Hoping to hear from longtime NCers who were disinherited or inherited something

[chowder]

Hi, Footprint33,

I went NC with parents and GC sister after so much of their striking out and attempts to hurt me.  They were so cruel and cutting and worked as a team.  I finally established boundaries - which were commended by my mother's sisters, no less, who knew her better than anyone, having grown up with her and seeing so much with their own eyes.

I had greatly tended to my parents' needs over the years - many times dropping everything, running to the hospital, being there for them - while GC sister did none of that.  They didn't like the boundaries, though, and so were out to punish me one more time. 

So I was disinherited.  Everything went to GC.  I was never counting on it, and in some way it felt like I didn't miss what I never had.  I had a feeling they would do that, because of course when you see how someone responds to different situations, you can almost predict.  So it was not surprising.

Looking back, I never could have sold my soul to maintain contact, enduring the hurt, which I knew deep down was so wrong.  And then they could still change the will and use it as a threat anyway.  I had to sleep at night.

An interesting twist was that I went to their gravesite a few years later, and discovered that GC had never completed the process of putting their names on the headstone.  I felt this was so disrespectful, not to honor them at least in that way.  Though again, I was not surprised, knowing how GC operated.  Anyway, I went to the office to see if I could do the right thing and get their names engraved.  They would not do anything, because the person with the deed is the only one with that authority.  Since I was NC with GC and intended to remain so, after much thought I decided to just let it be.  It was confirmation that by their putting GC in charge of their estate, all she did was collect the money and did not administer such an important thing as arranging for their name on a gravestone.  I finally became at peace with it, thinking that they made the choice to put her in charge, and that's on them - I tried, but it was out of my hands.

Later in life, one of my mother's sisters passed, and her estate went through probate.  They had to notify all family members, which included GC, a cousin and myself.  Also on this list was the distribution of jewelry, where only my cousin and I inherited our aunt's items.  Since GC saw that she was not receiving anything, she never even bothered to sign and return the required documents to the attorneys.  Typical - there was nothing in it for her, so she couldn't be bothered. 

Unfair as it is, you will have positives in many other ways.  It's a shame it takes something like this to get such clarity.  But you are seeing who the true people are in your life, the ones that have your best interest at heart.   

It may feel uncomfortable at first, but you will come through.  You are standing up for your peace and values, which are worth more than an inheritance.

One more note - later on, when GC passed, it was a such sigh of relief - for the first time in my life, the FOO could hurt me no more.  What a gift.

May you find peace and self-validation, and enjoy living your life to the fullest.

[footprint33]

Hi Chowder,

Thank you so much for taking the time to write this. Your story is so helpful to me at this stage of my journey. Not only do aspects of my own story parallel yours, but I especially appreciate the way that you were able to come out of this after going NC and being disinherited. With the exception of a few cousins and perhaps one aunt, I do not have the support of relatives. My extended family is very large and dysfunctional, and my father was the GC in his family, so most of his many sisters did not support me and have frankly treated me like an excommunicated cult member. I have received support from some of my parents' ex-friends, however, people that they burned over the years, including former coworkers. One of those people was my mother's former best friend who saw and knew exactly what my parents had done to me and risked her own reputation to support me. My parents are malignant narcissists and so destroy or attempt to destroy the reputations of people who disagree with them.

An interesting twist was that I went to their gravesite a few years later, and discovered that GC had never completed the process of putting their names on the headstone.  I felt this was so disrespectful, not to honor them at least in that way.  Though again, I was not surprised, knowing how GC operated.  Anyway, I went to the office to see if I could do the right thing and get their names engraved.  They would not do anything, because the person with the deed is the only one with that authority.  Since I was NC with GC and intended to remain so, after much thought I decided to just let it be.  It was confirmation that by their putting GC in charge of their estate, all she did was collect the money and did not administer such an important thing as arranging for their name on a gravestone.  I finally became at peace with it, thinking that they made the choice to put her in charge, and that's on them - I tried, but it was out of my hands.

