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Relationships

Mumsnet has not checked the qualifications of anyone posting here. If you need help urgently or expert advice, please see our domestic violence webguide and/or relationships webguide. Many Mumsnetters experiencing domestic abuse have found this thread helpful: Listen up, everybody

So I applied for a copy of my mum’s will to see who she left her money to.

79 replies

CovidCorvid · 17/08/2021 18:29

Obviously I knew I was getting nothing and was curious.

Bit of background. She was a nasty narc. Physically and emotionally abusive to me and my brother. She and my dad divorced before she died, she was physically abusive to him before the divorce. He died soon after the divorce. I could write a book on the stuff she did to me. Overall very critical and interfering. Insisted on coming to my dad’s funeral even though she wasn’t welcome, told me I couldn’t stop her.

She was nasty about me and my brother to my (then) 11yo Dd and dd repeated what had been said. My brother called her (mum) out on it and she denied saying it. She said my dd was a liar and needed to be in a mental institution (I believe dd). My brother told her we were both sick of her behaviour and if she wanted a relationship with us we needed to sit down and have a talk and her behaviour needed to change. She flounced off and apart from the odd abusive letter we never heard from her again.

Six years later (end of last year) she died. I got a nasty letter from beyond the grave telling me how much she hated me, how she hopes dd will be as nasty to me as I was to her (I haven’t done anything apart from refuse to be abused any more). Letter said I was disinherited (I’d guessed as much)

So her estate was worth nearly half a million. I was curious as to who she has left money to…..I’d figured a neighbour who I knew had helped her out a bit and maybe the church.

She has split her estate into 20ths and given various people either one 20th or 2x 20ths. Mostly old family friends, so people I knew as a kid. But unless they got closer in the last six years (unlikely as geographically distant) some of them are people she’s seen about 3 or 4 times in the last 20 years and apart from exchanging Xmas cards with had no other contact.

This has pissed me off more than if she’d left all her money to the church/neighbour. I don’t know why as it would make no difference to me. I suppose I always wondered if she might leave some money to Dd or to my nephew but obviously not. Instead she left it to people she hardly knew who are wealthy baby boomers like her, but also in their 80s so effectively it’s their kids who she doesn’t know who will benefit.

I know I need to let it go. Ultimately losing my inheritance was worth the weight which has been lifted off my shoulders the last few years. I’m also pissed off as I’ve heard on the grapevine she’s spent the last few years telling all her friends and neighbours what a nasty, selfish Dd I was. In one of the letters she wrote me she said how I’d cut contact with her once she became to old to be of any use to me. The sad thing is she probably believed that….she had a weird ability to totally rewrite history and to believe her new version….a version where she was the innocent victim.

OP posts:
TheWayTheLightFalls · 18/08/2021 14:36

I can see why you were curious. I would be the same. You can only get on with your life and move on. It sounds like her money didnt give her much joy x

This is it for me too.

OrangeBlossomsinthesun · 18/08/2021 14:52

They all work to the same script. You are better off out of it, emotionally. I can see why you wanted to know, but it's over now. See it as your freedom. x

GETTINGLIKEMYMOTHER · 18/08/2021 14:56

Wills can cause so much aggro and heartache. I don’t blame you for wanting to know, OP - I’m sure I’d feel the same in those circs.

A friend of ours, gone some years now, made a will that was grossly unfair and controlling towards his wife of over 20 years. I only knew of the contents because dh was an executor and had a copy of it well before he died. The knowledge turned me right against the friend, though TBH I’d been going off him already because of his meanness with money and selfishness towards his long suffering wife. Saying anything would have been out of the question though - he’d only have taken it out on her.

Luckily he altered his will to some extent shortly before he died - I swear it was only because he didn’t like to think of what other people would say and think of him when he was gone - his general reputation as ‘good old X’ was very important to him. Other things that came to light only after he died made me realise that he was a classic narcissist, not just mean with money and very selfish.

Re the OP again, sometimes I think it’s high time the UK law was changed so that you can’t disinherit your own children, like in France, and I dare say in other countries.

OTOH I do know a lovely couple, who frankly I wouldn’t blame in the slightest if they disinherited one of their dcs, who has behaved absolutely shamefully - the parents have been hurt to a devastating degree.

And before anyone says I may not know the full circs, I do.

Gonnagetgoing · 18/08/2021 15:01

Not sure why you expected anything but you should either get therapy to get over this and just park it.

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