Dealing with unpleasant, untrue rumors

In My Humble Opinion
1

Wondering if any of you would like to share your experiences dealing with unpleasant, untrue rumors which you heard were being told about you.

My wife recently heard from a family member (my wife’s sister A) that another family member (older sister B) had heard that my wife and sister A had been trying to get their father to sign some documents - presumably regarding his estate. My father-in-law is 90, and has some significant health problems including poorly controlled diabetes, and a pacemaker installed a week ago.

Without going into too many details, FIL had 2 wives. My wife and her 2 sisters are from the first wife, now deceased. Wife 2 and her 2 kids w/ FIL are alive. We’re pretty certain that my wife and her sisters are not going to get anywhere near a proportional share of whatever FIL leaves, and we are resigned to that. It is a long and sordid history. I can go into more details if you want, but that was not my point of posting this.

I’m figuring that the only response for my wife and sister B is to assure sister C that the rumors are untrue, and then just try to ignore it. Should we urge C to relate that to whomever she heard the rumor from? Anything else?

2

Ignore rumors until somebody directly asks your wife “Are you trying to get your father to sign some documents?”

Then answer “no”, and then continue ignoring rumors.

3

I don’t think there is any other way to play it. Dishonest people tend to disbelieve honest people anyway it doesn’t matter so much what you say. Ask them when and where this was supposed to have happened, just in case you can prove you where elsewhere at the time.

Or

If we really wanted his money we would have had you all poisoned years ago (wink).

4

The problem with rumors is that for the most part, people will believe what they want to believe and there’s nothing you can do about it. If asked directly, be honest. Otherwise, ignore the rumors. Frustrating, but that’s the way such thing go.

Sucks that your wife is having to deal with this nonsense.

5

Thanks all.

There has been a lot of unpleasantness related to her side of the family, but I think most of the past stuff involved people attributing bad motives to others’ actions. I can’t recall having heard that other people attributed something so untrue to my wife. It is surprising how bothersome it is. I hope to be more aware in the future, to be sure I do not do anything similar to anyone else. I suppose most of us “spread” rumors somewhat often. The person who is really out of line is the person who STARTED the rumor. And good luck at identifying THEM!

The FIL has always been - um - challenging. And it has hurt that he has seemed (in our perception) to greatly favor his 2d family disproportionately. But, like I said, we have done our best to accept that. And in recent years, as he’s gotten older, he seems to have mellowed. My wife has focused on enjoying whatever time she has left with him. Basically, sharing time with him before he dies is all my wife seeks. We’re not talking about monopolizing his time - just an occasional phone call or lunch. Our clear impression is that FIL’s wife and kids resent those efforts. It stinks when BS like these rumors interfere with my wife and her father passing some time together.

6

If it’s geographically possible, I think your wife might want to call a meeting with her sisters to talk about Dad’s estate. It would be nice (and the mature thing to do) to just deny and ignore and move on, but the fact is rumors can have consequences even if they’re untrue. Just be open and honest, get everyone on the same page and there should be nothing to regret later.

7

Thanks. Sister A is local. Sister B lives very distant (and has some emotional challenges.) Apparently Sister A asked B the source of the rumors, but B refused to disclose it.

Rumors are weird, aren’t they? You can spread one, but not let the object of the rumor know where to get more info? I guess the rumor monger wishes to retain their future access to more dirt! :rolleyes:

Believe me, there have been no lack of sisterly discussions about this over the past 3 decades, since my wife and her sisters were in their 20s an learned their dad was a bigamist and that they had 2 teenage half sibs. Wife’s mom turned to alcohol and drugs, got screwed (actually screwed her daughters’ interests) in the divorce, and didn’t record the property rights she WAS awarded. Wife and her sisters inherited from MIL a fraction of what FIL was/is worth. But, like I said, we’re doing fine. We’d certainly welcome an inheritance, but we don’t want the unpleasantness of striving for it.

During all this time, my wife and sister A have felt they were doing fine financially, and they weren’t going to try to litigate their future inheritance. Through this date, we think is somewhat “unfair” that FIL seems poised to be far more generous towards family #2 than my wife’s family, but the entire situation has been ugly and confusing enough that we have consistently made the decision NOT to try to litigate (or even directly strongly advocate) for economic gain.

Like I said, my wife has been very pleased that, over the past year or so as he’s become more infirm, her dad seems to be willing to engage in some of an emotional father-daughter relationship than he ever did before. Sucks that when we’ve seemed to have come to some place where my wife can enjoy the best possible relats in her dad’s final years, that BS like this comes up to interrupt that.

