Just checking whether I'm being unreasonable or not because complex family relationships can make you feel very unsure. I've namechanged for this thread because I've posted about this relationship before and it's all extremely identifying, but I've been a regular on here since 2006. It's going to be long, sorry.
It's about my step-mother and her children, although she's not really my step-mother - she's my dad's second wife, my mother is still alive and has always been on the scene.
My dad left my mum and they divorced when I was 11 and my older brother was 16. A few years later (ie. not the cause of the split) he met and married sm. She was 17 years younger than him and they had 3 children. The first was born when I was 16 then they had another two when I was at University. Once he had this second family I barely saw my father - he was busy with them and I was busy with my life as a young adult and didn't live in the same city, although geographically we've never been more than a bit more over an hour's drive apart.
They had an extremely happy marriage and he was much better suited to being with her than my mother, all fine although I had to deal with the fall out of my mum being devastated by the divorce, the depression, the alcoholism, the damaged mental health and to some extent am still dealing with it now MORE THAN 40 YEARS LATER but anyway. They were suited to each other and very happy.
In 2010 my dad had a heart attack. He survived. But during the recovery period my SM phoned me up and told me that they had decided to exclude me and my older brother from his will. The reasoning was that we would inherit from our mother, and their three children had not been as lucky as me and my older brother with jobs, salaries and getting on the property ladder etc. I was shocked by this, especially that my father was too cowardly to tell me himself and left the task to my sm - but possibly that's because it was her decision to do this?
A year later he died. He had 5 children, 3 boys and 2 girls and he made the 3 boys the executor of his will. He always was a sexist dinosaur. She told me that he had left me and my older brother £10,000 each and something for my 2 children (his only grandchildren at the time). I have never seen the will and needless to say haven't had sight of this £10,000 - all I've been given as a memento is one pen.
On his deathbed my dad said to my older brother "please make sure you take care of sm" - ie he wanted him to sort out the will and funeral and everything that she'd have to cope with after he died. My older brother (pretty well off) has done this brilliantly as he is great at practical help, has no children and is to all intents and purposes single and now retired. Dad's younger children were 34, 32 and 29 when he died, my older brother was 54. My dad and my sm have always treated them like babies imvho.
Dad left my sm pretty well off. He had some good pensions (she was always a sahm). A few years later she sold the family house for £680,000 and "downsized" aged 68 to a 4 bed 2 bath house worth £500,000 and bought a £17,000 car. My older brother has done masses of work on this house decorating and doing it up, plumbing, kitchen work, garden work - all sorts. One of her 3 children still lives with her (this half sibling is now middle aged). I expect she has given a generous amount of cash to all 3 of their children. They certainly helped them out with loans and paying fees and rent when they were youngsters in a way that he never did with me.
I wasn't close to my dad, he wasn't a good dad to me even if he was to his other 4 kids. I was the big black sheep and I think we would have lost touch years earlier if I hadn't provided him with his only 2 grandchildren. The rest of them all seem to have him up on a pedestal.
Two of my sm's other middle aged children are not particularly close to her and don't seem to spend a lot of time with her - she's quite annoying so I think I can imagine why, although neither of them have actually voiced why to me. I'm not close to them either (huge age gap and just different lives) so we don't have those sort of conversations. I go months and years between seeing them or being in touch with them.
Anyway, I wonder why I'm expecting myself to maintain a relationship with her? She has 3 children of her own, 2 of whom don't make much effort. The other one lives with her. She gets a lot of help and assistance from my older brother, he obviously doesn't resent the lack of acknowledgement in the will. As she's got older she's become more difficult (as older people often do) and more irritating. I also have my own very old mother to think of as well as my parents in law. My half siblings don't bother with me at all bar the odd facebook message.
Why do I feel obliged to phone her from time to time and spend an hour listening to her woes? Would you bother? If my dad had been fabulous to me and I felt especially close to him maybe it would be different. But he largely ignored me because I was female, strongly feminist and not dependent on him. And they both wrote me out of his will.
Aibu? Wwyd?