My Son-in-law Is Waiting For Me To Die To Inherit My $600k Home. He Doesn’t Know I Overheard His Entire Plan. Am I The Jerk For Setting A Trap To Get Him Arrested?

I backed out of the kitchen as quietly as I’d entered. I went to my car and sat there shaking for 20 minutes.

Then I drove to a coffee shop and called my lawyer. Helen Rodriguez had handled Daniel’s estate and helped me with some rental property paperwork a few years back.

She was sharp, direct, and didn’t suffer fools.

“What?” Helen’s voice crackled with anger when I repeated Tyler’s conversation.

“He’s using my daughter, and he’s planning to stay in my house until I die and Rachel inherits.”

“Can you record him?” she asked.

“Oregon’s a one-party consent state. If you can get him saying these things on tape, we’d have strong evidence.”

“Evidence for what?”

“Financial elder abuse, potentially fraud if he’s been forging your signature on anything or accessing your accounts. At minimum, we could get a restraining order and force them to leave. But Barbara, more importantly, your daughter needs to know who she married.”

Over the next month, I became someone I’d never imagined being. I set up a small recording device in the dining room.

I started checking my bank accounts daily. I put a lock on my home office door, and I documented everything.

Tyler noticed.

“Why is your office locked?” he asked one morning, trying the handle with a frown.

“I’m reorganizing my files. Lots of important papers in there.”

His eyes narrowed.

“What kind of papers?”

“Tax documents, investment statements, that sort of thing. Nothing exciting.”

“I could help you organize. I’m good with financial stuff.”

“That’s kind of you, but I’ve got it handled.”

He didn’t like that answer. Over the next week, he became more insistent.

Had I thought about updating my will? Had I designated a power of attorney?

“At your age, with no husband, I should really have someone who could make medical decisions if something happened,” he said.

“I’ve already got all that arranged,” I told him.

“With who? Rachel? Because she’d want me involved in those decisions too.”

“It’s handled, Tyler.”

Seeds of Doubt and Secret Safes

The temperature in the house dropped. Tyler stopped being polite.

He made noise when I was trying to read. He and Rachel had loud arguments in their bedroom, always ending with Rachel crying.

He left messes everywhere, and when I asked him to clean up, he’d sigh dramatically.

“I’m busy, Barbara. I’m trying to build a business. Maybe if you were more supportive instead of nitpicking, I’d be making money already.”

Rachel started avoiding me. When I tried to talk to her alone, she made excuses.

She picked up extra shifts. She came home after I went to bed and left before I woke up.

But I had my recordings. There were hours of Tyler on phone calls talking about “the old lady’s assets” and how he was positioning himself for the inheritance.

I had conversations about how he needed to keep Rachel dependent so she wouldn’t leave him. There were discussions about my house, my retirement accounts, even my life insurance policy, which he’d somehow found out about.

Helen and I built a case. We documented that Tyler hadn’t paid a penny toward household expenses in five months.

We had recordings of him admitting he was using me and manipulating Rachel. We had evidence that he’d been accessing my mail because I’d caught him with a bank statement I hadn’t opened yet.

“He’s planning something,” Helen said during one of our meetings at her office. “Men like this don’t just wait around. He’s going to make a move.”

“What kind of move?”

“Could be anything. Identity theft, forged signatures on financial documents, maybe even trying to get you declared incompetent so Rachel can take over your finances. Has he ever asked about your mental health?”

My stomach dropped; he had. Just last week, he’d made a comment to Rachel in front of me about how I’d seemed “confused” lately.

He claimed I’d forgotten that he’d told me about having friends over, which was a lie. There had been three strange men in my living room at 10 p.m., and I’d had no warning they were coming.

“Mom’s getting older,” Tyler had said with false sympathy. “It’s normal. Memory starts to go.”

Rachel had looked at me with concern, and I’d seen the seed of doubt planted. That’s when I made my decision.

I called Helen and told her we needed to move faster. She agreed.

“Next Wednesday,” Helen said. “I’ll draw up eviction papers. In Oregon, you can evict someone even without a lease if you give proper notice. Meanwhile, we need to secure your assets. I want you to change your bank passwords, put fraud alerts on your credit, and most importantly, I want you to move your valuable documents somewhere he can’t access them.”

I did better than that. I installed a small safe in my bedroom closet and transferred everything important into it.

I moved birth certificates, passports, investment statements, jewelry, and the deed to my house. I set the combination to Daniel’s birthday, something Tyler would never guess.

The day I installed it, Tyler noticed.

“Getting a safe?” he asked, appearing in my bedroom doorway as I was having it mounted to the wall studs.

“Just taking precautions. There’s been some package thefts in the neighborhood.”

“Kind of extreme, isn’t it? What are you putting in there? The crown jewels?”

“Just important papers.”

His jaw tightened, but he said nothing. He disappeared back into the dining room, and I heard him on the phone minutes later, his voice agitated, though I couldn’t make out words.

That night, Rachel came home with flowers and apologies.

“Mom, I’m sorry I’ve been distant. Tyler and I have been stressed with money stuff, but that’s not your fault. You’ve been so generous letting us stay here. I want us to be close again.”