Inheritance tales are hardly entertaining, especially when large sums of money are involved. Families have such horrible disagreements that members may stop talking to one other since some individuals value money more than the connections they have, forgetting that a person has just died. It’s much worse when you have to decide how the money will be allocated to the deceased’s relatives. This is precisely what occurred in this story: while the daughter was not delighted to take on this position, she believed she might teach her family a lesson.
Source: Reddit
So in December, my extremely wealthy father passed away, leaving a trophy wife widow with a daughter from her previous marriage, me (27F) and my older brother, as well as lots of my aunts, cousins etc behind.
Now my father was not a good person by any stretch of the imagination – he was a vain, selfish braggart who liked to flex his money on others. Nasty, I know. He wasn’t a good father either, and though he never hit me like my brothers (2nd brother passed years ago), he wasn’t a good dad either. After he passed, there was some kerfuffle until his will was found and properly verified. Soooo much sh%t was flung in this period already, it was insane.
During this period, me and my brother were already drowning in phone calls from ‘concerned’ family members after my dad’s money. My brother took (with permission) a laptop of my father’s to help sort some documents etc and no less than 3 people called him accusing him of stealing from his inheritance, over a laptop worth MAYBE 2k at best. Epic family, right?
I’d been no contact with all of them except my father and brother for YEARS, after various types of issues with them. From calling me a s*** for having a boyfriend at age 19 (by a woman divorced at least 3 times no less) to accusing me of turning two of my nieces against their mother by feeding them when she refused (withheld food as punishment for grades), there is a lot of bad stuff going on and I got out ASAP. Even my father openly disliked a lot of that family. He once introduced me to some cousins who live overseas as ‘Trish and Trixie, the golddiggers’. They both married rich, and he said that TO THEIR FACES. We did not get along 🙂
So, everyone expected my brother to be the executor of the will (or a family friend possibly) as he is the oldest and my father’s widow, while a nice person, had neither the fortitude to deal with the sharks we’re related to, nor the language skills to really understand. Yes, he actually imported himself a wife from Russia. He was that clichéd.
Anyway, to everyone’s surprise, the named executor in charge of splitting the assets wasn’t my brother, it was me. I’ll spare you the legalese as it was fairly complicated and had lots of clauses and conditions attached, but the idea is I get the final say on what a fair split is and who gets what, except for the preallocated stuff, which is minor. Everyone was surprised as I’m the youngest and generally stayed FAR away from all the family drama. I think that may be why he picked me? Or it could have just been to f*** with the family. He did request a f***ing gun salute at his funeral, which was swiftly and resoundingly shut down by the funeral service as it was illegal lol, just to give you an idea of what sort of person he was.
Anyway as soon as it got out that I’m in charge of splitting assets, I was DROWNING in phone calls, letters, emails, Facebook requests etc. You would not BELIEVE the number of families that suddenly wanted to get back in touch with me and to find out how I’ve been doing etc. Not ONE of them remembered treating me badly before either, could you believe it? I must have been remembering wrong because it was so long ago and all that. Gaslighty pack 😂😂
Really cringe, the lot of them. Now the will said that I was to split all remaining assets as I saw fit (with a few specific amounts and assets allocated to my brother and my father’s widow). The rules boil down to ‘give everyone directly related (my aunts, my cousins, my uncles) something, everything else is optional. Soon as the will was fully read, the calls and messages changed again, and suddenly my aunts and uncles especially were trying to tell me that they’d be happy to help me get a fair split, etc. They were essentially trying to tell me what to do, and wanted to tell me what would be ‘fair’ since I obviously didn’t know them anymore, but they knew who needed it the most. Spoiler: for each aunt/uncle, it was them plus their kids that needed it most. Surprising, right?
This all got so complicated and so time consuming I had to take time off work just to be able to deal with their sorry a**es. I’m only just really getting back to my own work after weeks of this sh%t. The main kicker was the widow’s daughter. I struggle to view said widow as a step mother because my father has been married many times and they weren’t married long at all, but I genuinely like her as a person. She grew up poor, had a more abusive husband than my father before him, and just generally struggled in life and ended up an upstanding person despite that. She has always been a cleaning lady and takes great pride in her job at a hotel, which she worked at despite being married to money. I admire that.
Her daughter on the other hand is one of those cringing, trying to look rich when she’s poor AF types. We’ve all seen them. Chavs, if you’re British. Trailer trash if you’re American. Proleten if you’re German.
She started verbally abusing my brother in the process of sorting through my father’s physical assets and at multiple points told him he’d be lucky if he got anything at all from the stuff as she didn’t think he was a ‘good enough son’ to deserve anything. She met my dad when she was 22 btw, so no IDEA what sort of power trip she was on. My brother accepted this treatment, I did not, though I kept quiet. I think she thought it would be her mother doing the allocating, in which case things would have gone very differently.
It took them months to tally up my father’s assets (we got the final count of everything a month ago, that’s how long it took lol), and when they gave me the list, I realised it was going to be more complicated than expected. I also realised that while I had quietly put up with my family’s sh%t, I really didn’t have to. Nobody knew exactly what sort of amounts we were talking as while my father had made an incredible fortune through his work (mostly legitimately) he was also a huge spender and it was entirely possible he’d blown it all on some island in the Caribbean or some shit like that (some overseas properties, no islands).
