Rental property in mother's irrevocable trust, now she wants to sell
EDIT: ***Never mind any of this!*** According to my brother, it's a revocable trust; my mother misstated that it's irrevocable. Good. Freaking. Grief.
Hi all,
I was wondering if any folks could offer insight into how things would work if my mother, a resident of Massachusetts, wants to sell a rental property that she put in the irrrevocable trust, whether the proceeds of the sale could go back into the trust, etc. I will consult an estate planning attorney as well, but I was curious if I could get an initial sense of things from here.
My mother set up an irrevocable trust after the death of my father in which she has me and my brother as both the trustees and beneficiaries due to the high degree of trust that we will carry out her wishes. She had included her rental property in the trust and is under the mistaken impression that she has to sell the property off before she dies. She's also made recent remarks that at age 75, she is getting too old to be a landlady and wishes she could travel during the summers instead of sticking around to ensure the leases and tenant turnovers for this rental property to college students goes smoothly. If you looked on other parts of Reddit, you could see that I tried very hard to get recommendations for property managers to handle the day-to-day management of the property; despite getting several great names and having conference calls with multiple prospects, she refuses to believe that property managers can help her rent out the property and thinks they're essentially a scam to get a list of repair people, which she explains she already has. My brother and I were at our wits end trying to advise her to renovate one of the two units using above board contractors and going through proper permitting processes, but she also refused this. She ended up doing a complete update for 80K this summer using the unlicensed/ uncertified under the table person from the same immigrant community that her friends who are landladies from this same community used for their renovation projects. It actually looks pretty good, and I guess the unlicensed guy knows some licensed electricians and plumbers who were able to pull permits on his behalf? I don't know if this is some kind of kick-back scheme or how it all was done both because my mom was being super secretive and doesn't care/is clueless about details in any case (she somehow paid the guy 80K and only knows his first name in their native language!).
At this point, before she further damages the value of the property through her "repairs" and "renovations" (she is a 4'9" force of nature who managed to browbeat the unlicensed guy into some kind of slapdash cheap repair of the pipe that carries waste water out of the house through the whole length of the basement, even though he initially wasn't comfortable doing that and was trying to explain that the whole system needed to be replaced), we realize it would be best for her to just sell the property, despite the fact that she'll need to pay an estate planning attorney more fees (she does not love spending money on such things, if you haven't caught on) and doesn't need to sell it in the first place (which she also refuses to believe). Even if we managed to convince her to hire a property manager, she likely would get fired as a client right away, since she would not be willing to do any repairs or further renovations the proper way.
Side note: re all the things she refuses to believe, my brother and I are having difficulty determining if this is just her usual stubborn as all heck nature, or if there may be the start of something neurodegenerative going on in addition. She unwittingly signed herself up for an Alzheimer's research study for the free coupon at CVS (thank god, she never ever otherwise would have willingly gotten herself evaluated!), and although she has some protein biomarkers in her blood, the diagnostic value of these biomarkers is controversial, and her performance on the comprehensive neuropsychological testing has been stably in the mild cognitive impairment range, meaning it's below her premorbid functioning and not normal, but also not low enough (yet?) to meet criteria for dementia. I suppose at some point down the line, if her POA for estate gets activated, my brother could manage renovations and what not with the property manager (I'm the HCP since I'm a healthcare professional). However, the non-renovated unit is getting to be in bad shape, and the student renters apparently are having more and more issues with it; my mother's current plan is to bring in the same under the table guy to redo the downstairs next summer, then sell.