Dear Cristina:

You are very welcome.

(It must have been a typo in your original post, that your father and stepmother married in 2012, correct, it being that they’ve been together for over 30 years and that he last updated the will in 2006)

“Love is Responsibility”, the Shaman you mentioned said. I would add to the definition: love is  just responsibility, the word justice being in it. Your father did not practice just responsibility, did he. He practiced partial, inadequate responsibility and so, unfortunately, his legacy with his daughters is that of hurt and sometimes anger.

And like you wrote yourself: “these stories are so  common.. I’ve heard of so many others like this”. I would say justice (back to this word, this quality) is uncommon. Injustice in all its forms is the norm, not the exception and it leaves behind millions of hurt and angry people every day.

Knowing this is the reality we didn’t choose, but it is our reality nonetheless, knowing it is the norm, not the exception, if there is no way for us to correct a particular injustice, we better endure that hurt and replace that anger (when we can) with sadness, not keeping it burning inside us.

Back to the Shaman, he said that “the only really, pure and true love is that between a parent and a child.. mother and child.. All other relationships involve 2 people who ‘use’ each other for something”- –there are mothers and fathers who do love their children unconditionally, but many parents don’t. Many fathers and many, many mothers use their children. What I learned is that a young child always loves his parents unconditionally.

Lots of mothers (and fathers) criticize their children mercilessly. A young child never, ever criticizes her or his parents, no matter how faulty they are. The child doesn’t see those faults.  For the child, the parent is a god: unquestionably perfect, strong,  good and just. Part of the child that looks up to the parent as perfect, wanting desperately to to please the parent- that part never dies. As adults, we see our parents’ faults but we love them anyway. We may complain about them.. but we love them anyway, we won’t leave them (that hardly ever happens).

Your stepmother, she didn’t see your father the way you and your sisters saw him. For her, he was never a god, so it was transactional, the word you used. When you hand her that 20% check, that will be the ending part of that transaction.

I suppose it is your luck, that at the least, your father had a Trust for you and your sisters.

“I’m still wrestling with why he told us”- to ease his guilt, perhaps. But if he didn’t tell her and didn’t insist on putting in in writing, in a legally binding way, then his words to you were empty.

“I kind of feel like ultimately she saw my Dad as her and her daughter’s meal ticket, and the sad thing is, on some level that deal was OK for my Dad”- this kind of deal is okay with many men, from paying women in street corners for sex, all the way to rich,  older men marrying much younger, pretty women. The exchange of money and sex, whether sex is involved in a one time transaction or a long term relationship, is as old as the beginning of human society.

In addition to  it, financial considerations are part of all adult romantic relationships, sooner or later, because we do have to look for our material needs and the needs of our children. In many cases though, greed expands the nature of what is materially needed to expensive cars and houses, that are not really needs, but wants.

Feel free to post again anytime,  on the matter of the inheritance, responsibility and love.

anita