My Wife's parents started a divorce in 2004 which lasted until 2009. I have stories that could fill a book because we got dragged into it. Wife hid all her assets, a lot of it was found but didn't get in trouble. Lots of half truths and not full truths. Like, I want half his 401k and half is company retirement. We helped Dad out because Mom's a bitch and fucking him over hard, that and his lawer was worthless... Well he had three and they all were crap. So we found she had a 401k and a company retirement plan. This was later into the process so it was amended so that instead of her getting 1/2 of everything, she only got enough of the 401k so that they had equal halfs considering her 401k.
Other stupid shit, he was so desperate to get out that he offered the house and he would keep the debt. Well he said you can have all the assets I will take all the debt but I want the farmland. She came out way ahead with that because debt vs assets, there was still money owed on the land so he would have some land and massive debt while she would have a 1/3 mil home paid off and no debt. Even if he sold the land for top dollar he wouldn't be able to come close to even. She wanted all that + 1/2 the land.
We knocked some sense into him and they went into arbitration? I think that is the term and decided on one thing at a time. They both decided neither want the home but that they didn't want to sell it to anyone because he build the house. They offered it up to the kids but we were the only ones who could even possibly come up with the finances and were even in the area. I tried to talk my wife out of it but I reluctantly went along with it. That is another story, I will get to that.
The land he wanted bad but they ended up splitting the land 50/50 and as well the debt on the land. I think in all they both walked away with 45k debt free as their used the house sale to pay off the debt and split the assets. They agreed she keeps her car and he his truck. Then there was the camper, boat and trailer. He wanted the boat for the boat trailer but this fighting kept going in circles. She basically either wanted it all or for him to just not get what he wants so I proposed he ask for what he doesn't want and when she demands it, play the fine! if you are going to make my life miserable card lets just get this over with and it worked. She ended up with a MASSIVE triple axle 5th wheel trailer and no means to move it. He got the boat and the boat trailer. The camper was traded off for the jeep after some fight. He and his dad built the Jeep togetrher and she knew he wanted it. They plaid the over appraisal game and so in order to get it he had to trade up for over 2x what it was worth.
As far as the home we said we weren't getting in the middle of their fight. If we buy it, we will get it appraised and pay what it was appraised at. They agreed. No one has been at the house in years and when the appraisal comes in super low we find the place has been trashed. I knew My father-in-law and I could fix it up so we went with it because in our eyes this was a good deal.
We put our home up for sale and get a buyer right away, we had it planned out to close on the family home and then next week our old home. We were going to move into the home within that week. But Mom decides she wont move out and plays the eminent domain card. She is so fucking lazy... We get into fights with her brother and sister because they didn't think we paid enough for the house. Oh yeah and she tried to put all these weird stipulations into the closing agreement. Live we aren't allowed to sell it for 5 years and if we do after 5 years we have to offer it to her first. There were some other weird things having to do with us owing her a % of the closing costs we were paying. I actually got up and started to walk out of the room during closing when I caught all this. I was walking down the hall when her lawyer said they would pull the language.
After a month of fighting her to get out of the house, at this point I started moving in and my father in law was there helping me clean up she finally gives up after finding out while we cannot kick her out she cannot stop us from moving in.
but we get out there to find the place trashed. She is a hoarder and it got out of control in these couple years. I am not exaggerating, I rented a tandem box truck and hauled 6 loads strait to the dump, not the transfer station, I drove it myself to the top of the pile as I was instructed and unloaded. It was horrific, knee high of you name it. I had to replace most flooring and some sheet rock. Took a couple years of work. When we were moving in her brother would be out there trying to prevent me from coming in, saying he would call the police and I said fine do it I own the fucking place. Then he goes off about I know what you're going to do, you are going to clean this place up and sell it for a profit. I'm like shit, great idea! ooh ooh I know what you're going to do, you FIL is going to build next door and you are going to let him use your well! WUT, it would be cheaper to just dig a new well but who fucking cares, if I want to spend many times more to dig in a line, it is my damn well now.
I hate my MIL.