This story rings so true to my own experience and is the type of thing I suspect will happen in my FOO when my parents die. I have two brothers, one of whom is the GC but the other of whom is the backup GC. I was always the SG, especially my mother's SG. When my brothers and I were in our early 30s, I remember talking to my brother about my mother's upcoming birthday. He responded something like, "oh yeah, when is her birthday?" I was completely disgusted. My brother had received so much from my mother--certainly all of her love, energy, and attention, but also large gifts of all sorts and for so many years. My parents gave my brother and his wife (now ex) the downpayment on their first house, gave them all of their own cars once they were done using them, and I'm sure he received so much more that I'm not even aware of. I of course never got anything. And my GC brother didn't even know when my mother's birthday was? In the meantime, I had since childhood always marked my mother's birthday in a special way. By the time I was in my early 30s, I was sending her enormous bouquets of flowers that I could not afford. One time, I sent her two dozen roses. I now realize that this behavior on my part was very co-dependent, but like you, I was the one who cared and stepped up to the plate for both of my parents.

One thing I learned recently was that my GC brother had tried to get my parents into a nursing home 3 years ago. They refused but he got them in there for a week or two and the nursing home has 1-star on Yelp. My father is apparently now in a nursing home, though nobody has told me if it is the same one as before or where he is, and I believe that my mother is living in their home. Based on our life histories, I know full well that neither of my brothers is treating my parents well or taking care of them. That was always my job. I don't feel guilty for no longer being involved, however. It was their choice to treat me the way they did, and I just feel lucky to have gotten out and preserved my own life and family.

Thanks again for sharing what you've been through, Chowder.

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[Blueberry Pancakes]

Hi Footprint, I came back to this thread because I have been following it since my mother was in hospice care and I knew the end was near for her. I knew when she died, all the worst dynamics would swirl and they did.

I was going to start a different thread but instead decided to make another comment here since it is really a continuation of the same topic. I was reading what Chowder posted above and so much of it I could have also posted.

One common theme seems to be a lack of caretaking for an elderly parent near end of life. I was in just enough contact with my mom to see negligence from her POA daughter. I assume my sister felt she was above caretaking and I was not around to dump it on, so instead she just did nothing. 
           
Our dad died 18 months ago. I was unwilling to re-engage with my sister to attempt to coordinate plans. My parents had pre-paid for a funeral at a funeral home close to their house. My sister's actions should have been clear if she had any interest in fulfilling her parent's wishes. However, what I recently found out was that my sister never had any memorial service for our dad nor did she even publish an obituary for him. I was talking to two of my mother's friends in the last few weeks who said they did not even know my dad died. I thought my sister denied him of a legacy. What I view as sacred actions of surviving loved ones seemed to be something my sister deliberately neglected to show she was more dominant than common rituals.     
                   
My mom died a few weeks ago. I again refused to interact with my sister, but I did engage with the funeral home. Through them I realized my sister was once again refusing a memorial service and not giving them an obituary. The two friends of my mother's I had spoken to actually pleaded with me to publish an obituary. It was flying monkeys asking the scapegoat to fix what the golden child broke. I hesitated but ended up giving the funeral home an obituary for each parent. I did not do it for them though. I did it for me. I did it to show I have a voice that was not silenced and that my sister does not get to control this chapter, and I was closing the book.

The final topic now is the inheritance. After sitting with the litigation decision for a while, I recently decided I am not going to fight and litigate this. The reason is that I know my sister will deliberately drag it out, cause delays, make me incur more expense, and engage me in continual made-up dramas. She would use it to deliver more abuse onto me and a fair outcome of such cases is not even guaranteed.   
       
I want no more of this. The estate I am walking away from is considerable, but I decided the intangible cost to my wellbeing is too much. The odd thing is, I had a pit in my stomach for a long time. I thought it was grief and the impending death of my mom. Just recently though, I noticed that "pit" was gone. I felt lighter and more like myself again. I never thought I would get back to feeling this way. That was when I realized I made the right decision for me. It was validation I am on the right path for me, so I am calling that my "win" and I am sticking with it.

