My husband and I have cared for an elderly lady for the last 20 yrs. She had no immediate family, with the exception of a few nieces and nephews. Who did nothing for her. She pasted away in December. We tried talking to her so called family, about returning the things that we had bought her over the years and the items that she wanted us to have of hers. None of them will speak with us on it except to say. When you buy things for someone it is then theirs. And I could not have the things that I know she even told them to give me at her death. Now they are having an estate sale this weekend. I guess I would like to know if there is anything that I can do, to retain those items before the sale?

Not really. If she had wanted to to have certain things, she should have left them to you by will. And as far as the things you gave her, her relatives are correct: if you gave them to her they belonged to her, and after her death, to her estate.

It doesn't appear that you had an agreement to be compensated for the care you gave her. But if you did, you would file a claim with the decedent's estate. If they have not applied to probate court for the establishment of a probate case you would possibly have a long shot, but not a very good one.

Were you compensated for the care you gave? Do you have anything in writing about it? Were you live in care givers?

But I tend to agree with AK, it doesn't appear you have any claim.

I see no claim, you could have filed and sued the estate if you had unpaid wages for your service. If she wanted to leave you anything, that needed to be done in a will.

Thank you for the imformation. She really didn't have a will, but verbablly told her niece handling everything what she wanted. I was just curious.

We stayed with her at times when she needed someone. And we never received any type of payment for what we did, she would just say that we would be compensated when she died. I have documents of times I had to do things for her. But was just curious if I could be reimbursed for my time and expenses that it costed me. Thanks for the input.

"Reimbursed when I died" is meaningless. You MIGHT have a chance of she said, "I'm keeping track and you'll be compensated $X an hour when I die."

You could file against the Estate but I think you will lose.