Ugh, family and jewelry....

[Anonymous]

Tell your mom and update us

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Tell your mother. If she finds out that you knew but didn't share that information, she will feel betrayed by both her sister and her daughter--just for different reasons.

Betrayed by OP for not telling her first? That seems pretty dramatic. Life is too short to waste time reacting to things this way.

[Anonymous]

Op, you have no idea how the ring ended up with the aunt. I've had a lot of experiences with family deaths, and each one has brought out the crazies in otherwise normal people and also made people make decisions I never would have predicted. The surviving spouses give stuff away to people you didn't expect, or sell it and give nothing to no one, or people steal stuff or fight about it.

There are several possibilities of how she got the ring. Just because the "plan" had been to bury the grandmother with it doesn't mean at the last minute the plan didn't change. Your aunt was the daughter of the grandmother, perhaps she approached her own father and said "dad, I would really love grandmother's ring, it's the only thing of hers I would love, can I have it?" The aunt doesn't need your mothers permissions, etc. Maybe she did pry the ring off your dead grandmother's hand when no one was looking, but I doubt it.

The automatic response to interprete others' intent as bad and selfish is a bad habit to have. Your grandmother is dead. The ring has been made. Your cousin is engaged. The past is the past. Life is not fair. Not everything is 50/50. You can tell your mom but it sounds like your family gets worked up over small things and fails to see the bigger picture. Get excited for your cousin's wedding.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Everything depends on the will. I was the executor of my parents' estates. When mom passed, technically her will left everything to me to divvy out as I saw fit.

What some people think the "family" agrees to do doesn't actually matter in many cases. It is up to the executor to make these kinds of decisions.

OP here - first, there was no will - everything went to her husband/my grandfather.

I told my mom last week at dinner. She was annoyed/disappointed. She said one of her brothers had already mentioned that there was something they needed to talk about whenever she was up for it.

So, she ended up talking to my aunt (I assumed that was how it would play out no matter who told my mom because there are 3 sisters and the third is developmentally disabled). Aunt continued to be defensive and vague about the entire issue and never really fessed up to the whole thing but admitted that (1) she acquired the ring around the time of the funeral and (b) neither parent gave the ring to her. She also claims that the ring has been in her safe and she didn't think much about it until her daughter got engaged. My mother suspects the ring was removed when the casket was closed and handed over to my aunt (that is the only thing that makes sense at this point).

My mother told her that she was very, very disappointed in how aunt chose to handle the situation. That she still feels there is more to the story about how my aunt acquired the ring that perhaps my aunt herself is not ready to resolve (aunt was the youngest and had a very, very hard time when their mother died - she has always acted a bit more entitled about the death, like it was more acute and painfuyl for her than anyone else). My mom added that, even if my aunt hadn't thought much about the ring since she acquired it, she should have come to everyone and explained the situtation before she gave her daughter the ring and removed the diamonds.

Anyway, her daughter is, as predicted, keeping the diamonds. My mother asked for the gold setting to handed over to my mother and that she and her brothers would decide what to do with it. I suspect there will be hard feelings/distrust towards aunt for a long time and I do not doubt that they will bubble over at some point in the future (the brothers/ my uncles are still bothered by it - in large part because the niece with the ring is young and never even knew her grandmother).

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the update, OP. Your aunt is your family's entitled grabby relative. Sorry that your mom and her brothers have that to deal with on top of their own grieving.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Thanks for the update, OP. Your aunt is your family's entitled grabby relative. Sorry that your mom and her brothers have that to deal with on top of their own grieving.

OP here - thanks. Just to clarify, my grandmother died in 1992 (grandfather died in 2005). So, the deaths are not recent, which I think is part of what lead to the siblings feeling more disappointed and annoyed than angry.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Thanks for the update, OP. Your aunt is your family's entitled grabby relative. Sorry that your mom and her brothers have that to deal with on top of their own grieving.

OP here - thanks. Just to clarify, my grandmother died in 1992 (grandfather died in 2005). So, the deaths are not recent, which I think is part of what lead to the siblings feeling more disappointed and annoyed than angry.

That's a long time to be secretly stashing away a family heirloom. She probably hoped you all would forget about it, although telling her daughter of it's origin was unwise if that was her intention.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's so weird to think of a granddaughter wearing a ring. In my family rings go to men to propose with, not to girls so their boyfriends can propose with them.

We don't have that kind of heirloom in our family. But the only 2 people I know it has gone down to women because, I think, the logic is that if something happens to the marriage, the "real family" will always be the one with the ring. If a son gets it for his fiance and they break up, its no longer with the family most likely?