8

There are traps and pitfalls in denial of false rumours - in particular, the mindset of: “Methinks he doth protest too much!” and “Oh, you’re offended! The truth hurts, right?” and “You’re never be so defensive if it wasn’t true”

In my experience, the best rebuttals of falsehood are very concise, and remain closed to extended debate and elaboration. It should be enough to say “That story is entirely false”. If challenged to explain in greater detail, don’t do it - just say “There is nothing further to discuss; the story is entirely false”

9

Any given rumor falls somewhere between quite believable and extraordinarily unlikely, and somewhere between harmless if true and horrible if true.

Obviously the worrisome combo would be Quite Believable + Horrible If True.

I think you have to start off by acknowledging, in a situation like that, that the rumor should be taken very seriously, because it’s a credible accusation and would compel the intervention of people if it were indeed to be true, and because if it were true of somebody else you’d want it to be acted upon and things done about it.

Then, having done so, you can remind people that it’s also a horrible accusation, one that should not be believed about anyone unless it is indeed true, and that, while we should take the matter seriously, we should be seeking facts, not lighting torches and preparing a gallows.

Then you make your statement about your innocence (we’re assuming you are in fact innocent, yes?) and you invite questions and make yourself available to cooperate with any inquiry etc.

If it’s Quite Believable but No Big Freaking Deal, you say “Maybe, maybe not. Does this concern you? Is there a reason this concerns you?”

If it’s Horrible but Massively Unlikely to be True, you say, seriously but calmly, “No. For the record.” And don’t elaborate unless others pursue it, nor speak to the subject at length.

If it’s neither Quite Believable nor Horrible, why bother to respond at all?

10

Yeah - good responses. How about adding something along the lines of, “It is quite hurtful to have such unkind lies spread about us. I trust you are not spreading them and will take any opportunity to deny them to whomever told you.”?

Probably serves no purpose other than basically whining out loud…

11

Well if I gave it more than a seconds thought im sure i could come up with a more meaningful example but immediately off the top of my head, a certain member here (unless he’s been banned, that wouldn’t surpise me) who also posts on the snark board, as well as however many silent assenters who went along with him, perpetuated a pretty vile and disturbing real life smear against me a year or two ago. I make no secret of the DUI I got when I was 20 years old, the one which led to my car crash which led to the injury which ultimately led to me being paralyzed from the waist down. Well I’ve never tried to shirk responsibility for my actions. Never.

But along comes a bitterly unhappy shit of a man who just does-not-like-me. And he thrives on the snark bpard “behond their backs” forum, which is really a revolting place (at least it used to be, it very well may have changed recently). This is the forum on the Giraffeboards where assholes, trolls, banned former Dopers, Incels, and just a bunch of hateful human being congregate to sit in puddles of their own warm piss and blow spit bubbles. And eviscerate Dopers where no one can see or hear them. Except for anyone at all who clicks over to the site and takes a gander but why? There is nothing there.

Now let me say, there are some awesome motherfuckers over there (those same posters are here too). But they are definitely the minority and truth be told, I don’t know what they get out of being over there that makes it worth it. But that’s their call to make.

Anyway, this bitterly unhappy little man who focused his ire on me for some reason (I recall about a sentence or two of interaction with him, ever) obviously did at least a cursory amount of reading about my backstory, both by reading all old threads and by digging up anything a quick google search migh tbring up (Dude, do u think im sexy?) He became familar with the basics of some elements of my car crash story, enough to subvert the facts and completely destroy the truth and fabricated about the most offensive lie anyone has ever leveled against me.

This shit stain posts, for all the internet to see, how i was a degenerate piece of shit who deserved the fucking death penalty because i got drunk, drove recklessly and killed an innocent child in a drunken haze. And then i just sued everyone, right let and center because i was a degenerate who deserved to die.

I absolutely never expect to be stuck up for, vouched for, or for anyone to get my back. Its much preferred to just not get involved, not make waves, than it is to stick your neck out for a guy who, from their perspective at least, is just as likely if not more so to be in the wrong as he is to be in the right.

To be honest, i was expecting at least some pushback from longer term dopers who had access to and read all the same stuff that a broke Tierian Lanaster read (i honestly have no clue as to this poster’s size or stature. The mental image of a Tierian Lanaster, broke and fallen from grace, fits my mental image of this pozter perfectly. Sad.

The one saving grace from this whole thing was that one Doper in particular did get my back. I already held DSeid in pretty high regard here and i have for many years. He validated that high regard when he challenged the unnamed poster on his libelous claims that i killed anyone and sued anyone for non-legitimate reasons. He dug up some of my old posts where i articulate exactly what happened, directly contradicting the small man in front of all. And he backed up my claim to have taken full responsibility for my actions all those years ago.
Kudos Dseid. You made me feel like i belonged here that day. And you didnt not have to do that. It was not your mess. But you did. And if i ever met you, id buy you a drink.