It's not about parents spending their money as they wish.
It's about favouritism and unequal distribution of love, financial support and expectations.
It's about the emotional load of dealing with valued possessions. That's hard in itself. Add in bereavement. But when that stuff has had decades of inflated value (emotional and perceived financial) that makes it harder. When there's nowhere for that stuff to go on to to be of use, to be of value and even the charity shop struggles to shift it for £1 because they're drowning in a generation of it. Where stuff that should have had value is mouldy, motheaten and a health hazard because it wasn't looked after. When possessions are kept in chaotic conditions so you're trying to find "treasures" in trash. Where the property itself is degrading because it hasn't been looked after. Where quality of life has been affected for decades because of worthless, chaotic possessions.
When rational conversation about it has been blocked for years, and you've been prohibited in breaking it down into managable chunks. When you know that when you pick up a magazine from April 1993, you'll hear your parent's voice in your head saying "but I haven't read that article yet". And those decades of procrastination, denial and emotion are lumped on to the next generation at their hardest emotional level.
That is worth anger.
I don't care what DM spends her money on. A great life on theatre trips, meals out, socialising. Great. Genuinely great. I don't mind her buying stuff that brings a glow of happiness. But the line is when that stuff is past use, broken, out-dated, out-grown, rotten and it's been hoarded for years, with offers to help blocked and the problem has been kicked down the lines for decades until they're too frail to deal with it, then eventually too dead. When you go into the house and there's a "new" piece of furniture from the clear out of Margaret's mum's house or a "bargain" at the charity shop, but she still won't clear out the chair that collapsed in 2004 because it's OK if you delicately put your weight over the right leg and don't lean back.
And then when the house is finally empty, how to make it sellable after decades of neglect? Do we pool together and put time and money in to strip out and replace the threadbare carpets the same age as middle-aged me? Do we take a potential loss of (£)££,£££ because the house is not fit to be lived in straight away and needs to be sold at "development opportunity" prices rather than a family home.
Wartime childhoods, rationing and abundance later in life are a perfect cocktail for hoarding disorder, which is as harmful as other disorders like eating disorders or addictions like alcoholism. But it's less understood. Really it's about control. The illusion of controlling the items and the perception of stability. But the house of cards of this disordered lifestyle falls most heavily on the descendents who have to clear up the aftermath.