police gave her my brothers house keys without asking if there was a member of the family to attend to his funeral his home possesions valuables family photographs and keepsakes she had my phone no instead she got her friends to take everything my brother owned including private documents and bank cards passport driving licence credit card i only found out his home was cleared when i contacted his housing dept to report his death when i asked where his property was she told me it had been sold i asked about his personal and family effects photos docomunts etc she told me she got rid of them this woman is a alcaholic and has been seperated from my brother in the care home for 3years she was in the right place at the right time should the police have not made enquires into her credability being only connected through marriage

[Peter Pedant]

// This is very muddled. I can't make out what's happened//

erm no I can understand what happened
as it almost happened to me

Cosh 28 is saying there was a death
the police gave the keys to the 'wrong' person who emptied the house and sold the contents
over and above the wishes of the rest of the family
who have just found out what happened

Basically this happens cosh and I am not sure what you can do about it

If you are not there at the time
then there is no way you can intervene
The money has gone down the throat of the alcoholic and so 'has gone'

The police make their enquiries
follow their own rules - which are heavily biassed towards the so called 'next-of-kin' and get on with doing something else.

In my own case - I was on the spot - and had the (unproved) will, waved it around alot and said "you must deal with this man ( executor)" and they STILL insisted on keeping the keys to the house and the dead mans wallet for the 'next of kin' which I ( actually the executor ) collected SIX months later. ( we had duplicate keys )
we were looked on as interfering interlopers even tho the next of kin's fave phrase was "I cant afford to bury him" which he used at every opportunity - we did ( bury him)

In law - the WIFE is the inheritor of all your brothers stuff and so had a right to do what she did - sell some and throw away the rest.

sorry

[jackthehat]

PP - She was NoK's wife.....NOT the deceased.

By the sounds of it, there may be other siblings (reading through other threads)...
Although I agree that there is probably nothing to be done, now. :(

[jackthehat]

And since the death of Brother A, Brother B has also passed away.
The alcoholic wife would be entitled to HIS estate.

[Peter Pedant]

thx JTH

I think this is "a case of possession is 9/10ths of the law"

[ and would you believe ( cue X files or twilight zone music - do0-doo-doo-dooo)] I was rung during this and asked " Bills just died how do I register the death ?"

weird - CGJung had something to say about that

[EDDIE51]

From the question ''When the police were informing my brother of his death he is in a care home his wife was there the police gave her my brothers house keys''

[cosh28]

HI THANK YOU ALL FOR YOUR RESPONSE TO MY QUESTION I APOLOGISE FOR THE LACK OF PUNCTUATION MARKS AND FOR THE WAY IT HAS COME ACROSS MY HANDS ARE TWISTED AND MY FINGERS HAVE LITTLE SENSATION IN THEM I SUFFER FROM DEGENERATE OSTEOPHOROSIS OSTEO ARTHRITIS &muscle&nerve damage this makes typing & writing very painfull and difficult what takkes most people ten mins to type it can take me a hour or more i make a lot of mistakes i try to rectify all of them but often miss some i have degenerate cervical spondylosiss having to l9ok down makes my neck sore to please do not take this explanation for the remarks some have made about by grammer i only wish to give you a explanation for it . am a intelligent woman with a masters degree and phd it is my inherited conditions and bad luck that they are degenerate these conditions usually appear when your over well over 60 and they worsen as you get older mine begain when i was 43 and at the top of my career ladder im a bio-nuc engineer i worked for the MOD at Faslane Nuclear Sub Base for over 20years reaching the position of Head of tec& Engineering had it not been for debilitating impact these conditions have i would not have early retirement 2years ago but this is my life and i live it my way im a survivor im independant lifes to short to give into its setbacks i have lost both my younger brothers in 21days this woman had nothing to do with my brother who died 3weeks ago other than being the wife of my brother she abandoned 2years ago he was in a care home while she lived in his house hes dead now i buried him on friday what she did with my brothers property his estate 3weeks ago selling his possesions household effects the money she got for them shes welcome to,its the personal family effects that were my mums,my sisters,my.sons and my brothers, that we hadnt got round unpacking stored in his flat of no value to her priceless to me,that she took and has said to people i know she got rid of them,instead of giving them to me to share among his descendants thats the crime

[EDDIE51]

I am very sorry to hear of your condition and how you have become less able to type. I am also sorry about what the wife did but I do not see that now there is anything that can be done about it.
The goods and possessions are gone , the wife has spent the money on drink so it will never be recovered.
However as far as I can understand the police acted correctly. She was still his wife even though they were separated and legally she was the next of kin and gets the estate. Things would have been different if they had actually divorced rather than just separated.

[fiction-factory]

Eddie- i think JTH unpicked this and it wasn't the deceased's wife- it was the wife of the brother of the deceased

[jackthehat]

Eddie - Are you ignoring what I am saying?

To start with the Alcoholic woman was the Wife of the decesaed brother's NoK.
Then she became a widow when her own husband died 3 weeks later...

[EDDIE51]

^^ Ok, But with the 2 brothers both passing away within 3 weeks ( I think that is what happened) the wife of one of the brothers may well have been next of kin. In any case the cash has been spent on booze by the alcoholic wife so it will never be seen again. It would have been worth fighting if there was a house involved but as said the deceased lived in social housing. The total cash was probably just a couple of hundred £s if that .

[Old_Geezer]

So it boils down to whether cosh is hoping to get something from the estate, or simply wants to bring the police to book ?

What was the conclusion for both scenarios ?