Homicide Adjacent

Murder house sold! Estate taxes sorted! Everything ready to disperse and be done with the financial end of this disaster… except.

Unfortunately! According to the will, all Victim’s money should go to Aggressor (wow, that decision aged like milk, as they say).

Fortunately! There is this thing called the Slayer Law, and as soon as Aggressor is declared guilty, all money will be dispersed to Victim’s loved ones.

Unfortunately! Trial has been put on permanent hiatus.

Fortunately! You can sue to have someone legally declared a slayer, and I guess it (fortunately? Unfortunately? I don’t know anymore) doesn’t even mess up Aggressor’s legal strategy in criminal court (somehow? According to someone? This seems dubious) or hurt the civil case even though Aggressor is technically not guilty yet (I am so out of my league). Technically I guess it is possible to thread a needle of not hurting Aggressor’s right to a fair criminal trial while still attempting to cut them out of a will and accuse them of murder.

Unfortunately! (Ha, did you think we were done?) It costs an estimated 25K to go through with this civil suit.

Theoretically! You might spend that money and the criminal trial could roll up and do the work for you all for free like… months later? Years later? Or Aggressor could die and then I don’t know what would happen.

Anyway, for those of you looking at this as a roadmap, this is the stage when relatives start wondering, Lo these two years out, why you are sitting on a lump of cash that is in part theirs. Even circumstances in which they trust when you explain the situation, and they know on an intellectual level you are not dipping into that lump of cash to use at your disposal while keeping it away from everyone else?

Yeah, there’s still that swirl of tension. There is a pile of money and a pile of grief and everyone gets triple helpings from one and none from the other, even though holy shit, this is really a time in the history of our lives where everyone could use some sympathy cash.