If you add in improvements to your parents home, do you then have rights to the home?

My uncle is the resident mooch in our family. He is alcoholic, drug addict, unemployed loser who is living off disability and running from the IRS. He has had jobs off and on most of his 60 years, but has lived with his aging parents for the past 10 years. He moved in with them because he had nowhere else to go. Anyway, he recently won a fraudulent lawsuit from a car accident and was awarded $192,000. Although he blew most of his money on stupid stuff, except replacing the front and back decks of my grandparents home, which he offered and they did not ask or need. He also had a 10,000 shed build next to their home to store his motorcycle and junk in. He did not get along with my grandfather and was actually charged with abuse to the elderly for an altercation with him shortly before my grandmother passed away. He then began to verbally abuse and mistreat my grandfather, even going to far as to make this 78 year old, mentally-incompetent man, try and mow the 7 acres because he thought he was acting helpless. He drove him to a veterans hospital in a neighboring state and had him admitted to the psychiatric ward for a psych evaluation without telling anyone else in the family. After all this, we had to go through the steps to have him formally evicted to get him out of their home. When he left, he stole most of their furniture, their riding lawnmower, and all of the family photo albums. Although there was a police report filed, none of the property has been recovered. My grandfather is now in a wonderful nursing home and doing well. The nursing home has a restraining order against my uncle because he has visited my grandfather and threatened him in the nursing home. Now after two years of quiet, my uncle has filed a lawsuit against my cousin, the executor of the estate and my grandfather's power of attorney. The lawsuit states that he had an understanding that all of the improvements on my grandparents home would be repaid to him and he wants it. All of the improvements were volunteered by him and were not necessary to the home, but supposedly something he wanted to do for my grandparents because of all they have done for him. Having said all this, does he have the right to request repayment for improvements that he made to their home when they were gifted, or does my grandfather have to sell his home to repay my uncle for his "gifts". This is in Texas if that matters.

6 months ago - 6 answers