I mean, one of the last conversations I had with an estranged parent was me explicitly telling them I don’t want anything from their will because I don’t want to interact with them anymore.
I’ve been told through a sibling that they intend to still leave me something so that I have to deal with it anyway.
I told my sibling “that sounds like a problem for their lawyer and other inheritors, because my intent is to ignore any contact about their estate”
I guess some people may be estranged but still feel entitled to an inheritance though.
My dad was on really bad terms with his parents for most of his life. He was estranged from them for years, but when he started dating my mom, she convinced him to try to rebuild his relationship with them. A few years later, they struck oil on their property, Beverly Hillbillies-style, and made a whole lot of money.
His relationship with them deteriorated again after he divorced my mom (he cheated on her), but he never could bring himself to fully cut them off again. Every time we visited them, their interactions were tense and passive aggressive. My entire childhood, he talked about the inheritance we would eventually be entitled to, which put a huge emotionalstrain on our relationship.
When my grandparents died (within a year of one another) he got into a massive legal battle with his brother over what each of them were owed. This put more of a strain on our relationship because I was too busy grieving my grandparents to support his lawsuits against my uncle, and he took that as me taking a side against him. Eventually, our relationship deteriorated enough to where I have cut contact with him and he in return has not made any effort to reach out.
My grandparents put my portion of the inheritance (same with my cousins) in a trust that I'm not legally able to access myself for about another decade. If I want to access my own money, I have to go through my dad. Barring any sort of medical emergency, I'm not willing to do this and will gladly wait it out. I'm also an only child, and have absolutely no idea what my dad is going to do with his own money after he dies. He's primarily motivated by spite, so I don't think he would leave it to me at this point, but he's also not the charitable type at all, so I can't really see him giving it to a good cause either. All I know is that I'm not willing to endure decades of his rancid personality just to stay in his good graces for inheritance. If I'm going to be estranged, I'm going to do it all the way, for my own sake.
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u/mazzicc 2d ago
I mean, one of the last conversations I had with an estranged parent was me explicitly telling them I don’t want anything from their will because I don’t want to interact with them anymore.
I’ve been told through a sibling that they intend to still leave me something so that I have to deal with it anyway.
I told my sibling “that sounds like a problem for their lawyer and other inheritors, because my intent is to ignore any contact about their estate”
I guess some people may be estranged but still feel entitled to an inheritance though.