WWYD - Found deceased mum's letters to my dad

[ThePastKnocks]

My parents split when I was a child, my dad was pretty flakey then one year he just didn't turn up for me anymore. He's been like it on and off during my life. I've got to the point that we chat and I enjoy him visiting/meeting up as a family a few times a year but I tend to keep my expectations very low due to my childhood. He seems to be trying his best though and was supportive through the bereavement.

I'd just been looking for a document and found 5 files. The first one is red unlike the others so I took a quick peek thinking I'll have to sort through them later. From a quick glance, it's letters to my dad and then potentially some responses and maybe court stuff.

Should I read the file(s) - I don't know how many are about this.

AIBU - No
YANBU - Yes

OP. Sounds like you found a healthy way to deal with the letters. Best to you.

If her DM didn't want her to read them she would have got rid of them. She didn't. OP can read them if she wants to.

@Mum2jenny

I dont understand the outrage over your actions. They were letters written to a deceased person by another deceased person. Why should anyone read them?

You didn’t read them, you destroyed them. In my opinion you were right, but I wouldn’t have mentioned it, either to your SIL or here.

It was none of her business. It wasn’t her family. She interfered in something that didn’t concern her.

That’s terrible that you made that choice for her - why did your DH get to choose and not her? And to do something as final as burning them. awful.

When exactly are people supposed to get rid of their correspondence? Given that most of us don't know when we're going to die, so we have to shred everything? Not keep any letters that are important to us, but that we don't want others to read?

Until recent threads on here, I've assummed that my kids will respect my privacy and not rifle through old letter and diaries. If everyone assumes 'she'd have got rid of it if she didn't want us to see it' presumably she should have never kept a personal diary, and should have destroyed any.love letters etc as soon as she'd read them.

So no, I don't assume that anyone leaving letters and diaries is giving me permission to read them. I certainly won't be reading my mum's stuff when she dies.

I’ve already got rid of anything I don’t want our kids to read. Everything that’s left is fair game now.

That's quite sad. It offered me great comfort. I knew most things about my mum and she was very open. I knew she loved to write but found loads of her poems. She'd read me a few when I was a lot younger but there were some she'd written to her mum who'd passed away before I was born, about having a child and divorcing and there were some about life, she'd written songs. They're insightful and really cherished.

My mother of all people knew what people left behind when they died as she had to deal with stuff from both parents.

I would never just chuck something without checking what it was otherwise surely people should leave a document to say what they don't want opened after they're gone?

Every situation is different, but I think there's real danger in being misled about the truth of a contentious situation by reading a letter, written years ago, not for the person reading it now, stripped of all its context, and most importantly by one person only.