Reading through your original post and the ones after, you will never make you sister happy or have her not be resentful of you and your other sister.
Keep the money. Your parents seen (and disinherited her) for what you have yet to see about your sister.
Agreed. But OP DOES have ability to do what they think is RIGHT. No matter how unpleasant the future is, there is value in being able to look back and be comfortable with your choices that were in your control.
Silly little example, but my wife is estranged from on elf her sister. I would be capable of pretty much ceasing to think of her permanently. But my wife is wired differently. So she sent her a Christmas card, thinking it the “right” thing to do. Only the OP can make the decision that is best for them.
Based on my own sole experience of arguments about a will leaving scars on the inheritors, I would say that if you do decide to give her a share of what you inherit, be sure that it will heal no wounds, and that you are only doing it out of a sense of what is morally right. It will not change your sister or her relationship to you at all.
I chose to pass on a lot of the money that came to me to my younger sister (who got an equal amount but was furious she didn’t get more). I didn’t need the money, she always lived beyond her means and always will. I did it because I pitied her, more than any other reason. Guess what? She took my offering and hated me for pitying her (among other reasons I also could do nothing about, most being imaginary narratives she had created to feel justified in her truly atrocious behavior). It was much of a muchness whether I gave her my share or not. Nothing short of divine intervention was going to shift her anomosity.
If ever a post deserved to be blowed and underlined!
As in many situations, all you can hope for is to act as the person you wish you were. Everyone else will respond however they will, in ways you cannot predict or control.
Agreed; I’m just making the point that what the o.p. should do or not do with regard to responding his sister’s demand shouldn’t be based upon anything the father may have wanted but on his own interest in maintaining an equitable relationship with her (or not, as he may decide), not in being obligated to execute on some manipulation or carry out a fit of pique by his father.
Stranger
Eh, “mental illness” isn’t a binary state. And everyone has some control over their actions and feelings, and has some uncontrollable urges and feelings.
From a distance, only knowing what’s been said in this thread, I would guess that sib2 is mentally ill, and the father is at least somewhat responsible for that.
I find it curious the way different people interpret mental illness, personal attributes, and choice in different situations.
It’s tough when you love someone who keeps making terrible self-destructive decisions or is consistently cruel to yourself or others, but it’s because of profound mental illness. Personality disorders are serious business. It’s why for me it was hard to sever my relationship with my mother. Because underneath all that crazy is an interesting, even loving person. But when the crazy completely consumes that shining personality, something’s gotta give.
And I’m comfortable at this point holding my mother morally accountable for her decisions. I tried to hold her hand countless times, for decades, to get her the help she needed, and she made a choice not to get help. That’s always been the clincher for me. When I was a kid, I flat out told her she was destroying me psychologically, and she persisted. She knew something was wrong at home, and rather than calling child services or in the very least kicking that fucker out of our house, she spent the next several years seething with rage and jealousy and took it out on me.
It’s not a perfect paradigm because sometimes I think she is so untethered from reality it’s impossible for her to understand basic human relationships. And I had an uncle who was schizoaffective who abused children when he was a teenager and I have a hard time attributing his actions to a moral failing so much as a complete disconnect from reality and inability to process his own abuse. You will find that a lot of people with close loved ones with these kinds of issues have to constantly do this mental calculus and sometimes come up with conflicting results.
But as a wise relative once told me, at a certain point whether someone is morally culpable for their actions is beside the point. If someone is harming you, you have a right to walk away.
Maybe I missed something, but I’d like to know what the other sibling has to say about this situation.
If it were my family, we’d divide the money up evenly.
Unless the sister deliberately and knowingly lied, which doesn’t appear to be the case, I see no reason not to. Plus, now that the sister is so annoying, I would then feel no guilt in having no contact with her in the future.
Sib1 has never believed Sib2’s accusations, and thinks sib2 is crazy. She will not give sib2 a single penny.
Sib1 and I have a pretty good relationship and can enjoy each other’s company, but we have very little contact with sib2. Life is better this way.
I just want to do the right thing here. I know sib2 will not be satisfied, even if I give her a third of my inheritance. She’ll be aggrieved and resentful, because that’s what she does.
Pretty much sums it up. Take sib2 completely out of the equation when making the decision, and do what you think is best. Maybe you just want to use the money for yourself. If sib2 has children, maybe the money could be better used on their behalf, if not now than perhaps later. But you are not going to make sib2 happy, so don’t even try.
I’ve skipped over most of the previous responses to reply because of how late it is, so apologies if this has already been posted.
She sued and lost in a civil trial which has a much lower requirement to decide guilt. Likely happened -vs- reasonable doubt. She didn’t reach that bar.
It’s up to you whether you believe her assertions and if you want to share your largesse. In the end, it’s your inheritance. Do you care if her claims are true? Do you want to share regardless of that to save your future relationship status with her? Is it enough to really matter one way or the other?
As @Dag_Otto said just above, with this info you now have an easy decision.
Sib2 could just as well have said “I want 1/3rd of the estate because the Martians need cucumber scones” for all the relevance to reality it has. And more importantly, for all the change your actions (or inactions) will make to your (and sib1’s) relationship w sib2.
I still don’t think it is an easy one; but the item to weigh is clear.
Again, placing myself in the OP’s shoes the issue is what is just.
If this is a case of a father spitefully trying to punish a child then I lean to one action as the one I would have myself do. The concern is living with myself and being able to say to myself that I did the right thing, appreciated or not.
If however this is a case of a family member having essentially disowned their family, including the OP who did their best to do right regarding them, as this perhaps sounds more like? Well then. You abrogated yourself of your obligations as a family member, and of the rights and privileges of such. You have no just claim to any benefits of being of this family.
I am not a child of abuse but I do have sisters who (no accusations of abuse involved) have each functionally disavowed my brother and I (and each other and when mom and dad were alive each of our parents, or at least one of them, for varying lengths of time) as family. While I’d possibly still step up if I was asked to help one of them, if I could, I do not feel ethics still demand I do so.
Well said. It remains an ethically complicated situation not suited to absolute answers.
If sib2 has been actively abusive to OP & sib1, a certain amount of “you reap what you’ve sown” is applicable. Offset a bit by the injunction to turn the other cheek.
But if sib2 is mostly self destructive, not other-destructive, it’s easier to place oneself above the fray and be morally as well as materially generous, no matter how little it has been or will be reciprocated.
Life is too short, it’s just money, and whatever happened she’s still you sister. Give her her fair share. It might not be the right thing to do, but I don’t see how it can be the wrong thing. Worse comes to worse, you’ll do something good for someone who didn’t deserve it - and is that such a bad thing?
My usual inclination would be to do the right thing and be generous. But the more I read about the circumstances of this family and the description of sib2, the more I think “No good deed goes unpunished”.
To elaborate on my post above, sib2 strikes me as the type of person who would turn on people who get close to her or who try to help her, so that giving her any amount of money could lead to trouble for the OP.
AFAICT the OP was the only person in the family to take sib2’s side in the abuse trial. And her thanks to him was to make every conversation “a struggle” for him, and to eventually end her relationship with him. Now, several years later, there’s money involved and sib2 suddenly comes back into his life wanting some of it.
We can debate what being “actively abusive” to a sibling means, but using one as an emotional whipping boy and engaging in blackmail by guilt is at least one definition.