Proverbs 20
16 Take his garment that is surety for a stranger: and take a pledge of him for a strange woman.
17 Bread of deceit is sweet to a man; but afterwards his mouth shall be filled with gravel.
18 Every purpose is established by counsel: and with good advice make war.
19 He that goeth about as a talebearer revealeth secrets: therefore meddle not with him that flattereth with his lips.
20 Whoso curseth his father or his mother, his lamp shall be put out in obscure darkness.
21 An inheritance may be gotten hastily at the beginning; but the end thereof shall not be blessed.
22 Say not thou, I will recompense evil; but wait on the LORD, and he shall save thee.
23 Divers weights are an abomination unto the LORD; and a false balance is not good. (Scripture taken from the King James Version, 1987 printing. The KJV is public domain in the United States. To read this passage from The Message, go to www.biblegateway.com and do a passage lookup.)
What if you inherited $10,000? What would you do? Would it be a good thing? One would think so. But things are not always as they seem. My grandmother had a wealthy aunt by marriage who passed away and left her $10,000. My grandmother was elderly, in poor health, and living in a nursing home. Her financial situation was such that each month the nursing home garnished her Social Security check and used it to pay her bill. She had no other assets – in other words, she didn’t have any income or money beyond her monthly Social Security check. So, you must be thinking, this $10,000 was a good thing, right? Wrong!
Now that my grandmother had assets ($10,000), the nursing home would no longer accept her monthly Social Security check (which was somewhere around $1000), as payment for her room and services. They wanted the full amount of $3000 per month. So, until the $10,000 was gone, she had to pay the “regular” fees each month to the nursing home.
You may be thinking, “this is only fair. Many others pay the full amount each month." And you would be right. And in that regard, the inheritance made no difference. Where it DID make a difference was in paperwork! Unless you have admitted a relative or friend to a nursing home, you have no idea how much paperwork is involved. They want proof of all of your assets – or that you have none. They want to see checkbooks, savings accounts, notarized statements from funeral homes about your burial plan (if you have one), copies of life insurance policies, and much more. And all of that had been provided. Of course, once the inheritance was received, all of that had to be redone, and again when the money ran out!
My mom even tried to refuse the inheritance. But legally, she had to accept it on my grandmother’s behalf. And in the end, the paperwork all got done and life moved ahead. The irony of the situation is that my grandmother had two sisters, and one of them also received $10,000 – the other did not. So here was a woman who got money she really didn’t want or need, another who got it and enjoyed treating herself and her family to a few luxuries, and yet another who could have used the money and got nothing, and she was deeply hurt. None of these three ladies really DID anything to earn this money, and I guess you could consider an inheritance a “gift” – and not all gifts are bad. But banking on them to get you through is not a good idea, and when you do receive a gift, consider carefully how it will affect your life and what it will mean. Don’t count on gifts or the generosity of others to get you through life. And should you receive them, ask God to guide your steps and show you how to proceed.
©2007 Debbie Robus
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