It is not that simple. Again, are you a lawyer?And that is why you owe her nothing financially when you sell your home.
You should have included that detail in your original post.
I am just going off what our lawyer and accountant told us when a relative gave us a large amount of money for my mother's house in a similar situation. A lot of it depends on how she declared that money when she received it. That will determine whose money it is now.
For instance, our relative gave our mother several times the IRS max gift amount at the time. Our lawyer had paperwork drawn up to say that it was a loan and would be paid back upon my mother's death or the house was sold, which ever came first. Her will also had to have a line item that the money would go back to the relative. If she had not had that paperwork drawn up, she would have been able to keep $10,000 as a gift tax free, but she would have had to claim the rest as income for that year.
Listen OP, nobody on a Disney chat board can give you advice. None of us know what you claimed on taxes, what kind of legal agreements you have between you and your mother. You haven't shared any of that nor do you have to. However, the fact that you are asking on a chat board what you are entitled to screams that you need the help of a professional.
This has nothing to do with what you 'think' you should receive. You need to speak to a lawyer. You need to have legal agreements drawn up with your mother so she cannot come back and say you owe her money. A family meeting is a great place to start, but the IRS is pretty finicky when it comes to large gifts of money. They always want their share. You need a good tax attorney to draw up the paperwork to minimize the tax impact on you.
It would only take one concerned busybody at the mom's new residence to call the IRS tip line and suggest that they look into how the OP financed that addition 19 years ago to make her life a living hell as they go through an audit. Depending on how the gift was handled, there is a potential of having to pay enormous amounts in back taxes, penalties and interest. Worst case scenario, the IRS may then look into how the house sale was handled, impacting your siblings.
You may have done everything correctly back then but you still need a lawyer to draw up paperwork on severing your mother's place to live now so that she nor the siblings would ever have a reason to come back at you. Protect yourself.
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