This is what I thought too (boy gets it to propose with), but to solve the problem, it should be given to a girl but not as a ring to be proposed with and certainly not pulled apart. She should get it intact, as an heirloom, right-hand ring. Fiance should still buy a proper ring.

I took a family ring as my engagement ring. Why would I make my husband buy some stupid expensive piece of jewelry when I have a very special ring already?

+ heirloom rings are a treasure. My family didn't have that kind of money coming out of the depression. You are very fortunate!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Wait, you guys were going to bury a huge diamond? That is really the most interesting part of the story.

It was our grandfather's choice at the time. I was only a kid when it happened but I assume, based on what I know now, that he was a mess with grief and not think rationally. He has also since passed.

I also cannot imagine anyone will take that ring back - that would be crazy. I just want to know if I should go ahead and tell my mom so she can talk to sister/mediate the conversation about how the ring came into the aunt's possession.

I mean, I would definitely tell my mom. But I wouldn't sit and pretend that it was because I wanted my mom to have a head's up when it's obvious she's going to find out in the very near future anyone from someone else's big mouth. You want to gossip. Just own it.

+1. I would tell my mom but it would be so we would gossip and take bets on who is going to flip their lid over the situation first.

ditto!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Thanks for the update, OP. Your aunt is your family's entitled grabby relative. Sorry that your mom and her brothers have that to deal with on top of their own grieving.

OP here - thanks. Just to clarify, my grandmother died in 1992 (grandfather died in 2005). So, the deaths are not recent, which I think is part of what lead to the siblings feeling more disappointed and annoyed than angry.

That's a long time to be secretly stashing away a family heirloom. She probably hoped you all would forget about it, although telling her daughter of it's origin was unwise if that was her intention.

I have honesy come to think that she believed if enough time passed, no one would care. She isn't really like this in general, but she really has an axe to grind over her mother's death and has always acted like it was a bigger/more important death for her than her siblings. My grandmother babied her (as I stated, she is the youngest) and I don't doubt that is where it came from.

[Anonymous]

No doubt your aunt handled it poorly. But, geez, I wouldn't want that diamond(s) after hearing the story. Sorry, I think there's bad karma attached to how the ring was procured and I sure wouldn't give it to my daughter as an engagement ring!

It really makes you wonder how your Aunt got the ring! I wonder if she pulled it off her hand at the viewing? Makes me think of some crazy Grandma Mazur story from a Stephanie Plum novel.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:No doubt your aunt handled it poorly. But, geez, I wouldn't want that diamond(s) after hearing the story. Sorry, I think there's bad karma attached to how the ring was procured and I sure wouldn't give it to my daughter as an engagement ring!

It really makes you wonder how your Aunt got the ring! I wonder if she pulled it off her hand at the viewing? Makes me think of some crazy Grandma Mazur story from a Stephanie Plum novel.

Your cousin is going to find out and will never be able to wear that ring again at family functions without feeling weird.

[Anonymous]

Obviously no one is going to rip he ring of the young girls finger, but I would be pretty pissed about it as well. If the will doesn't specify, all of the siblings get to decide what happens with the jewelry. When my dad's mom died, she had a ton of jewelry and 9 kids. They had the jewelry appraised and split it up according to who had sentimental attachment to which things and their worth. The siblings that got the more expensive pieces paid the others some money, or they got an expensive dresser or something. Letting your aunt claim the one expensive and sentimental thing seems very unfair.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Obviously no one is going to rip he ring of the young girls finger, but I would be pretty pissed about it as well. If the will doesn't specify, all of the siblings get to decide what happens with the jewelry. When my dad's mom died, she had a ton of jewelry and 9 kids. They had the jewelry appraised and split it up according to who had sentimental attachment to which things and their worth. The siblings that got the more expensive pieces paid the others some money, or they got an expensive dresser or something. Letting your aunt claim the one expensive and sentimental thing seems very unfair.

Meh. Don't be so sure about that. It wasn't the aunts property to give. If she wants her daughter to keep it she may need to come up with cash to compensate the siblings.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Yes, you should tell her. Who are you protecting by not telling her after all? I can't imagine not mentioning this to my mother. But then it's up to her whether to do anything about it.

I saw OP's update, so the horse is out of the barn, but here's another perspective. By not telling her mother, she's protecting her mother. Maybe her mom would or wouldn't find out, but is this info necessary? How does it benefit her mom? It just causes pain. Who really cares who has the rock and the setting? It's stuff. It's "disappointing" that the aunt was given/took the ring...that's one way to look at it. But if you were the aunt who somehow had the ring, what were you to do at the time? Get all the sibs together and divide a rock x ways?

Everyone move on.