Sister has inherited huge wealth. Help

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My sister has inherited huge wealth... multi millions. Through sad circumstances.
Myself, my younger sister and our parents are all struggling money wise, due to poor pay (work two jobs to try to help), sister is divorce, parents just pensioners. I am trying so hard to be happy for her as she spends spends spends, one day she spent £300k! I try to oo and aa over what she buys, but I'm dying inside and drowning at home. Please help me be more positive, or explain nicely how it's making me feel without ruining our relationship.

@malificent7 £10 million might take a while to get through

Tbh it's her money yes you might be struggling most people are but it's not really on her to support you though

@99bottlesofkombucha - what you said - spot on.

Reading between the lines there seems to be some unpleasant history between your sister and the person whose money this was. It's probably fair to say there's a lot of trauma attached to it.

I don't think it's completely unreasonable for your sister to take some pleasure in blowing a portion of the money (although I wouldn't say a house/car is 'blowing' it per se) in those circumstances. She may see it as a final 'fuck you', payback for whatever it was she experienced or she may feel that by improving the standard of her life she's be able to heal faster and put the past behind her. So that whatever she went through wasn't for nothing.

I also don't think it's unreasonable for you to mention to her at some point that it might be nice of her to help your parents, assuming they had a good relationship prior to the money. Maybe mention a financial advisor too, especially if she has kids she wants to make provisions for and isn't used to dealing with wealth.

As for you, she'll either take the hint when you mention your parents or she won't. If she doesn't, I don't think it'd be unreasonable for you to ask for help with something specific (mortgage, CC debt etc) that you're struggling with, but just asking for a share probably won't go down well.

I'd be fascinated to read the sister's side.

Like many people said, I'd want to help out many of my near relations and friends so it's interesting that she doesn't. The relatives that I wouldn't feel really difficult about knowing they had less than me are the ones that let me down or screwed me over, so sod them if they're now 'oh I'm so close to Sardines (now she's minted)'. I'm sure my mother would tell people we were close when I achieved some pretty objectively impressive stuff at work, but she sure as shit wasn't bothered with me back when I was a young struggling single mother and told me all about her new car and holidays whilst never thinking to help out.

Like I say, if you're close and caring as a family, you'd have to be spectacularly odd not to feel the want to do something even small. Like, really pathologically cold. This makes me feel like the family are jolly interested now there's the sniff of something in it for them.

Having said which, I'm not close to many of my birth family but if be absolutely eating myself with envy if they came into money. Probably because I don't really like them much.

I can't imagine a situation where my sibling or I wouldn't help each other, or our parents, if we came into a £10m windfall.

My brother inherited close to 1.2m from his paternal grandfather, an awful man who had cut our Dad (his son) out of his will following an argument over him trying to hide money to avoid paying for his mothers care. I was never in the will as I'm 'not family', despite my dad raising me from the age of two.

The first thing my brother did when it landed in his account was split it three ways between him, me and our parents. None of us were struggling, it's just the principle.

Stop helping her - you don't have time if you're working 2 jobs and she can pay for help now.
I'd stop being available to see her aswell.
I wouldn't want any of her money but I wouldn't be a doormat who has to be impressed whilst she spends thousands on crap and let's her family struggle for basics.
Your kids don't need to be exposed to that either - if you do have to see her tell her to shut her face about her money.

Geez that’s hard.

Could you explain that this is difficult for you, not because you are jealous but it feels a bit insensitive and you can’t help but feel she is not thinking about your feelings and that feels shit. The way she is behaving is making it harder for you to be supportive and that in turn makes you feel shit.

From here you could put a boundary in place. You are not telling her what to do, quite the opposite, you are telling her what you will do. When she starts talking about this, you will remind her this feels difficult for you; if she continues, you will change the subject/leave/start talking about Traitors. If you explain in advance and she knows the parameters, she will soon learn.

