Dear Michael: In 1999, my father passed away. The year prior to this, my dad and mom transferred a life estate in the land to me to make certain that we would always have the land to ranch and farm. After my father died, I worried that even with the life estate, if my mother went into a nursing home or needed care of some sort, they could still take away the land. I talked to the attorney who handled Dad's estate and asked if I could buy out Mom's life estate interest. He said I could and calculated the value of Mom's life estate interest at $100,000 which he put on a five-year contract (I'm not sure how he came up with that figure).