Devastated but should I be?

[Solarpinlight]

Very long story shortened or I'd write a book.

My father called me and my sister up today, said he needed to talk to us. Our mother passed away suddenly last December, we are still struggling with it and my sister and I miss her terribly. My father started seeing a woman not long after, we have met her a few times but we've gathered she's possessive of my dad and he's started to be less and less available. My sister and I have found this difficult but understand he's an adult and as long as she's not being forced to be our mother then even though I don't really like it we've accepted it for peace all round.
Today father tells us that his girlfriend wants to move in with him into his house. She is planning to give her daughter her house and her son a house she owns elsewhere. Part of the 'deal' of her moving in with my dad is that she will give him half the value of his house in cash if she can be then signed over half his house, in effect buying half. He will then spend this money on much needed modernisation. My father wasn't looking for our blessing, it seems he's doing it whether we like it or not. His attitude is that we are all settled and working so don't need his money. My sister and I came away she'll shocked and it's only now sinking in. Our mother would not have wanted this at all. She'd be devastated to think we were losing our family home. His GF is 12 years younger than him, he's 70 so once it's all sorted out if he dies first then she'll have the house.
I've come home and spent an hour on the phone to my sister as she's as gutted as I am. Where on earth do we go from here, he's adamant the GF is his future and we are not to interfere. I feel sick, I know he's entitled to his life but why do this to us? He's not the man I thought he was and I'm reeling.

Oh dear lelapaletute "fannying about like teenagers"? Empathy fail.

Ratatatouille is right.

I would like to see a change in or at the least heightened awareness of this issue which is becoming far more prevalent in the days of blended families.

Any parent, if asked whether they wanted their money, home and things to go to their children or a random stranger would say the former. They don't enshrine that in law before they die because it is not always simple and they have a degree of trust, an unwritten agreement with their spouse that that is what will happen.

The leaving of the deceased partner's money to someone that she never met and may not even have liked is clearly a breach of that agreement.

Time to re-think the marriage and inheritance rules.

lelapaletute How can you be sure that this woman is going to care for op's father? They have know each other for 12 weeks. That's a ridiculous assumption.

lelapaletute
I really wish people wouldn't get so hung up on inheritance. It destroys families

That statement shows lack of understanding of so many things.

cloudgaga i was referring to the dad and new girlfriend, not the OP. They are older people with a limited amount of time left to enjoy life in. Everyone seems shocked at the swiftness with which the relationship has developed, including the OP and her sister (understandable in their case as grieving for their mum). But their father's new relationship is no slight to their mother. To see it that way is to assume love is finite and to love this new woman means he has withdrawn his love from the memory if their mother. If anything, his keenness to take the relationship forward is a tribute to the happiness of their marriage - he clearly knows he is much happier settled down with a loving partner rather than playing the field. Bit insensitive getting rid of photos, mementos etc so soon - but imagine having to move into a house dripping with memorabilia of your OH's previous relationship, it would be very awkward!

If the post had just been about her pain at how swiftly he has moved on from her deceased mum while she is still reeling with grief, i would have been sympathetic. The fact she hinges it all on the house and her feeling that he has done something awful to her and her sister leads me to believe either that she is more bothered about the inheritance aspect, or that in her upset she is confusing material provision for love. I think she has the right idea that preserving her relationship with her ageing father is far more important than policing his relationship with his new partner, or how big a slice of what she gets after he's dead.

Op - this is an awful situation and there are no easy answers.

cloudgaga you can't be sure. Relationships do fail. Hopefully the OP and her sister would still want to be there for their father if they break up and she moved ou, though they would be within their rights not to. And if he had to sell the house and downsize if the relationship fails, then i guess he'll learn a lesson. What I'm saying is, how much of the house is left to OP when he dies should be neither here nor there.

BadKnee care to clarify what things, or is that just a general non-specifically sneer?

"This evening my sister and I are both questioning whether he was seeing her before. He's known her for years apparently, through bowls. I'm honestly reeling, I don't know what to think."

My DF girlfriend was from work, moved in 3 months after my mothers death. She had been so friendly, helpful, such a good listener etc etc in the six months previously when my DM had been dying!
Fast forward 6 years. Father - divorced, lonely, penniless and crying in my home about 'What an old fool' he had been. !!!! He died in a council old folks home, there was nothing left for anywhere else. He and my mother worked their entire lives, and he literally gave everything away to a woman who turned his head, and his mind with nice words and a bit of sex. Sad but true.

Unfortunately there is nothing you can do , lawyers cant help .

