Mother Being Secretive about Will

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So you are begrudging your stepfather money from a business that he has successfully helped run for 25 years? Stop it.

Apologize to your mom, and then leave it alone.

No, I am not begrudging him money.

The issue from my point of view is that he is not our dad.

If my mom leaves him her estate when she dies, it's very possible that he could remarry and not leave my brother or I anything at all later on. The thought of that is upsetting because I already feel a great deal of resentment about neglect due to her relationship with my stepdad, which i feel she prioritizes. My mom sent me to boarding school when I was 9 years old so that she could spend more time with my step dad. My step dad was not open to bringing my brother into the business, which would not have been true if it was his own child. However, he did lead him on about it for several years, during which my brother worked for the business with the hopes of being brought in in a more serious way. This is time he could have spent preparing for a different career.

As I said above, the issue is loaded with emotional baggage.

There's a lot of baggage here. I don't think talking to your mom about it from this perspective (i.e. the will) is going to help. Clearly the issue go much deeper. I would not think you or your brother are going to be left much. I would see a therapist to talk through the issues about being abandoned by your mom and think about how to distance yourself from her to protect yourself.

[Anonymous]

Yes, he's not your dad. But this is just part and parcel of your mom's second marriage. It's her business and she's within her rights to leave it to her husband if she chooses. I understand why that might be upsetting to you, but I think you should resign yourself to the fact that that might very well happen.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So you are begrudging your stepfather money from a business that he has successfully helped run for 25 years? Stop it.

Apologize to your mom, and then leave it alone.

No, I am not begrudging him money.

The issue from my point of view is that he is not our dad.

If my mom leaves him her estate when she dies, it's very possible that he could remarry and not leave my brother or I anything at all later on. The thought of that is upsetting because I already feel a great deal of resentment about neglect due to her relationship with my stepdad, which i feel she prioritizes. My mom sent me to boarding school when I was 9 years old so that she could spend more time with my step dad. My step dad was not open to bringing my brother into the business, which would not have been true if it was his own child. However, he did lead him on about it for several years, during which my brother worked for the business with the hopes of being brought in in a more serious way. This is time he could have spent preparing for a different career.

As I said above, the issue is loaded with emotional baggage.

Well in your original post you said it was something you thought was very normal to ask, but clearly given the backstory you knew it wasn't.

If your mom sent you away at age 9 to spend more time with step father why in the world would you think she would prioritize you now over him?

Also you are assuming if your father lived he would have ran the business successfully and passed it along to your brother.
Neither of those things are guarantees, though I have much empathy for your loss and need to almost fantasize about your father and create such a wonderful image in your head of who he was and would have been. (I do that as well)

However the fact remains that your step father ran the business for 25 years and the successes are due largely to him and your mom.
It doesn't take away from what your father started, but business's fail all the time and this one didn't.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I would add this.

A decade ago, a friend's mother died. She had circumstances very similar to your mother's. She had remarried after being widowed. The second husband was younger and successful.

The mother and stepfather ran a very popular restaurant until the stepfather's adult children took over. Then the mother and stepfather went traveling for roughly five years. The mother developed BC and returned to the US for treatment. She didn't respond and soon died.

Before her mother died, my friend's husband pressured her to ask what was going to happen to the first estate: a small rented out house and some money left from the first husband. It was known to be modest, but he wanted to make sure that it didn't go to the stepfather.

So as my friend's mother was dying, she was asking her about the will. The mother shushed her out of the hospice room and called her attorney. She died a couple days later still not speaking to her daughter.

When the will was read, my friend learned that the mother and stepfather had originally intended to split both estates among the 4 adult children (my friend and her stepsiblings). instead, my friend inherited her biological parents' modest estate and would get nothing at all from the stepfather's much larger one.

It put a crack in the my friend's marriage that has never healed.

OP again: That's an interesting response from the mother. I wonder what their relationship was like before that happened.

In any case, the topic of money is obviously a very loaded one. In my case, there is a lot of family baggage contributing to why this devolved into an argument. Money is not the core issue, it's really just a symbol.

So when you asked about her will, you were asking about a whole lot more than her will, in a way that was guaranteed to start a fight and create hard feelings. This isn't information you need before she passes away, it sounds like you were looking to make a point with her.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Yes, he's not your dad. But this is just part and parcel of your mom's second marriage. It's her business and she's within her rights to leave it to her husband if she chooses. I understand why that might be upsetting to you, but I think you should resign yourself to the fact that that might very well happen.

I agree that it is within her rights. That is why i prefaced my question acknowledgement of that.