[Blueberry Pancakes]

An interesting twist was that I went to their gravesite a few years later, and discovered that GC had never completed the process of putting their names on the headstone. ... It was confirmation that by their putting GC in charge of their estate, all she did was collect the money and did not administer such an important thing as arranging for their name on a gravestone.  I finally became at peace with it, thinking that they made the choice to put her in charge, and that's on them - I tried, but it was out of my hands.

Chowder, I am so sorry. I experienced similar with how my GC sibling acted. I felt like there was some second-hand trauma from seeing such an injustice. However, I too came to the same point you reference - parents made their choice who to put in charge. It was a decision they repeatedly enforced through their life. I saw it as on them and not anything I had to fix. I have not been to my parent's graves, but I am quite certain there would not be any markers.   
     
I find some peace thinking there may be organic justice or karma we may never see. My sister had a stroke five years ago. She still has impaired speech. While I had minimal contact upon the death of each parent, I noticed she had difficulty focusing on dialog during a meeting with the hospice nurse and was confused on details. She also smelled of alcohol in the middle of the day at that hospice meeting. While she puts up a great facade, I think beneath the surface they sometimes self-destruct by the very thing that fuels them.

[Invisiblewoman]

I went full no contact. About 5 years ago. Not everyone involved is a bad person. They just don't know anything, and have been told so many lies, it's just not worth going back. Really has been twisted for so long it's not worth fixing it.

Honestly after some of the things that were said and done you couldn't pay me to go back.

Hi Invisible Woman, I agree that not everyone is bad. However, there were some people from my previous life, especially aunts and cousins, and a few friends in the shared social network with FOO, who stopped responding to anything I wrote to them, never asked me if something happened, pretty much wrote me off and sided with FOO. I feel like we survivors of this insidious treatment are first abused by FOO, then we are abused in a second way, which is by FOO's proxies and seemingly unknowing people who do their bidding.

The good news is that there have been some good people who came out of the woodwork, asked me what happened, asked me how I'm doing, etc. But those have been far and few between. The whole experience of being mistreated, standing up for myself, getting the cold shoulder by FOO's proxies, was actually good at the end of the day because it taught me a lot about human nature and showed me who the truly loving people were in my life. For all those people who just dropped me, probably believing whatever lies FOO told them, they never really loved me to begin with.

footprint

That's hard. I wanted to reach out to people. I tried to reach out to my mom's partner when my mom died, but just thought it best to leave him alone. My aunt basically told me I'd probably just upset him anyway and then told me everyone thought I was just an angry person, and just seemed to go out of her way to cut me off and isolate me from other family, and anyone who knows my family. She did triangulate my brother into the picture and was trying to get intel on me through him. She said it was for my own good because I said my mom behaved abusively towards me. The fucked up part is my mom encouraged this brother to inflict physical abuse on me. My aunt knew this, but triangulated him against me anyway.

I uncovered some really messed up lying that just proved to me I wasn't crazy, and the manipulation was all sorts of messed up.

As for proxies that want to believe the lying, and be flying monkeys? They're not my people anyway. My aunt made accusations that suggested I deserved a psych hold, or be charged with harassment. I wouldn't put it past her to lie and make further false accusations.

I changed my contact info for my own mental wellbeing. The less information they have on me, the better.

I am sure people know, and people have had their own experiences of certain family members and have drawn similar conclusions.

As long as they have a predominant role in the family, and good people don't know the half of it, abuse will continue. No need to make myself vulnerable to it.

[footprint33]

As for proxies that want to believe the lying, and be flying monkeys? They're not my people anyway. My aunt made accusations that suggested I deserved a psych hold, or be charged with harassment. I wouldn't put it past her to lie and make further false accusations.

