u/Few_Copy898

A few months ago, after around ten years of being in Taiwan, I started really paying attention to the jackpot games offered by the Taiwan Lottery system. I am American so Powerball / Mega Millions is my frame of reference.

Is it just me, or are the Taiwanese jackpot games really poorly designed? Maybe this is by design?

-The tickets are $200 each, which is six bucks American. This is quite expensive for a jackpot game.

-The odds of winning are a lot higher than they are stateside, but that is still low enough to make playing nothing more than a stupidity tax.

-It seems that people know this because the jackpots grow at a snail's pace. I started really watching during Chinese New Year when one of the jackpots was something like 20億. Somebody won that and in the time since the jackpots for the two main games have been mostly flat and haven't moved beyond 2億 in months.

I also think that the lottery stores themselves are incredibly interesting since many of them seem to operate without the need to generate a profit since they are run out of what are presumably family-owned storefronts that don't need to pay rent.

This is more of an observation than a question but I welcome any related discussion.

And to make this a two sentence horror story, there is a disinherited child. Yikes.

So I am the 'good' one. My dad had long talked about these plans, and everyone had known about it, and what was in the will. So it was quite a shock to find that the will the he had prepared had gone unwitnessed and unnotarized. The way that he'd talked about his estate plans, no one would have guessed that things would end up this way.

Just for context, a will like this, in the state of Florida, is as good as toilet paper.

Why'd he have the will drafted and reissued multiple times, all setting me up as the sole beneficiary of the inheritance if he'd not follow through by getting things formalized? It could be that he'd had a change of heart, or that he just couldn't do it--though I have extreme doubt that is the case. In any case, we'll never know now. Frankly, I think that he was either lazy and just kept putting it off until he forgot about it.

Negotiating with the once-disinherited sibling is fine, because he is reasonable, but at the end of the day this is just a big fucking nightmare. We also need to spend money in probate now, which on its own, even without litigation, is likely to cost upwards of five grand.

And then on top of these things, there is still the need to have myself declared personal representative just so I can pay the bills.

My dad's estate is pretty modest, about 250K with 90K debt, but that is a very significant chunk of change for me and this situation has and will continue to cause me many sleepless nights. I will be extremely relieved when this ordeal is over regardless of the outcome. Right now, I just want to cry most of the time.

Anyways, here is to hoping for good things. I love you dad. I just wish that you'd finished everything so that this would be easier to navigate.