I definitely live my life as if I will receive nothing, and I agree most people should adopt that philosophy.

I just wish we could have a normal, frank conversation about it. However, I knew we wouldn't be able to, and asking about it was a serious lapse in judgement. I certainly won't be apologizing, but I won't bring it up again.

[Anonymous]

How old are you and your brother, OP? Have you considered therapy to help you deal with the feelings all of this has created for you? It sounds painful, and I'm sorry for you.

[Anonymous]

The emotional baggage is understandable. And with your mother's reaction, it would not be surprising at all if she left it all to your stepfather.

However, as difficult as it is, you need to brace yourself for a small inheritance or even exclusion. It happens all the time and it sucks.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So you are begrudging your stepfather money from a business that he has successfully helped run for 25 years? Stop it.

Apologize to your mom, and then leave it alone.

No, I am not begrudging him money.

The issue from my point of view is that he is not our dad.

If my mom leaves him her estate when she dies, it's very possible that he could remarry and not leave my brother or I anything at all later on. The thought of that is upsetting because I already feel a great deal of resentment about neglect due to her relationship with my stepdad, which i feel she prioritizes. My mom sent me to boarding school when I was 9 years old so that she could spend more time with my step dad. My step dad was not open to bringing my brother into the business, which would not have been true if it was his own child. However, he did lead him on about it for several years, during which my brother worked for the business with the hopes of being brought in in a more serious way. This is time he could have spent preparing for a different career.

As I said above, the issue is loaded with emotional baggage.

Well in your original post you said it was something you thought was very normal to ask, but clearly given the backstory you knew it wasn't.

If your mom sent you away at age 9 to spend more time with step father why in the world would you think she would prioritize you now over him?

Also you are assuming if your father lived he would have ran the business successfully and passed it along to your brother.
Neither of those things are guarantees, though I have much empathy for your loss and need to almost fantasize about your father and create such a wonderful image in your head of who he was and would have been. (I do that as well)

However the fact remains that your step father ran the business for 25 years and the successes are due largely to him and your mom.
It doesn't take away from what your father started, but business's fail all the time and this one didn't.

I get that, but, my mom runs the business just as much as my stepdad does. In fact, she is far more prudent. My step dad would objectively NOT have done as well without her.

I think most moms would want to make sure that their kids (or even skip over kids and go right to grandkids) got part of that hard work. If she leaves everything to him, someone who is not our dad then that's not really looking out for her own family. I'm prepared that it might happen. But I felt compelled to make my point in light of the fact that you seemed to assume that my stepdad was the brains of the operation.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:How old are you and your brother, OP? Have you considered therapy to help you deal with the feelings all of this has created for you? It sounds painful, and I'm sorry for you.

I'm 31 and my brother is 30. Haha, and yes, lot's of therapy

I've made a lot of progress healing from pain related to my past. I'm also very lucky in that my DH is a wonderful man, and his family treats me like a daughter and it feels great.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes, he's not your dad. But this is just part and parcel of your mom's second marriage. It's her business and she's within her rights to leave it to her husband if she chooses. I understand why that might be upsetting to you, but I think you should resign yourself to the fact that that might very well happen.

I agree that it is within her rights. That is why i prefaced my question acknowledgement of that.

I definitely live my life as if I will receive nothing, and I agree most people should adopt that philosophy.

I just wish we could have a normal, frank conversation about it. However, I knew we wouldn't be able to, and asking about it was a serious lapse in judgement. I certainly won't be apologizing, but I won't bring it up again.

But you're not having a frank conversation about the real "it" either. What you really want to discuss with her is how she's always prioritized your stepfather over you and your brother, and you're using the will issue as a proxy for that. You've been through a lot of heavy stuff, OP, and there's probably a lot of emotional issues there that you need to work through. Your mom is highly unlikely to ever give you the satisfaction you're looking for, so you need to find a way to make peace with your relationship without getting anything different from her. A skilled therapist may be a good starting point.

[Anonymous]

Your mother's husband IS her own family. He's her closest legal relative. She's also made it clear over the past 25 years that she prioritizes her relationship with him.

I personally would have never sent you off to boarding school at 9 just so that I could spend more time with my husband, but perhaps her decision was more complex than that and she handled it badly. You are clearly still reverberating from a decision she made a quarter century ago and should focus on resolving that rather than the issue of inheritances.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So you are begrudging your stepfather money from a business that he has successfully helped run for 25 years? Stop it.

Apologize to your mom, and then leave it alone.

No, I am not begrudging him money.

The issue from my point of view is that he is not our dad.

