Should I respect my grandmother's decisions?

[Kate8889]

When I was visiting my grandma in November (she's in Russia), our neighbor called and said there's a tree at our summerhouse that is likely to fall on the house and needs cut down. He said a crew was in the area and could do it for X amount of money that day, he also sent photos.

My grandma was against it because of the cost, said it wouldn't fall and I didn't feel like arguing with her or paying the amount (it's her property, not mine). The tree fell this week and was stopped by another tree, cleanup was 2X the original estimate. My mom is there and having to deal with it.

She said I should override my grandma on decisions where family property is likely to be damaged. The thing is, I really don't care that much what happens to it. It doesn't belong to me. I don't want to use my time or energy (trying to convince my grandma it's important) or money to fix it.

Maybe I'm a brat? Once the tree fell my grandma realized her mistake and went in 50/50 on the tree removal.

Why did she only go 50/50 on the cost? You might as well have paid the full cost originally to get it removed safely. If it’s her property, and it was her decision to not get it removed, she should hand paid it all.

it sounds like you are scared of her? It’s a tricky situation though if she owns the house. Can you afford to get your own place so you don’t have to defer to her over everything? Do you pay rent? If you don’t, I think you should have paid to get the tree removed in the first place.

By the way, the part where you say you don’t care about what happens to the property because it’s not yours absolutely makes you sound like a brat.

She went 50/50 with my mom. I'm not scared and I don't live with her, just visiting for a few weeks. I just knew it would be an hour long discussion to convince her that it's worth the money and didn't have the emotional bandwidth at the time.

Also my thought was, I'll tell her once it's a good idea, if she doesn't want to that's on her.

Well, I'll never live there and it will never belong to me. It's similar to saying would I spend time to save my neighbor's home. Yes, but if they are obstinate and don't want help I'll butt out.

She said I should override my grandma on decisions

Tell your mother you are overriding HER decision on how to handle your grandmother. And if she doesn't like her daughter doing that to her then maybe she'll understand why you won't be bulldozing your own grandmother against her will.

Treat others how you wish others to treat you.

Well I wouldn't have forced her but I would have spent some time explaining why it was a good idea and the higher costs should it fall and yes you do sound a bit of a brat

I discussed it for maybe 15 minutes but she wasn't budging so I let it be since I was exhausted from running around all day on family bureaucratic errands.

How old is the grandmother? If she's a doddery old 95 year old, you should have helped. If she's 60 then it's not your problem.

She's 89, just diagnosed with Parkinson's but has always been as stubborn as a mule.

I don’t see how you can force someone to pay for something they don’t want to pay for.
Why didn’t your mum pay for the tree to be cut down in the first place if she has an interest in the property?

She couldn't do local currency bank transactions since she was outside the country, but also she just wanted me to take care of it logistically - talk to the people and have the tree removed even if my grandma didn't want that. She also couldn't do this because messenger is blocked now except for Max.

Why should OP pay? It's not her house. She also says she was just visiting so why are you talking about rent and moving out?
It's not OP's responsibility to police the actions of other adults.

It was mostly I didn't want to pay when my grandma was saying no. Also I was just tired of debating with her already 2 or 3 times that day and running errands.

That was my point - why wasn’t the grandma paying 100%! I’m saying if she ended up going 50/50 anyway, she might as well have paid it up front. However she has clarified that it’s her mother that went 50/50.

My grandma said she was sure it would stay standing for 5 more years, after she's gone