While it’s entirely normal and understandable to leave things to your offspring after you pass, inheritance is one of those topics that can really tear a family apart. Unfortunately, once you add in favoritism and entitlement, things get even messier.
A woman asked the internet if she was wrong for considering no longer helping her elderly mother after learning that she would not inherit the house. She later added some details that made many readers change their mind. We reached out to the woman who made the post via private message and will update the article when she gets back to us.
Figuring out who is entitled to what can end up causing a lot of familial issues
Image credits: SDM ProdStudio / Freepik (not the actual photo)
One woman wondered if she should stop supporting her elderly mother when she discovered her inheritance plans
Image credits: prostock-studio / Freepik (not the actual photo)
Image credits: Wavebreak Media / Freepik (not the actual photo)
Image credits: Towfiqu Barbhuiya / Freepik (not the actual photo)
Image credits: AITA_Conflicted_Wish
Thinking about what happens after death is important
It can be hard to balance “who gets what” when thinking about what you leave behind. Indeed, most folks actually struggle to properly address the question of their own death, so they can perhaps be forgiven if they don’t have a perfect plan. After all, imagine sitting there, putting pen to paper, about what happens when you die? A lot harder in practice than theory.
At the same time, it’s absolutely vital, as this story demonstrates. Unfortunately, greed and entitlement (both selfish and legitimate) are very human emotions. We also tend to create emotional attachments to things that can go beyond “value” in a monetary sense. The house in this story is a perfect example. It’s actually very easy to find out just how much it’s worth, but if you’ve lived there a long time, sentimentality can change the equation.
However, setting aside the emotional difficulties of who inherits what, the truth is that thought has to be put into this. Favoritism can and will poison a family, if the last thing your offspring remember of you was an unequal will, that memory will linger. It also creates the unfortunate reality where near the end of a parent’s life, their kids will start to act differently. This starts to raise questions about why they are helping out, spending time with their parents and so on. Not at all hard to see how this can poison a family dynamic.
The parents should have had a plan
However, this story is peculiar, as the woman who wrote it made some edits later that really did change people’s equation. Perhaps this is a good cautionary tale for people who frequent these online groups, to not jump to conclusions, many readers were entirely on her side until she revealed the rather large sum of money she was about to inherit.
More importantly, it was a lot more than what the mother had to leave behind. It seems like the woman wants the house and the money because of an oral agreement she had with her father. The fact that neither parents actually sat down to figure out a joint plan is just selfish. Without “protagonist bias” the woman’s question seems a lot more bleak, she is asking if she should no longer take care of an elderly woman, after inheriting the majority of her money, because she also has the house she wants.
More importantly, the details that turned many readers against her came in an edit, not in the original story, which is telling. It raises the very natural question, if she skipped these details, what else isn’t she mentioning? The fact is, inheriting a couple of millions should set her up for a long time, but she seems insistent on more.
Many people, justifiably, wanted more details
Some netizens gave suggestions
One group of readers thought she was in the right
Others thought she was being greedy
