21 January 2020

Local gossip and photos

I use the term gossip with some hesitation. Nothing bad was said about anybody, really, and certainly not about anybody still living. Yesterday I went to get my hair cut. The young woman who owns and operates the salon de coiffure is very talkative. She has a three-year-old daughter and she is pregnant again because she and her husband wanted to have two children but no more. And she recently learned that she'll be having twins this time! She said she cried for weeks when she found out she'd soon have three young children. Yesterday was my first haircut since early October.

It seems also that the coiffeuse had an aunt, or great aunt, who passed away recently at the age of 96. She left a big mess behind because she either kept a lot of secrets or simply didn't remember things, write them down, or confide in anyone in her family about her life, possessions, or net worth. She died with no heirs and no last will and testament. Everybody just assumed the woman had drawn up a will.

She was not a blood relative of the coiffeuse or her mother. She had been married to their uncle, who was a blood relative and who passed away in 2006. Still, the coiffeuse and her mother took care of their aunt. The mother would go get her aunt almost every weekend and take her to her house, where she would cook her a good lunch — even though the aunt would no longer allow her niece to enter her house. They invited the aunt to Christmas and Easter dinners, and to family birthday parties. The aunt admitted, I gathered, that the house was a mess and she'd prefer that nobody see it.

A few years ago, the aunt told her niece that she could no longer go the the supermarket or do other shopping because her car was so old and unreliable that she was afraid to drive it. So the niece, mother of the coiffeuse, bought her aunt a car. The aunt would always plead poverty. I don't have any money, she would say, so I couldn't bring a gift to the birthday party you invited me to. The family took the aunt's word for it.

When the aunt died, the notaire handling her estate told the coiffeuse and her mother that he wanted them to go and clean up their aunt's house, and especially go through papers to see what they could find. Even though they weren't legal heirs, they could keep things like family photographs and other small objects that had sentimental value. All of the aunt's estate — anything that had any monetary value — would go to the French state because the woman was sans héritiers et sans testament.

The coiffeuse said her aunt's house was piled from floor to ceiling with who knows what all — every room. Outbuildings too. She said she herself spent two days cleaning out and going through what just was stored in the bathroom. And there, she found bank statements showing that the aunt actually did have a certain amount of money in the bank. She might have forgotten about that particular account, or might have though it was an account in francs, not euros, and therefore it was not a significant amount. (The euro is worth a fixed rate of about 6.56 French francs.) Speaking of francs, the aunt had never converted into euros the franc banknotes she kept in the house. The deadline for doing that passed years ago. The coiffeuse and her mother found 30 thousand francs (the equivalent of about five thousand euros) in cash in one drawer at their aunt's house.

And then, a few minutes later, the coiffeuse found a bank statement revealing that her aunt had another account, with a different bank. The mother of the coiffeuse is a banker herself, and she said she couldn't believe her aunt had an account at that particular bank. C'est la banque des riches ! is what she said to her daughter.

That second account had 400,000 euros in it! All that money will go to the state. The uncle who died in 2006 was a collector of classic cars and classic farm machinery. All that will be sold at auction and the proceeds will go to the state. The same applies to all the furnishings in the house, the house itself, the outbuildings, and the land, which is evidently extensive. Even the car that the mother of the coiffeuse bought for her aunt will be sold at auction and the money will go to the state. Let that be a lesson to us all. The aunt who died always resented having to pay taxes, and now all she hoarded goes to the tax authorities.

P.S. I took the photos in this post yesterday afternoon. We are in the middle of a sunny and dry, but cold, weather pattern right now.

22 comments:

  1. Well if anyone reading this doesn't have a will, this should persuade them to do it immediately!
    My affairs are all in order and have been for years. A cautionary tale indeed.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hmmm, oh what tangled webs we weave...an intriguing tale! 30,000 expired francs. She coulda taken a vacation somewhere warm with that. Reminds me of Aunt Ada in "Cold Comfort Farm."

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I don't know that book, nor the movie based on it. Thanks for telling me about it.

      Delete
    2. The 1995 movie is wonderful with a first rate cast, from Ian McKellen, Rufus Sewell, to Stephen Fry and, of course, Kate Beckinsale.

      Delete
  3. The aunt sounds like a rather nasty person in the end, to have accepted a car from her niece when she could afford one herself, and not to have given the niece anything.
    At least the money will go to the state and not to some blood relative who never did anything for the aunt. That's some comfort.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The family involved seems to think the woman really didn't know what was going on.

      Delete
  4. Considering the meanness of the old lady, I would have be inclined to say to the notaire that if the state are getting all the money they can afford to pay someone to clear the place out! Once I had had the chance to select a few chosen mementos, that is!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. You probably can't have it both ways, Jean. Either you participate or you don't. And for Americans reading this, I think the meaning of "meanness" is significantly different in GB compared to the meaning in North America. Saying somebody who is "mean" in GB seems to equate with being stingy (radin in French). In North America, being "mean" is the same as being "nasty" or "malicious" or "small-minded" (mesquin in French). Some people who are stingy are not malicious at all.

      Delete
    2. Interesting point about the use of the word "mean"!
      In the UK it can mean both things, depending on the context. Mean as in stingy/uncharitable or mean as in unkind/harsh, but mostly stingy I think.

      Delete
    3. After looking at dictionaries, I think the French word mesquin means both things too. In North America, "mean" doesn't really have the meaning "stingy" or "tight" unless that too is part of the aspect of "pettiness" assigned to the individual. I've often been thrown off by the British use of "mean" or "meanness". When somebody who's especially disagreeable and critical lives a long life, people in the U.S. or at least N.C. sometimes wonder what keeps that person going. "Pure meanness" is a frequent answer. Another word for "mean" is "ugly" as in "ugly behavior."

      Delete
    4. It occurs to me that in my dialect somebody who pretends not to have any money but really does is stingy. Somebody who admits to having a lot of money and isn't willing to help others in need is just mean.

      Delete
  5. I made my first will I was 19 years old! Quite a few years ago.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. When I was 19, I owned absolutely nothing but the clothes on my back. What was there to put in a will?

      Delete
    2. Well, you just can say, I leave all my possessions (whatever they are or are not) to X... You can come up with some money or something else in the meantime.

      Delete
  6. O/T I just cilcked on the wrong place on my tablet and now I'm wondering what ever happened not to Baby Jane, but to Martine whose last post was on January 1, 2018. She was supposed to have retired six months later. I do hope she's well and enjoying a peaceful retirement.

    ReplyDelete
  7. What a sad tale- especially all those francs going to waste!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Evelyn, that was my first thought, how the old lady or her niece could have enjoyed that money!

      Delete
  8. I got the idea somewhere that French law says property goes to relatives if not otherwise specified. Which reminds me, it's time for a will update.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The woman who died had no living children, no living siblings, and of course no living parents. That's what I understood. She had inherited everything from her husband when he died, because they had no children. So she had no "automatic" heirs, and no will. That's my understanding, anyway.

      Delete
  9. I can understand the estate reverting to the state if there are no legal heirs, but at least I trust that the lady in question invoiced the notaire for the work involved in clearing the house and checking the documents - at maybe something like the notaire's hourly rate?

    A distant relative I knew nothing of apparently died intestate some ten years ago: one of those heir-hunting companies contacted another cousin about it, and for at least the last year or more it's all been tied up between them, the relevant government office and their appointed executor lawyers - tales of lost documents, staff leaving without handover records. Once one estimates the likely number of actual relatives within the right degree of cousinage, we might be lucky to get the price of a meal.

    ReplyDelete

What's on your mind? Qu'avez-vous à me dire ?