Resentment of what parents did with their inheritance has wrecked our relationship

[MalePoster9000]

Parents are late 70s. I’m mid-40s.

I could go into details but it might be outing.

Anyway my mother always says “family is everything” but this has really not been reflected in any decisions / actions she and my father took with all that they inherited and didn’t need from the generation above them.

Anyone experience anything similar?

Instead like another precious poster says, they’ve had lots of cruises, needless redecoration, and living the refined retired life

Adding to that your previous gripe that they live in a location they actually like, not one you want them to live in where property value would be more advantageous to you when they die. What utter bastards. How they could envisage a comfortable retirement in a house decorated to their taste in a location they want to be in literally defies belief.

Just. So. Glad. You. Are. Not. My. Child.

On another note, I occasionally work with someone who is fully deaf since birth. They have made a great life. Got good quals, didn’t pursue a clin facing role due to this but did further specialisation in a niche field where they get paid an absolute fuck tonne and that was all possible decades ago as they are now around late 50’s. They have a house, a family and have been driving since old enough to get their license (the only problem they have is with siren’s but say that they can tell by change in traffic behaviour that something is not normal and they work it out and become extra vigilant). There’s an element of self-responsibility in all of this.

Most adults, the decent ones, don't sit around waiting for hand outs from their parents. They get on with making their own wealth. That you have failed isn't your parents fault. It's yours.

You could consider buying outside London. There is civilised life in other parts of the country.

@IncessantNameChanger I admire your stance. My DH's parents have a house to leave but as they are being taken care of by his sister, we have told them to make sure she gets it.

So your life is terrible because they spent their money they way they wanted to, and on the things they wanted to, because it was theirs. Good grief.

You don’t sound hard sound hard done by at all. You sound like someone who is ignoring their own privilege (parents still alive and willing to help you out) the fact you’ll inherit 50% of their house (or as you put it ‘only 50%).

I can’t see how they aren’t doing things for their family (you!)? If they’d sold their house and gone on a cruise and expected you to care for them, then I’d understand
your frustration, but it sounds like pretty normal/fortunate circumstances.

get a grip and realise that inheritance is not a right.

💐 OP.

That’s not impressive behaviour. You’re alone with disabilities and they let you struggle while they enjoyed family windfalls to the max.

Ewww. How awful for you to have that as their legacy. So will everyone.

OP, are you this dramatic in real life? I wish I could give you the benefit of the doubt and say that when you rehearse these kind of arguments in your head to a sympathetic audience of one, it does tend to inure you to how they actually come across...

Everyone gets your bitterness, but you've got to find ways to reframe what's unchangeable, so you can move on. For instance, I found out, doing genealogy, that a thrifty childless uncle 3 generations back left the equivalent of £1m in today's money to the local hospital. Which has since been knocked down, so I can't even go and look at a plaque. If he'd left it to my great grandfather, his nearest relative (who must have been absolutely steaming - or maybe there's a family story there I wasn't privy to, who knows?) our lives would have been completely different. But he didn't. So I focus intently on the people in the hospital who benefited instead, and not on my grandmother, who always seemed a bit pissed off, come to think of it.

Jeez @MalePoster9000 you sound so bitter and twisted.
Get over yourself and start living your own life.

You wanted them to buy you a flat in London 😳

But if you didn’t have a proverbial pot to piss in, in your mid 40s, would you feel the same way?

What if you could replay the past so that you felt you’d been emotionally stunted by your parents growing up, too?

I’m not saying this would be a useful mindset however!

I am probably going to have to house and financially take care of my mother in her old age due to her absolutely terrible future planning. She's now in her mid 50s and recently diagnosed with a life long and limiting illness so looks to be coming sooner than I thought

Some of the things your parents have done might not be the smartest but it's their stuff.

You said you've moved back home a few times when things have gone tits up, that's a pretty big security net to still have in your 40s. One I really hope I can offer my DC. I will also want my DC to have some sort of inheritance but you can be sure I will be living the life I want in retirement too

I don't expect much at all from anyone. I've told my dps and nan to spend now while they're alive.

My dps have both retired early. I don't resent them in the slightest.

