I haven't kept you up to date on the demolition project on the farm house. The asbestos guys removed the siding in about four hours so the next step is to send something to the state so we can then apply for a demolition permit from the county.

I was getting ready to write checks: $60 to the state, $4,000 to the asbestos removal people, and $5,500 to the demolition contractor as a deposit. So I decided to check the balance in the money market account for that farm and I'll be darned, my cousin back east (who does nothing to help with all this) wrote a check out of the account for $8,700 to their lawyer and instead of $11,000 the balance is only $1,300. Holy shit. And he wrote it without figuring out if there was enough in the account to cover the check.

I couldn't believe it. My cousins wanted this house torn down and it was going to take almost all the money in the bank to do it, and then they do this. I have told them how much everything will cost, and they receive copies of the bank statements so he knew how much money we have left.

Our joint enterprise incurred a lot of legal fees trying to sell the place this summer and the sale fell through. We each had our own lawyers and I paid mine out of my personal funds, not the joint farm account but the cousins think the joint account should pay for their lawyer.

So I called him and at first he acted like he didn't know what I was talking about, but finally owned up that maybe he did write that check.

He agreed to reimburse the joint account for the $8,700 so we can continue with tearing down the house. There was no way I was going to loan the joint project money of my own because I might never get it back from them.

I'm stuck with these guys until this farm sells. They have refused to buy me out and I can't afford to buy them out. We inherited this mess from our parents; I would never have willingly gone into business with them.