You can try to reason with your DF , but from experience I very much doubt he will listen and you will be painted as a gold digger. As you will have realised from posters on here this is not an unusual situation.

Lelapaletute
So you would be perfectly happy if you have children and a house with your half being worth for example half a millions pounds that on your death your 50 percent of the house eventually end up in another strangers family when your DH remarries because that's what happens when you don't write a will and have tennants in common
Do you really really trust your DH to do the writr thing and even if he want to the law unless he writes a will simply givr everything you owned to his new wife / family

Would you honestly really give a total stranger and there family huge amounts of money in many cases your talking hundreds of thousands of pounds
If you would be happy with that your a much much better person than me and many others . Because that's what the OP dad is doing .

In many cases it's not about the inheritance or being grabby
Im sure that many of us wouldn't care less if the house was sold for care home fees or spent on fast cars and gambling as its rightly there's to do so .

But for 50 percent of a house which in my parents case would be around half a million pounds damm right i ensures that my parents understood the issues about death , and remarrying
There are lots of things that can be put in place like life interest for the surviving spouse and splitting the tennancy for to joint tennants so that each party can leave there 50 percent to whoever they want to.

It's just cost my parents £350 to do exactly this and leave a life time interest to the surging spouse and write mirror wills leaving there 50 percent to my sister / my son
So at least if my dad did something like the op dad we know that my mums share is going to her family and not some random woman and her family who's pussy whipped my father

To be fair the way many men dump their kids and don't bother once they get remarried it's not surprising that this happens either

Another one here that this has happened too.
MIL died after an illness of several years.
PIL was seeing somebody else immediately - before the funeral and so presumably before MIL's death.
Our DD was old enough to have a close relationship with MIL so we told FIL we did not want the kids to know about new woman (NW) until DD had had time to grieve. We new she would be distraught if she was expected to deal with NW so soon after MIL's death.
FIL and NW went ballistic - we were being insulting and offensive by suggesting this. They were doing nothing wrong. How dare we.....
In the end we gave in to their demands, told DD and exactly what we predicted would happen did; DD refused to see them for 6 months and even now years later her relationship with her FIL has not recovered.
My DH's relationship with FIL has never recovered either.
But the truth is there is nothing at all you can do about this. His life, his choice. His money, his decision.
Your inheritance has gone and if you try to argue that with him, you will also lose your relationship with him.
I imagine you thought you would grieve for you mum as a family and that you would spend more time together supporting each other, but sadly you are now on your own.
So sorry for your loss - as well as losing your mum you must now feel like you have lost your dad too.

I fear the same as skinoncustard for my dad. He's very taken by people pandering to him. If we are more truthful/honest he's outraged. Without my mother smoothing this it's totally off kilter. I feel like I'm in some updated king lear but with other women rather than sisters as goneril and regan. In the end I decided I just couldn't bear to think about it all the time. I used to feel horribly like I owed it to my mother to challenge this. What about her wishes etc. In the end though, if it was that important to her, she should have made it better will to ensure it happened rather than leave me with all this awfulness that I can't solve. I'm sorry her wishes won't happen but what csn I really do about it.

Your dad is an adult - and like all of us - whatever age we are - free to choose whatever we want to do - which includes making mistakes on occasion - (I'm not suggesting this is a mistake - they may be perfectly matched and all goes well.) however this situation is not really anyone else's business but his - and if you love him op - let go and leave him to do what he wants to do with his life.

If it was the other way round and you'd met someone and was planning the same - would you listen to your dad telling you what you should/shouldn't do?

No one really wants to be told what to do - we all just want acceptance and for others to be happy for us.

If you fight - you risk losing him altogether. Love is unconditional, after all.

I'm so sorry. Some men just seem to do this, detach from the past and their kids and switch wholly to the new relationship. My DFs partner would happily write us out of their lives and has tried, we cope by never giving cause for offence. If partner put enough pressure we know from seeing it happen that DF would just go NC with us and not look back.

It's very hard to see the message and feelings change from 'this is our home, we are a group with our shared history' to 'this is my house, my life, nothing to do with you' as if you're a stranger or nothing more than a hang over from a relationship that's no longer relevant. It's very painful, it's hugely rejecting. It writes you out of the emotional history and bonds your whole life has been built on.

Yes yes to asking now for the sentimental items of your dms, they will be got rid of. There are family items of no value but which have always been there since I was born, including photos. I know when my DF passes away we'll be lucky if we're told and there is no way we'll be allowed to keep or even see anything from my DFs life.

