WWQP Bulletin Board Chat

Is it just me... or is technology making things more ponderous???

I tried to sign on the other day at lunch time. I was at work. Nothing I did seemed to work to allow me to post something. So I had to look at Google's FAQ page. The things suggested (including resetting my password, turning on cookies-even though they were already on-, and clearing my cookie cache) did not work. So I dug further. Finally, after clicking on a link that said "this did not help and my problem is still not solved" I came to a page that suggested that if I was behind a firewall, I should talk with my system administrator.
**Sigh** Yes, that would be the problem. My work computer is behind a firewall. So no more lunchtime posts for me! I will have to wait until I am home at my very own unprotected computer. Well...maybe not so unprotected. But it is a Mac, and that helps.
So I signed on tonight and voilá.... here I am.
Does anyone speak French fluently? Wanna go on a vacation to St. Martin????? I have a problem. My mother and father owned a 1/3 share of a condo in St. Martin. When my mother died, my father found out that although her will said he got everything, French law does not agree. My father owned 1/4 of my mother's interest of that 1/2 of a 1/3 share of the condo..... and each of the three children owned a 1/4 share of that 1/2 of a 1/3 share. Lost yet??? :-O
For him to sell the 1/3 share of the condo, he would have to get us to sign over our 1/4 of our mother's interest to him. Then he would again have the complete 1/3 share of the condo and could sell it. He even had a buyer... one of the other partners wanted his share. To do this in St. Martin, you need a notaire. A special sort of lawyer who takes care of real estate transactions.
Two years later, my father was STILL trying to get the notaires to do the paperwork. Life there is on island time.... what's the hurry? When he was diagnosed with a bile duct tumor, he knew he had very little time left. So in January, he wrote to them saying he did not have much time to settle this matter. About mid March, the paperwork finally arrived. However, he was really sick after doing some chemo and told Joyce (my recently acquired step-mother) to take the paperwork home and put it on the desk. He would take care of it when he got home from the hospital. As you can guess.... he never made it home. He died on April 1, 2007.
Since he did not execute the documents.... we had to start over! We now owned 1/4 each of our father's share (including his 1/4 of my mother's share). We retained a French speaking attorney and he got all of the paperwork together... even information about Joyce since now she would own some of this too! (What a MESS) There was a prenuptial agreement, but it wasn't clear if French law would honor it or not. Well.... the French speaking attorney left the firm and although the notaires have had the paperwork for 4 months, nothing has been done.
April 1st, I sent out an email to the notaire. I wrote it in French with the help of forum at wordreference.com. I sent that off.... and as you might guess, no reply as yet. **sigh**
So I am running out of tricks.... If I get no reply by the end of next week, I guess I'll have to look for another French speaking attorney and have them phone these guys.
If they won't respond to the phone call, then I will have to go down there and see what I can do in person. Any suggestions?

Labels: the exasperating bureaucrats

posted by astroiguana @ 7:28 PM