I had a about an hour to spare yesterday, so I went to the bank to finish off the banking for the dead man. Damn... that was... wow...
The people at the banks (I've now been to six of them for the dead guy) have been really helpful and understanding. Explaining to them that, "no, I can't really ask his sisters for that, they don't want to talk to me" seems to get a lot accomplished.
So I went to close out his chequing account. And the friendly Personal Banker and I filled out forms and made things kosher. Then she asked me to wait a moment, she had a couple of photocopies for me from the last time I was there.
I waited, and listened to muffled whispers. And a little shuffling of paper. She returned, her hands slightly atremble.
I was given photocopies of cheques that were written three days before he died. Turns out that one of his crazy sisters (the one with the criminal record!) had written herself a cheque for four thousand ($4,000) dollars. She also wrote a cheque to "N.S. Visa" for five thousand ($5,000) dollars with "Visa Payment, Crazy Sister#1" in the memo line. There was only $500 left.
So, three days before he off-ed it, his sister took a lot of money from him. I doubt he would have been able to agree to it. Seems to me like she took advantage of the stupid, dying fool. Crazy Sister#2 tells me that for the last month or so, he wasn't coherent, or sensible and didn't know where he was. Doesn't seem like he could have agreed to pay off someone else's VISA.