Hi Invisiblewoman, I'm sorry you had to go through this, and this is the type of stuff I've been through too. I agree wholeheartedly with you that we just have to understand how anyone believing the lies is just not our people. I had an ex-friend who believed everything my FOO told her, hook, line, and sinker. She didn't question it at all, and they told her some pretty outrageous things. She verbally attacked me in a long email, spouting some of their lies as if they were truths. I'd only ever been very kind to that friend and she should have questioned FOO, not me. In the meantime, I have other friends who were told the same sort of stuff and they believed none of it and completely had my back.

The harder issues for me were with my very large extended family of origin. My NC with FOO stemmed from their treatment of me shortly after the birth of my first child. The level of cruelty and insidiousness with what they did to me was out of this world. They then told enormous lies to cover up their own actions. One of their lies was that I had very bad postpartum depression, which I never did. The reality was that they had come to me when I was in the happiest moment of my life, having just become a new mother, criticized me in a café, with one of them literally yelling at me that I had endangered my child's life by going past my due date (I never endangered my child, went through all prenatal testing past my due date and delivered a very healthy and beautiful baby, and was healthy myself after the birth). The reality is that they were enraged that the birth had gone so well, that our baby was so healthy and beautiful, and had come to attack me when I was in that vulnerable state of having just become a mother. THEY then stopped talking to me, not the other way around. Quite simply, they were green with envy. My husband was present and was dumbfounded that anyone could treat a new mother, new baby, and family the way we were treated.

When I try to tell people what the catalyst moment was in why I eventually went NC, it sounds so absurd that many don't believe it. What parent or sibling would travel across the country to yell at a new mom and tell her she had endangered her child by going past her due date? But that's what they did and they were vicious about it.

So the extended FOO, which had always prided itself on being so supportive of moms and families, was just so full of BS and completely ostracized me at that exact same time, believing the lies they were told. I was a brand new mom and suddenly had no family members responding to me. In place of that, they started doing really passive aggressive stuff, like posting pics on social media of them all cozy with my parents and brothers, visibly leaving me and my husband out of everything. It was a huge wake up call and I realized that the very large extended family functions identically to the way a cult does, treating me in similar fashion to how excommunicated cult members are treated. It was all very creepy, though I'm glad it happened because it helped me get the heck Out of the FOG, find my chosen family, and become a stronger person.

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[Call Me Cordelia]

My NC with FOO stemmed from their treatment of me shortly after the birth of my first child. The level of cruelty and insidiousness with what they did to me was out of this world. They then told enormous lies to cover up their own actions. One of their lies was that I had very bad postpartum depression, which I never did... The reality is that they were enraged that the birth had gone so well, that our baby was so healthy and beautiful, and had come to attack me when I was in that vulnerable state of having just become a mother. THEY then stopped talking to me, not the other way around. Quite simply, they were green with envy...

When I try to tell people what the catalyst moment was in why I eventually went NC, it sounds so absurd that many don't believe it.

Hey footprint, just chiming in to say I believe it and went through something similar. I got the ultimate discard from my parents when I had one more kid than they had. They too were envious and made up a lie that I had postpartum depression and that was why I was pushing them away and why I was mentally unstable and an unfit mother. At this point I had very little mutual connection left with my parents and the people they tried to smear me to who actually knew me did not believe them. I think the siblings and people who went along with their story did not actually believe it either but it was more convenient to go along with their story than to stand up for me, since they were never in the habit of doing such a thing. Whatever they think of me now is anyone's guess, but really it doesn't matter.

[Invisiblewoman]

Hey footprint,

The cruelty is the point I think. They hit at a vulnerable moment. Just had a baby? Mom died? Felt mistreated by someone else and made the mistake of telling them?

I think that's what made me let go. They made it harder at my most vulnerable moments.

