Parasite Surveillance

It was really a simple operation as far as surveillance goes.

You just set up shop for the day, or night. Meaning, you park yourself in your vehicle somewhere you hope you won't be noticed so you can observe and photograph a particular house while following all legal parameters.

When I do surveillance that may end up taking hours or days, I often call the local police beforehand and let them know I will be there. I tell them I am a state licensed investigator working a case and explain the nature of my investigation.
That way, when the inevitable happens and a curious neighbors notices me and calls the or 911 everyone knows what's what know what's what. And I remain undisturbed at my vigil.

The house I watched on the day I am writing of, belonged to a widow, we'll call "Mother".
Mother's beloved husband died 3 years earlier. He left a large insurance policy behind. Then Mother died unexpectedly.

My job was to watch the house the day her son, and the two other adult children heard the news. I was to observe and note who came and went. To see if people took things with them. To photograph the comings and goings.

When I do these jobs, I enter the scenario before the estate settles. Sometimes, its before the person is even in the ground, wind, or sea.
It didn't take longer than 1.5 hours when I witnessed and filmed the first theft by an an heir, apparently.

When someone dies, the human parasites emerge from cracks and crannies so fast, it's mind- boggling. Suddenly dead humans acquire monetary value of extreme urgency which, among some families, launches competitive probate actions and dueling-for-dollars dynamics you see.... and still don't want to believe.

And now that the economy is tanking, people are seeing money as their life raft. They believe it is the money that will keep them afloat. Or sink them.

So tonight's blog, a short one because I just got home, is about matters of money, particularly probate.
Probate is a dark and evil place.
And it keeps many investigators like me, legitimately and gainfully employed.

I was hired by Mother's eldest son, an attorney I knew to be kind, trustworthy and a fine human being. He wanted to protect Mother's estate from his two other siblings whose life rafts were full of holes and sinking fast. He wanted a funeral for his mother and then, the reading of the will.

I was parked across the street from Mother's house before sunrise. She just died 10 hours earlier. I didn't expect anything while I sipped slowly on my coffee and watched the neighborhood wake up.

The first visitor arrived just after dawn.

Within the course of an eight-hour day, I filmed both siblings at separate times with their spouses, as they came and went in Mother's house the day after she died and took things with them. Lots of things. On one visit, one of the couples brought their two teenage sons to help with the hauling.

I filmed people enter the house and exit with lamps, framed pictures from the wall, a red velvet chair. There were large cardboard boxes, handfuls of clothes. A jewelry box. Even an entire file cabinet hauled by a father and his two sons. And so it went throughout the course of that day.

People, my client later I.D'd as his siblings and their kids, were in and out of Mother's house robbing her blind.
"It's a good thing she's not alive to see this," the attorney said to me as he shook his head slowly and watched the footage.

The thing was, he explained to me, his Mother had a will. She had wishes. She had desires. She had a sizable estate.

My client, the attorney, had that will in hand. It was a reasonable will, he said. It was fair.
Yet he was the Executor Mother chose. The siblings resented him for that and for his success. So he was the enemy. The siblings, unwilling to wait for the funeral, hired their own attorneys and the probate circus had begun.
After they cleared out Mother's house.

This one probate surveillance was a major lesson learned for this investigator.
Being, how lucky I am to have a family I am certain would never go there.
And how unfortunate it is for those who have families that do.