[CA] Parents [64M/62F] Getting Divorce, Mom Destitute legaladvice

Throwaway because I contribute often.

Flashback History:
My [30F] father-in-law (FIL) [64M] is a VA-member, used to be a co-owner of his business with my Mother-in-Law (MIL) [62F]. He did all the labor, and MIL did all the records and payments. They had been married over 20 years. During the housing crash in 2009, they went broke and I paid for their bankruptcy. Several years later in 2012 he cheated on my MIL, and he left her to be with that woman [36F]. I found out about it before he left and confronted him when his phone broke and he asked me to fix it - I found the memory was over-full with pictures of that woman's privates. Those pictures still haunt me. He moved out for about a year. When my FIL and his woman got tired of each other, he begged my MIL to take him back. He promised both my MIL, my spouse [31M], and me that he would never cheat again. She took him back and they lived together again.

8Months<1Year Ago:
My FIL said that his mom [82F] (my grandma-in-law) was sick with cancer, and he had to go take care of her across the country. My real-mom died of cancer when I was young, so I was really sad to hear this and supported him to take care of his mom in her final days.

2-3 Months Ago
Months later, a woman [~38F] calls up my MIL to say that he has another family including kids, that he's been living with them and not with grandma-in-law, and that he was divorcing my MIL. His mom was never sick with cancer, and he's a real POS for saying that.

My MIL has been a housewife and has no real skills. My FIL's adulteress told my FIL to cut her off financially. The adulteress was upset that he had been paying for MIL's mortgage this whole time that he was cheating with this adulteress, which is why she exposed everything to my MIL so she could keep more of my FIL's money. My FIL stopped paying the mortgage +2 months ago, but he didn't file divorce paperwork. My FIL also cut off her VA benefits and money.

To reduce expenses, my MIL abandoned my FIL's leased truck - it was significantly over the lease miles because he had been seeing said earlier mentioned 36F adulteress every week prior to leaving across country and 36F adulteress lived about 80 miles away. Cheating on one adulteress with another, classy. She also sold several of their things to try to pay for her expenses (mortgage, food, credit card bills, etc) while she was figuring stuff out, including selling my FIL's gun safe and anything else she could sell that she didn't need.

Finally, out of things to sell and having a high mortgage with no income and seeing that there was no future with FIL, MIL finally submitted the paperwork last month to divorce him. The alimony that she would receive is less than her mortgage, but she really wants to keep the house especially since this is so hard on her. I could help her financially with her mortgage payments for 1 year, but this is not something I can do indefinitely and I'm not going to offer it until their divorce is final and alimony is set in writing.

Currently
FIL is sending homeless people and other "friends" to pick up his stuff. Last time he had his "friends" pick up stuff they stole jewelry and other things from my MIL, so I told her to have everything that he wants put out in the front of the house, covered under the walkway, so they don't come in but everything is out there. There are things on the list that MIL sold pre-divorce paperwork to make payments when FIL cut her off. She has receipts of everything she sold which has a date showing before the divorce was filed.

MIL's attorney hasn't been much help. My MIL wants to keep the house (about $20k equity) and a few items that are worthless, and my FIL wants to take everything of value and either have it shipped to him or if it's large he wants it to be sold like their refrigerator, couch, and other large furniture. My MIL's attorney thinks she shouldn't get much of anything, and attorney said if MIL wants to keep the house (no guarantees) that my FIL can have whatever he wants and that my MIL has a "bad attitude." My MIL is destitute, has no income, is very old and confused, doesn't know what she did wrong, and is incredibly fearful of moving.

Questions

• What are her options?

• She sold some of his and her stuff that she felt she didn't need so she could pay the mortgage and bills because FIL stopped paying the mortgage and hasn't lived there for almost a year. What does she do about the items she already sold? One of the items she sold was a safe (there's a whole reddit thing about buying safes) - could she legally sell the safe and/or it's contents pre-divorce paperwork? Does that change if she knew/didn't know the code?

• FIL is claiming there were guns in the safe - what are the legal ramifications of selling the safe pre-divorce paperwork knowing/not-knowing there were guns in there, and does it make a difference who she would sell the safe to (friends/family/strangers)?
  I don't know what the laws are regarding selling a +20year marriage spouse's safe is if they leave a house and stop paying the mortgage, and I don't know if it makes a difference in the eyes of the law if she knew or didn't know the combination and sold the safe and knew/didn't know if there were guns in the safe. I can't find anything about the law regarding safes and spouses, but I do know that safes are special in the law, but so is +20year marriage community property.

• I'm concerned when my FIL finds out that his safe was sold that he will try to come after me and my safe. My FIL might try to claim that I bought the safe and try to have the police go after the contents of my safe. I don't want the police in my safe. Is there something I can do to protect myself?

• If FIL gives consent for homeless people to enter the house (without FIL present) to take things on a list he gave them, can they enter even if MIL doesn't want them to? Could she leave his remaining stuff outside or put it in a storage unit (covered, secured, not damaged)?

• FIL's attorney never gave a time-frame for these items to be picked up - is there an advantage to this?

• My FIL's attorney wants me to take pictures of the house to make sure it's being "maintained." Is this a sign that he's trying to take the house after he takes all the stuff?

• My FIL is crazy, he likes to stalk people and he writes rules that he demands his adulteresses to sign that they will never cheat on him and never go on online dating forums. We have notes of him stalking people and his adulteresses like a private detective, and those notes describe what their activity is for hours. There are years of these notes. We are concerned that he will stalk us. This makes my MIL very worried because he used to beat her and my spouse. I've heard him hit my MIL and heard him hit my spouse; he takes them into another room so I can't see it but I can hear it and screaming/crying then silence. Is there any way to stop him from stalking us, maybe get a restraining order?

Submitted November 18, 2017 at 03:51AM by kaleidoscope_grope http://ift.tt/2iqN46o legaladvice