So I looked at the list. There were several properties on there, many of whom specific family members had already expressed their wish to have as their ‘share’. Yeah because clearly my aunt was SO attached to that holiday home in Italy she’d never even been to. That sort of stuff. I did listen to all of their ‘requests’ mostly for my amusement.
I got a realtor I know to help me put them on the market at the lowest reasonable price, and most already have offers, at least two of which I accepted immediately. As soon as an uncle who’s also in real estate figured this out he went BALLISTIC on me. How dare I sell family property (it’s not) how dare I deny people their rightful inheritance (it’s not) and why didn’t I at least sell through him (yes he was that obvious). I hung up on him and continued.
Next was his stocks, bonds and investments. Guess what happened to them? That’s right, sold. Cars? Sold except for 2. Bikes? Sold except for 1. One car for me, one car and bike for my brother. My father’s best friend, a luxury car dealer, got my number from someone to complain I didn’t sell through him. Dream on mate 🙂
I continued to turn everything into cash that I could, even sold some art and stuff that he had, as was my right (and is also fairly common to do as a strategy, or so I’ve been told). Not all houses and stuff have sold, but I do have a preliminary total that I am to split between the family members. This is the fun part for me.
The widow will get roughly a third of the assets as in my opinion, she deserves it for having married my father. My brother gets about 25% which quite frankly, is more than my father would have given him as they weren’t on great terms. He doesn’t exactly know yet, and actually said he’d have been fine with just the car and bike, as long as he could stay out of the drama, bless him. He’s always struggled near minimum wage and been bad with money – he might waste the opportunity, but at least he’ll get a real chance to improve his situation for once.
Then come aunts and uncles. One aunt I used to like has passed away so she’s a moot point, the other one revealed herself to be very nasty and greedy in the last few weeks. What does she get? 10k. 🙂 Enough to give her no chance to contest, but an insulting amount off the millions we’re talking here. Also, a donation to a clinic for alcoholics in her name, which she is, worth another 5k. Uncle 1? Misogynistic prick beyond compare. He actually called me and offered to take over as the executor so I wouldn’t have to worry my pretty little head over it. Yup, that bad! What does he get? 10k plus a donation made to a woman’s shelter in his name, for another 5k. Uncle 2 has kept out of most of this and was on good terms with my father – he gets an actually reasonable sum with another zero attached, and quietly to keep him out of the drama. He’s done nothing wrong, so I won’t punish him at all. He is possibly the ONLY one who hasn’t badgered me in all this.
Cousins – cousins with kids get 1k per kid more than those without. Base cousin amount will be 5k, plus a 5k donation for a suitable cause. The cousin who abused her kids? Donation to domestic violence org. The racist cousins (yes plural)? Donations to various international relief orgs and maybe a few local refugee help services. So on, so forth. Each cousin gets a suitable donation in their name to a cause – the policeman gets one to a group investigating police violence. That one was my brother’s idea and I love it! There’s about 10 of them, plus their kids who get nothing specifically, as they’re no longer mentioned explicitly in the will.
My favourite part is the widow’s daughter, the one who got so nasty with my brother. Remember her? Yeah well somehow she got the idea that she is my sister. She is… Not. My father never legally adopted her or accepted her as his child or anything legally binding. So she’s just… nobody. Which means she gets absolutely f&%k all. Not so much as a footnote anywhere, because as far as the inheritance goes, she doesn’t exist. Now I happen to know that she’s already bought herself some LV bags in lieu of her soon-to-be windfall. She works security in a mall. Minimum wage, I believe.
I didn’t tell her myself, just had a notary send her a letter informing her that she was not in consideration and would she therefore please keep her nose out of the business of the legal heirs (aka legalese for back off my brother you bit h). I am sad I didn’t get to see the reactions there because the girl has a TEMPER and I would have loved to see her read that letter.
The letters for aunts and uncles etc aren’t in the post yet, but I’m SO EXCITED for when they get them. I ran all of this past several lawyers, notaries and even my financial advisor just in case. They all helped me make sure that what I was doing was above board, I wasn’t breaking any rules etc, and that it wouldn’t be easy to contest.
The remaining money? Well I’ll keep some for myself, obviously, but I plan to donate the majority of what’s left. Part of that is some mild revenge against my father too, as he would have rather set fire to his money than actually donated any of it to those in need, and partly its because I’m probably the only one in the family who doesn’t actually need his money. Like him, I made my own fortune, luckily. I wouldn’t have been quite as free to snub those bastards if I was worse off, so lucky me. I made sure to allocate myself a fairly small amount compared to my brother (but still enough 00s at the end, don’t worry lol) to avoid any accusation of unfairly trying to keep it all for myself. I also took on myself all the fees etc that come with closing the estate, which naturally I’ll pay with my share of the inheritance.
I have plans to donate larger amounts to charities I support anyway, largely animal welfare and a few domestic abuse ones, as once again, I know my father could be quite abusive to his partners and my brothers. I am also friends with one of his ex wives who is a social worker, and I plan to anonymously donate to her organisation without her knowing as I’ve listened to her talk about her group’s struggles with funding for years and I now have enough disposable cash to really make a difference. Oh, and the car I decided to keep for myself is likely going to be a gift for my partner who has been listening to me whine about my horrible relatives for the last half year. I don’t really like sports cars but he does, so it’ll make a nice early Christmas gift 🙂
What would you do in her situation?
