I'll try and be brief, I'll have to fudge a couple of details too so forgive me if I get my wires crossed doing that.
I have had a very troubled relationship with both my parents. They have a troubled relationship with each other. They have no friends and have fallen out with every other relative. They both have narcissistic traits and my Dm is very codependent. I am late 30s, only child.
The emotional and psychological abuse, plus the sabotage and lying from my Ps have been truly awful. The levels of control they achieved over me were unbelievable. I look back now and I can't understand how I got so worn down as to accept it all. Financial control has been a huge thing.
The thing is, a few years ago, my DF really calmed down. He was still not great and his attitude towards me was still one of disinterest and demands but it was as good as it was ever going to be. Sadly at this point my DM escalated her behavior enormously. She became very manipulative, verbally abusive and cruel to me.
Very sadly she also confirmed a few enormous lies that have had huge consequences for me. These were not small lies either, they were prolonged campaigns of pretending to be interested and involved in good things I was trying to do and making sure they didn't happen. Very deliberate. A couple of these things were related to finances and education.
Anyway. My DPs are well off. Not like the Windsors or anything but comfortably off. They set up a few savings accounts for me and gifted me the money. We are talking in the 10s of 1000s. I was not allowed to touch these. Fair enough.
I do realise that this was very generous of them and that there are people out there who would love to be able to do this or receive this kind of help and can't. I also know that my Ps came from very poor backgrounds and to them this is like… why would I not just accept whatever their demands are in return for such a huge advantage.
At the start of 2019 I went through a few problems and was struggling. I did not tell my Ps this, I tell them as little as possible. They found out through opening post that I was in my overdraft and offered me some money. Let's say 1K. I stupidly accepted. I didn't live with them at the time but my Dm insisted my bank statements got sent to their house. I did say not to open them but she would say she did it by mistake..pause…and then say I would never know if it was a mistake or on purpose anyway.
After this my DM said she wanted to have access to all my bank statements and that in return for her putting money in my account which she would regularly do she would go through all the spending with me and discuss it and tell me what I was allowed to use the money for. I thanked her and said that was very generous but I felt it was not a good idea. So I basically said no thanks to a gift of money every month. This went down like a sack of the proverbial.
She also said that because I would inherit money and a house she wanted me to do nothing with my life except what she said. This would have meant becoming single, moving back in and asking permission to go anywhere or see anyone. I was very much
her response was "you'll have it all when I'm dead, can you not wait until then, you just want me dead now so you can have more money!" I left, very, very upset.
I have trouble clearly remembering this as it was so confusing but she was also insisting I stop working. She was saying I could go on benefits and give the money to her and she would pay for whatever I wanted that she approved of. Seriously though, I can't even really remember that part. When people behave this way it makes you feel crazy yourself and you shut down.
In 2019 I became very ill. I used one savings account to enable me to survive really. Me and my Ps were NC at the time. There is another account I have not touched.
I felt awful using the money, like I was stealing. However, I was very ill and the money was in an account in my name and I thought well, would my Ps really want me to languish and suffer when there is an account there with funds in it? It all feels very odd.
There are 3 other accounts with significant funds in them. These are online accounts and the login details and the old phone I used to verify etc are at my parents house.
As I am aware this is getting long let me just say there is NO WAY I can just go round and talk to them. It just does not work like that. My DM has all these rituals she needs me to do before she even let's me cross the threshold. She is incredibly mean and abusive from the first second of opening the door. She will literally corner me and then square off to me (she is tiny, I am not) kind of making it feel like I would have to physically mover her to get away. She lies in the extreme. She tells my DF one thing and me another. My DF is a self pitying bully who has no patience for anyone or anything and goes into meltdowns. She says disgusting things about people's appearance and I am not looking my best after being ill for so long. I don't really feel up to someone I actually care about taking the piss out of my thin hair, weight gain or things like that. She did that to a horrible extreme before I was ill, when I was quite well actually.
The thing is, they really need to take this money back, don't they?
There is no reason they can't login to these accounts themselves and technically they could take the money out again. That's fine with me, it's theirs. I suppose that's not technically legal though?
Also, say I did login..how do I send that much money back to them? I am guessing there is a limit on how much money I can gift to them in one year etc? This was all set up over the years with the cash as gifts to me basically.
I have come to understand that my DM will manipulate any chance she gets. She sees money as the golden chalice of manipulation. I can't see how this will ever be resolved because she won't ever want to drop that advantage. As I already said, she'll spin it one way to my DF and then spin it to me a different way. When she gets us together she gets very aggressive because she doesn't want to get caught out lying, which happens.
I can't really carry on having accounts in my name that I can't access, don't know what is in them and try and make my own financial plans on that basis. I can't resolve this is person.
The three accounts have approximately 3 Xs the amount in the account I have access to. I don't want to return the one I have access to. I don't know if that's a reasonable position to take or not.
I literally don't know what to do.