If my mom leaves him her estate when she dies, it's very possible that he could remarry and not leave my brother or I anything at all later on. The thought of that is upsetting because I already feel a great deal of resentment about neglect due to her relationship with my stepdad, which i feel she prioritizes. My mom sent me to boarding school when I was 9 years old so that she could spend more time with my step dad. My step dad was not open to bringing my brother into the business, which would not have been true if it was his own child. However, he did lead him on about it for several years, during which my brother worked for the business with the hopes of being brought in in a more serious way. This is time he could have spent preparing for a different career.

As I said above, the issue is loaded with emotional baggage.

Well in your original post you said it was something you thought was very normal to ask, but clearly given the backstory you knew it wasn't.

If your mom sent you away at age 9 to spend more time with step father why in the world would you think she would prioritize you now over him?

Also you are assuming if your father lived he would have ran the business successfully and passed it along to your brother.
Neither of those things are guarantees, though I have much empathy for your loss and need to almost fantasize about your father and create such a wonderful image in your head of who he was and would have been. (I do that as well)

However the fact remains that your step father ran the business for 25 years and the successes are due largely to him and your mom.
It doesn't take away from what your father started, but business's fail all the time and this one didn't.

I get that, but, my mom runs the business just as much as my stepdad does. In fact, she is far more prudent. My step dad would objectively NOT have done as well without her.

I think most moms would want to make sure that their kids (or even skip over kids and go right to grandkids) got part of that hard work. If she leaves everything to him, someone who is not our dad then that's not really looking out for her own family. I'm prepared that it might happen. But I felt compelled to make my point in light of the fact that you seemed to assume that my stepdad was the brains of the operation.

OP, in a situation like this, it would not be uncommon at all for someone to leave everything to their spouse rather than their kids, or perhaps to put it all into a trust for the benefit of the spouse during their lifetime and with the kids to get the remainder. I understand you're in a lot of pain and it sounds like there are very valid reasons for that, but your expectations on this issue (that parents should leave a business like this to their kids instead of the spouse; that your mother would tell you her estate plans) are not, objectively, reasonable, let alone reasonable for your family situation.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes, he's not your dad. But this is just part and parcel of your mom's second marriage. It's her business and she's within her rights to leave it to her husband if she chooses. I understand why that might be upsetting to you, but I think you should resign yourself to the fact that that might very well happen.

I agree that it is within her rights. That is why i prefaced my question acknowledgement of that.

I definitely live my life as if I will receive nothing, and I agree most people should adopt that philosophy.

I just wish we could have a normal, frank conversation about it. However, I knew we wouldn't be able to, and asking about it was a serious lapse in judgement. I certainly won't be apologizing, but I won't bring it up again.

But you're not having a frank conversation about the real "it" either. What you really want to discuss with her is how she's always prioritized your stepfather over you and your brother, and you're using the will issue as a proxy for that. You've been through a lot of heavy stuff, OP, and there's probably a lot of emotional issues there that you need to work through. Your mom is highly unlikely to ever give you the satisfaction you're looking for, so you need to find a way to make peace with your relationship without getting anything different from her. A skilled therapist may be a good starting point.

Yes, I agree 100% with the bolded.

We've talked about a lot of issues, but probably not directly about my feelings regarding my step-father. I doubt she would be particularly receptive. I have been learning to keep emotional distance and accept the relationship as it is. My DH has been really helpful with supporting me to that end as well.

[Anonymous]

Op you are making a lot of assumptions about why your mom has done or not done certain things without actually getting her side of the story. We we presume to know someone else's intentions we often get it wrong because we are inserting out own pain and judgment into the assumption. You should have a nonjudgmental discussion with your mom about your feelings (unrelated to the will or any financial issues). Perhaps then you can understand why she has made certain choices and find peace.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How old are you and your brother, OP? Have you considered therapy to help you deal with the feelings all of this has created for you? It sounds painful, and I'm sorry for you.

I'm 31 and my brother is 30. Haha, and yes, lot's of therapy

I've made a lot of progress healing from pain related to my past. I'm also very lucky in that my DH is a wonderful man, and his family treats me like a daughter and it feels great.

focus on this.

My biological grandmother passed over a cousin in favor of me for a small inheritance that was largely sentimental. My cousin had not seen our grandmother in the five years before her death and did not need the bequest from a financial standpoint, whereas I had visited frequently and at the time actually needed the money from the sale of most of the jewelry. I've tried for ten years to repair the rift with my cousin, including splitting the jewelry with her. Meanwhile, she was treated so well by our step-grandmother and married into a family where she is doted on as the sole DIL and mother of grandchildren. She has let the bitterness mar every single holiday for a decade.