@MalePoster9000 regardless of whatever happened in childhood, you are now a fully grown ADULT. You are the boss of you and in charge of your own destiny. You can whine about deafness and anxiety or you can sort yourself out and crack on. It is entirely up to you. I don't suppose there is a single poster on this thread who has had life handed to them on a plate. We could all probably find something shit about life to date, but the great thing about being a grown up is you can make your own decisions, make your own choices and you do what you want to do.

So, you are learning to drive - which is great. What else are you going to do, outside of worrying about what may or may not come to you as inheritance in 10-20 odd years time?

It’s not up to your parents to be financially supporting you at 40 years old OP.

In your position I’d be busier looking for ways to improve my own situation, rather than blaming my parents for not handing over more money to me.

You raise your kids and then you set them free to stand on their own two feet- you’re not a child or their responsibility.

Take some responsibility and control back over your own life.

@MalePoster9000 if you are mid 40s without a pot to piss in, that is your doing. Your fault. No one else to blame.

Even if they gave you every penny tomorrow morning you’d still be miserable and bitter because you appear to have spent your life spending more energy on being jealous and entitled than doing the work of growing up building a life.

And before you try the poor traumatised me spiel - I had an horrendously abusive childhood due to my parents. I could blame them for a lot and could have sat on my arse weeping but I - and millions of others with even worse childhoods - didn’t. You had the same choice, and chose to stay stunted.

Good grief, I don't know where to start with this. OP if your parents were regularly helping your brother financially (like paying school fees for example) and not helping you then of course, that would be unreasonable. I also think it's a bit unfair to split the will into thirds as you are effectively being penalised for not having children, but to regard it as 'actively evil' is just bat shit! Fred West was actively evil - your parents are just making choices you don't agree with because they don't benefit you.
I also don't see what your anxiety or partial deafness has to do with this. It doesn't even sound like your parents are extravagant or wasteful with money: they just live a more comfortable life than you deem necessary.
You come across as very bitter and entitled and I wonder if that colours the way your parents think of you.

But you have had the better part of two decades to earn, save, and make plans which didn't involve sitting around waiting for a large pot of free money. You are still young enough to get a mortgage and buy a modest property for yourself even if (shock, horror) you have to move outside London and the South East.

I think you're right with your thread title - YOUR resentment is wrecking your relationship with your parents, despite them still bailing you out by having you live with them in your 40s. Let it go. You can choose to carry on fretting about the injustice (and I frankly don't see any injustice) or you can be happy your parents are living a comfortable life. You will eventually inherit from them, unless you carry on blaming them for making different financial decisions to those you might have made and drive them away altogether. There's an element of luck, good or bad, behind most people's situation. I'm sorry for your health issues but you can decide to let bitterness spoil the rest of your life or make the most of what you have.

Ottermouse ah! that's interesting! I'll have a look into that - I do think all those sorts of plaques should end up somewhere, if only for descendants to take grudging photos of...

This is their money not yours. They inherited it, not you. With regards to your other comments about the financial decisions they have made in the past, they don’t need to consult you for their own financial decisions.

Parents are whole people, with ambitions, interests, hobbies and a life. They should live their lives and spend their money however they want.

They may or may not leave you inheritance when they pass away. But no one should expect inheritance or plan their own life decisions based on when they anticipate their parents will die and how much they will be left. This is grim.

My father sold everything that was left to him by grandparents and will no doubt spend every penny my grandpa (and his dad ) will leave him. He shamesly moved in with my grandad and is unemployed, living off my grandfathers pension. All of my granddads hard work, investments and savings will be gone. It makes me feel sick , especially since I know how much my grandad hoped to help future generations.

Just been sitting here laughing and shaking my head (in disbelief). In a way, it’s really akin to my kids coming on here moaning that DH/I didn’t get in on the ground with Microsoft/Apple shares back in the day and how gutted and disappointed they are in us. Because you know, we should have got as many of those that we could afford at the time (of companies no one would ever have heard of and couldn’t reasonably have anticipated they would explode as they did), then we should have held onto these and made our lives unnecessarily complicated with tax implications, and then we should have just handed them across to our kids when we hit retirement (while shutting up and staying put in a house we didn’t like in a location we didn’t want to be in). Mind blown.