You are 100% justified in feeling like this by the way and it would not make you a bad person to vent about her if you have someone to do that to. She sounds vulgar and totally lacking in awareness. Ripping the piss with someone else who thinks the same might feel delightful. Or a few ‘well done you’s’ with an indulgent head tilt and patronising smile might do the job

She needs to see a financial advisor - she’ll have no money left if she keeps on spending as she is….
There’s that statistic about lottery winners, where such a high proportion aren’t millionaires after five years…

Wait for Christmas and see if she gets you all nice presents?
I have one very rich brother who is entirely self made though, do not expect anything from him! Besides he has children. He is pretty generous and takes us out for lunches etc and I know if we lost our house etc he would step in. But you have no mortgage and sound fine to me. It is all relative?

If she is mostly unaware, why don't you create a win-win solution where you ask her to help the family and let her be the good guy? Once she realises, she might be happy to be generous, and everyone can benefit and keep good relationships

Who are all these people that inherit millions of pounds and have the kind of families that think “I’ll stick that up on Mumsnet”.

No equivalence. Your brother wasn't married to the deceased and didn't have children of the deceased to provide for.

@Cherrysoup Come on - if this is true then she is very obviously after money. She said it herself, talking about money for her kids.

The OP hasn’t got her hands out at all and there’s no indication that others in the family do either. She just wants her sister to stop rabbiting on about the money.

It’s posters on the thread who are saying that the sister should use some of her inheritance to help her family.

Ooh that’s a difficult one, yanbu I would feel the same but actually saying something does then make it sound a bit grabby . I would just I think see how it goes - I might say ‘had you thought about buying mum and dad a holiday or a new sofa or bed’ or something like that

You don't know if they were good parents or not. If they weren't, I wouldn't give them anything.

Are you not close enough to your sister to ask her not to flaunt it? Surely a message saying something like:

“Hi sis. I am really pleased for you and niece no longer having to worry about money. But I’d be grateful if you could be a little more tactful. As you know, money is tight for us and mum and dad so it’s a bit hard to take at the moment. I love you and don’t begrudge you the money, but things are tricky for the rest of us financially so maybe you could just cool it with talking about what you are spending for a while please?”

ETA: btw OP, I think how you are feeling is perfectly human and you shouldn’t beat yourself over it. I couldn’t imagine getting that much money and not helping my sibling and parents. I know they would do the same too. But I guess it depends on family dynamics.

That's up to the sibling yes but it doesn't fall on the person who has money to be forced to feel guilty and have to give money we all have our opinion and thats mine

Yes, this is actually creating fog and not really doing the op any favours.

The op's main issue is having her face rubbed in it.

I can agree that is wrong of the DSis without accepting it is appropriate for her to distribute more widely what, from my perspective, is her child's inheritance.

Agreed. And his situation was not analogous.

In a situation where the DSis was actually separated from the deceased and parent of his child, I think in her position it would be appropriate to regard the money as essentially held on trust for the child, albeit that the child's lifestyle with the mother will be of benefit to them.

I'd wait for Christmas op - or until the invested portion (am I being too hopeful here!) starts to generate an income that enriches them too. To me that extra step of dissociation from the actual corpus of the bequest makes it more appropriate for the Dsis to treat it as something to gift on.

I think that’s a very good response too - unless of course OP does really think ‘I would like some of that’

10 Million is a game-changer. If I had come into that sort of money, I'd share the wealth with my immediate family and a couple of good friends. not enough so they'd never work again, but mortgage and debts would be a thing of the past.

But that's what I would do, and I very much appreciate that we're all different. Perhaps a quiet word with your sister, saying how pleased you are with her newfound wealth, but it's a bit hard to be super excited while you're struggling.

The family dynamic is forever changed, sadly.

This is why relationships easily become almost impossible to navigate. The sister’s life has totally changed out of nowhere, she’s likely in shock and has only just started to adjust to her new reality. She’s naturally going to be talking to those she’s closest to as she gets her own head around it. It may genuinely not have occurred to her that her sister feels resentful about it. Yes, she’s focused on herself here, but no more or less than OP is. They’re both having to adapt, and if the relationship is going to survive then grace needs to be extended by both.

If OP asks about what she’s been doing, chances are that the money will directly or indirectly be referenced. Every conversation becomes littered with landmines, out of nowhere. Been on holiday? Flaunting the money. Purchased a house? Flaunting. Done anything that’s costs money? Flaunting. Suddenly, she’s being viewed in the worst possible light when all she’s doing it engaging in what she’s always known to be normal conversation.