Monday, August 1, 2016

Cutting Off Family Ties

by Laura

[Posted as a contribution to a forum thread.]

We cut off all contact with our maternal grandmother after our mother passed in 2000. Our GM wasn't abusive to us but was abusive to our mother, to the point where our mother had been afraid of our GM even as an adult.

We also cut off all contact with our uncle (mother's brother) after our mother's funeral. He was the favorite child, but he was also an asshole. We'd always disliked him.

GM died in 2006 and uncle died within this past year. Good riddance to both. If there's any justice, they're both crying for an air conditioner.

Our father (d. 2014) and our first brother didn't like our uncle either. Second brother didn't have an issue with our uncle, but he respected the fact that we and our father and our other brother did. Second brother is mildly disabled, and we/MDs felt compelled to protect him from the possibility of our uncle going after his money. Grandfather (d. 1989) was of the opinion that Brother #2 should inherit a larger share of our parents' estate because of his disability. Both of our parents firmly believed in dividing their assets equally among their three children, and they did so. B2 has full control of his own money, but we and B1 found him a financial advisor who specializes in working with the disabled. The two of us are actively involved in the financial-management process.

Short story long, if our uncle had been looking for a pot of gold to siphon from B2, he wouldn't have found one. It didn't stop us from watching out for it, though.

As for the extended family, we didn't advertise that we had cut our uncle off, but we were honest when asked. We never had problems after explaining to anyone.

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