Dear Cristina:

The sad reality is that your father signed over “a very lucrative investment property to her”, that he “took care of her (and by extension her daughter) to the detriment of his own children”, having “day-traded his kid’s retirement early”.

And it is also reality, that legally, you have no way to correct his actions following his death. His wife feels justified in having received that lucrative investment and in receiving that check that you will be handing her when the rest of the estate settles. There is nothing you can say to her, no perfect wording that will dissolve the greed that is strong in her.

Compassion for you- I am sure she will be willing to express that for you as long as it doesn’t involve money, as long as she receives that check, as she is legally entitled to it.

You wrote that your relationship with her may end. I think it will because I can’t see you being comfortable with her again. she will not give up that check she is expecting and which she is legally entitled to: people don’t do that, it would take a very exceptional human being to not take what is legally coming to them. Her loyalty is to her biological adult child, not to the adult children of another woman.

This story is so common, it happens all over, again and again. I know of a story closer to me, a father who gave away his house and big property attached (while still alive) not to his biological children, not to his one especially-dedicated, loving son who did so much for him, but to… a woman who did nothing at all for him. That woman then proceeded to change the locks so that the bio adult children have no access to the house.

Beats me, how and why people do that, why parents betray their own dedicated children, while their children are minor, by the way, and later in life. It is painful, a painful reality. I wish it wasn’t your reality.

anita