OK, WTF?

In the ongoing saga of Schrodinger's Inheritance, DH's mom called the accountant today. For some reason, he says tax purposes, he wants to wait until six months out from the death to start distributing the stock to the heirs. Which would mean early July, instead of any time now as we'd been expecting/hoping.

Does this make any sense at all to those who are familiar with such things?

Grr. It's driving me crazy to have all this money in a single stock and have no power to get it safely diversified.

We waited to distribute my grandmother's estate but I don't remember why. It's possible that waiting will mean you don't have to differentiate between short-term and long-term holdings which could save a bunch in taxes. It's also possible, though I'm just guessing, that keeping the estate in stocks rather than converting to cash will keep the estate taxes lower (if they even apply at all). In any case, it definitely sounds like a normal thing to happen.

Thanks, -t. It sounded fishy to me, but I've never inherited anything myself, and I've never even been around anyone who dealt with an estate of this scale. What we're due is a tiny, tiny fraction of the whole, and assuming the stock doesn't collapse it's enough to change our lives.

Which is why I'm so anxious about this. I'm afraid it's somehow going to disappear, because why should we magically get out of debt, have a down payment for a house, and a college fund for our kids? It's not like we earned it.

ETA as I was just telling DH, the whole thing feels like something out of a book, and not one set in this century or the previous one. It's only marginally more real to me than if we suddenly got a call from a British lawyer telling us he's the 8th cousin and only heir to the recently deceased Duke of Shaftington (Roderick, Duke of Shaftington being our joke name for the stereotypical aristocratic romance hero), and we now own a sprawling estate, a fortune in pounds sterling, and I'm suddenly Her Grace and my daughter is Lady Annabel. So I feel like that now that I've finally started believing in the money and making plans for how best to spend and invest it, of course it's going to disappear somehow.

It's driving me crazy to have all this money in a single stock and have no power to get it safely diversified... I'm afraid it's somehow going to disappear.

I understand completely. I hate that my sister is executrix of my Dad's trust. It's not a lot of money to her, so she's willing to buy single stocks, which I would never do. When one of her "bets" paid off (and grew to the point where it was a third of the trust), she said she regretted not putting the whole trust in that one stock. I told her that she should consider selling off half the profit to put it back in mutual funds, and, oh yeah, please don't screw around anymore with money that we (my brother and me) are really counting on to pay off debt.

oooh. I'm looking at a slideshow of the superhero costumes at the Met, and (not sure if this link will work but) I want this one SO BAD! OOoooh (Edit: hmm, link doesn't go directly to it, just the slideshow...it's #10)

I would like to fire the maid that cleans our bedroom. Sadly there is no maid.

Still no sign of cellphone

Which slide, meara? That spiderweb dress in the first one is gorgeous.

ION, DH just sent me the following, which he is planning to send to the next one of our conservative relatives who forwards an urban legend:

Everyone --

Look, I know you want to send all of us this amazing e-mail about how Obama is a secret Muslim or how Mexicans are stealing our jobs or whatever, but look.

Every time you send one of these e-mails, Bill Gates and Warren Buffett gives $1 to Osama Bin Laden.

Really. I read it on the Internet, so it must be true.

Remember this next time you e-mail me. When you e-mail urban legends, the terrorists have already won.

Oh, gosh, Susan. So tempting, but so probably going to create more furor...

I edited, t--it's slide 10, the leather corset/bustier/thing

Oh, wow!

That's sexy as hell on the mannequin. Picturing it on meara? Cannot function with prospect of that much hotness.