Long story short, my wife thought she was helping an acquaintance’s widowed mother clean up the estate she inherited from her late son. Now the cleaning job is done, the property is sold, and the woman doesn’t want to pay her.

There is an attorney assigned to the probate case as the decedent didn’t have a will.

A spoken agreement between my wife and the woman called for compensation of $200 a day plus expenses, plus 15 percent of proceeds from auction sales of the contents of the property. In a conference call with the probate attorney and a judge in August, it was agreed that that figure was accurate. That attorney has been a part of the process since the beginning and was kept up to date of all the work my wife did as she proceeded.

As far as we (my wife and I, plus the probate attorney) can calculate, my wife is owed about $33000. The woman offered my wife $5000 and we declined. She then hired an attorney to deal with this situation (and presumably other creditors), made an offer of $10000, and we declined.

It seems this is heading to a hearing because we can’t come to terms with the woman. We do not have an attorney. We did not imagine it would come to this as the woman was aware of the amount of work my wife did and could have stopped her at any time if she felt it was getting excessive.

A CPA has advised my wife that she may be able to file a 1099 showing a business loss of the amount owed, and the IRS would take up the matter with the woman.