This woman seems to be playing him very expertly indeed. The only thing I can think of is to suggest enthusiastically through your teeth that's great dad, who can we find you for good legal advice to set it up? And see if you can helpfully find someone good and encourage separate advice. But he's going to do what he wants and i get how very hurtful it is.

magpie i wouldn't be perfectly happy, or perfectly unhappy. I would be dead and past caring. This is not about the OP's mother, she is no longer concerned with who gets what, and if she had been so intensely preoccupied with it when alive, she would as you've suggested made a will to that effect. That's what my mum has done, my stepfather has a life interest in her house which upon her death will be divided between me and my sister - her idea not mine as i don't give a monkey's. She initially wanted to leave a larger chunk to me as we have had more contact over the years - i begged her to make it 50 50, precisely to avoid the sort of horrible bad feeling that can arise when someone dies and people start carving up the pie. I even suggested my sister should have a larger share as at that time she had 2 children and i had none. To be fair we're talking about a small house in the North East with a value of less than £50k, so far from the half a million you dream about. My dad and my stepmum are far better off, but they are currently in the process of downsizing, taking early retirement and enjoying their money, and it never occurs to me for a second to wonder how much will be leftover for me at the end or who will die first and how that will affect the distribution between me, my sister, my stepsister and my half brother. It's their money. They could leave it all to Batteries Dogs Home for all i care. Or all to my stepsister who has 4 kids to raise up. Or to my half brother who is currently unemployed and struggling to get his life going after uni. I look after myself. Anything that comes on top of that is a gift and a bonus. I have seen over and over again inheritance arguments split families; i will not be party to it. In many ways I'd be in favour of 100% inheritance tax.

It's so soon for your dad to be in this serious a relationship! Possible he is still grieving and trying to fill the gap your mum has left?

At the end of the day it's his house to do with what he likes but if she buys half of it what right has she to say he uses that money for updates?
She would get a half stake in the house THEN they both pay in an equal amount to do it up, that's fair.
Sounds like she's out for whatever she can get!
In terms of people talking about inheritance, I'm off the opinion that people should spend whatever they've got and have fun, but if he does leave behind half a house and doesn't specifically will it to you and your sister and her kids eventually get it, then that seems very unfair.
Her kids are very very lucky, surely she must see that you guys should be just as important to your dad as hers are to her

"we all just want acceptance and for others to be happy for us."
Not me. I have always appreciated input from friends and family that was given in my interest. I don't have to follow it but showing support and sometimes scepticism is also an expression of love and care. Saying yes and amen to everything loved ones do is not always helpful or selfless. Many people do it because they don't care or for an easier life.

"Love is unconditional, after all." That's a bit of a cliché. Adult relationships are not unconditional.

Feel so much for you. You are losing out on the emotional availability of you father and financially - and it's all happening so soon and fast.
Everyone's nightmare I think.

Yes, single minded OP and anything I say dismissed instantly which makes our relationship very superficial. Not that I try and offer unwanted advice very often, but just occasionally mention something I've thought of. I'm wondering whether it will calm down in time. I find it easier to grieve by taking things slowly, doing lots of thinking and so on. But then everyone's different and it's harder for df of course as him and dm had such a great marriage.
Your world has turned upside down and it's hard.

It's very hard to see the message and feelings change from 'this is our home, we are a group with our shared history' to 'this is my house, my life, nothing to do with you' as if you're a stranger or nothing more than a hang over from a relationship that's no longer relevant. It's very painful, it's hugely rejecting. It writes you out of the emotional history and bonds your whole life has been built on.

^This. Exactly this. Painful reading because it is so true.

Good point cloud. Love does not shy away from hard truths... said kindly.

Also for those saying op shouldnt expect inheritance no you shouldnt as the parents may need to spend it on care or enjoying the final years of their life but neither should you expect that your family home should go to a complete stranger and their kids - i think you should have a chat with your dad and state the facts that his girlfrend is handing over her home to her children and the scenario could be that if he dies first that you all could be left with nothing unless there is something stated in the will - is he going to do this or not - if he says no then at least you know where you stand . I would also ask him to think about what your mums wishes may have been in terms of inheritance!!

^My DF girlfriend was from work, moved in 3 months after my mothers death. She had been so friendly, helpful, such a good listener etc etc in the six months previously when my DM had been dying!

ugh. Those are the worst ones. They hover around the soon to be widowed men, , like vultures circling their prey.

Definitely worth checking with him that he wants the house to go to her and then her children. And I would do it sooner rather than later as the chances are you will be come increasingly distant from your DF.
FIL has dropped us almost completely now. One or two visits a year max. He no longer bothers with anyone's birthdays. Don't see them at Xmas because they are too busy. It's very sad.