[Invisiblewoman]

My NC with FOO stemmed from their treatment of me shortly after the birth of my first child. The level of cruelty and insidiousness with what they did to me was out of this world. They then told enormous lies to cover up their own actions. One of their lies was that I had very bad postpartum depression, which I never did... The reality is that they were enraged that the birth had gone so well, that our baby was so healthy and beautiful, and had come to attack me when I was in that vulnerable state of having just become a mother. THEY then stopped talking to me, not the other way around. Quite simply, they were green with envy...

When I try to tell people what the catalyst moment was in why I eventually went NC, it sounds so absurd that many don't believe it.

Hey footprint, just chiming in to say I believe it and went through something similar. I got the ultimate discard from my parents when I had one more kid than they had. They too were envious and made up a lie that I had postpartum depression and that was why I was pushing them away and why I was mentally unstable and an unfit mother. At this point I had very little mutual connection left with my parents and the people they tried to smear me to who actually knew me did not believe them. I think the siblings and people who went along with their story did not actually believe it either but it was more convenient to go along with their story than to stand up for me, since they were never in the habit of doing such a thing. Whatever they think of me now is anyone's guess, but really it doesn't matter.

I too felt my mental health status was used against me and I was deliberately driven into anxiety attacks as a child. They claimed I was in a psychotic episode when I told them to stop gaslighting me, and called them out.

They also tried to claim I was harassing them after making several ad hominem attacks on my character. I didn't even attack back, I just responded calmly without matching their energy.

They did something where they claimed they tried to expose my address to my abuser who I was no contact with. I laughed and said "omg I would disown you." I honestly didn't know to react because Their suggestion seemed so out of pocket. That completely threw them over the edge and they held a grudge for months, and accused me emotional abuse. They also claimed my abuser was complicit in my CSA, and caused the case to be dropped. I ended up getting the court documents that prove otherwise. Just so much lying and sick behaviour it's unreal.

[footprint33]

Thanks for your messages, Call Me Cordelia and Invisiblewoman. These points are spot on.

Hey footprint,

The cruelty is the point I think. They hit at a vulnerable moment. Just had a baby? Mom died? Felt mistreated by someone else and made the mistake of telling them?

I think that's what made me let go. They made it harder at my most vulnerable moments.

The cruelty really is the point, especially if you're dealing with a malignant narcissist. I was so naive back then and it took me a very long time to figure things out. After the birth, a part of me just did not want to believe that my parents and siblings could be so cruel. But as I'm sure many of us have experienced, if we tap into the pain, we realize that something was always off with our FOO, dating back to childhood. They'd been doing things like that to me my whole life, it just took the birth for something to break in me, which allowed me to figure it out.

I got the ultimate discard from my parents when I had one more kid than they had. They too were envious and made up a lie that I had postpartum depression and that was why I was pushing them away and why I was mentally unstable and an unfit mother. At this point I had very little mutual connection left with my parents and the people they tried to smear me to who actually knew me did not believe them. I think the siblings and people who went along with their story did not actually believe it either but it was more convenient to go along with their story than to stand up for me, since they were never in the habit of doing such a thing. Whatever they think of me now is anyone's guess, but really it doesn't matter.

Honestly, although these parents are different, their behavior is sometimes textbook. I've seen a few posts here and on other boards about how women or families who just had a baby were treated cruelly by their FOO. They pick these important moments in our lives and try to destroy them. I'm so happy for you, Call Me Cordelia, that you were able to move past it and that you don't care what others think. I'm pretty far on that path too, though not totally there yet.

They also tried to claim I was harassing them after making several ad hominem attacks on my character. I didn't even attack back, I just responded calmly without matching their energy.

They completely manipulate/lie about our reactions or non-reactions. If we react as a normal person would after being treated so cruelly, they say that we're crazy or they project and say that we were cruel to them. If we don't react at all, they do one of two things: they either play victim and say that we are giving them the silent treatment, or they just make something up. I've heard complete fabrications that they've told to others just to cover their tracks.

I'm sorry that you went through that, Invisible Woman. The fact that they would say anything or become involved in any way with your abuser is horrendous.

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