For those who did write that letter and who did send it. What was the upshot?

[StayWithMe]

I like that this forum deals with inheritance and disinheritance.  I think that there is a possibility that it may happen with me.

Since my husband and I will be visiting my mother (my father passed away a few years ago) for Christmas, I was thinking that I would send her a letter in sometime in the new year.  I had been thinking about writing her a letter for long time to get some things off my chest before one of us dies (I'm in the late stages of cancer).  Like the time that she offered me a graduation and then invited the professor who, I told her, screwed over a recommendation for a summer program.  Or the fact that as an ex was stalking she was taking his phone calls and telling me what he tells her.  One time she said he told her that he saw me palying tennis with a man in the park (this is true which is why now I believe that my sister was playing informant for him).  then my mother looked right into my eyes and said "He also said that he saw you in a romantic position with this man.  (she has since insisted that she never said that, which is different from her usual defense of "I don't recall.)

since my mother does not read letters that I send her (all my life), I was thinking that I would send it to my brother, the GC, the lawyer and most likely the POA.  As I was imagining what would happen in my mind, I realize that my brother would say the same old, same old "Can't change the past" and then I realized perhaps this letter might ensure some transparency in the sharing out of the inheritance.

One thing that I do believe that would come to my mother's and brother's attention would be a warning.  That is, as my mother has squandered our relationship over several decades having her fun constantly replaying topics that I had told many times were dead and to stop raising them.  One had to do with becoming friends with someone in high school that just never happened.  she has chosen to stay in the home town and I am perfectly happy to go wherever my husband takes me.  However, my mother has spent more than 50 years in hometown and I am sure she is interested in the legacy that she will leave.  that is, should this letter fall into hands outside of the family, it would be very embarrassing, including for my brother who also has no interest in moving anywhere and sometimes socializes with this woman.

I felt at one Easter dinner with the family, they even tried a clusterfuck over trying to insert this woman's name into the conversation.  First my brother renamed her neighborhood with her name as he chose to talk about local real estate.  totally unnecessary.  Then my father, I guess he felt it opened the door to a conversation about her ........."oh, yeah, isn't that that girl you went to school with....."  "You tell me dad, you and mother are the ones who speak her name not me....."  To which my father told me if I was going to be so disrespectful, I could go home tomorrow.......  (Sorry, you're so late to the table.  I upgraded my communication skills a few years ago....)

Sounds dysfunctional to me.  what do you think?

I know there's a thread that talks about writing letters and not sending them.  I'd like to hear from those who did what I am planning to do.  Is there anything you would have done differently?

[scapegoat/caregiver]

hello staywithme

I am so sorry you are dealing with so  much.   You have some serious health problems to deal with right now. The family members and friends that you have that you KNOW are on your side and love you should be focused on.  To write this letter MAY help you unload your thoughts but I believe ultimately it will feed the fire and feed their supply and drama.   
If they are anything like my family they do not CARE.  and they may use your health issues as an excuse that it is ALL YOU.  and
they will NEVER under ANY circumstances look at themselves as even part of the problem.

I would suggest to focus on YOU right now. and your friends and family that love you.  do not waste one more second thinking of people that want to hurt you for fun.   and you know will not be there for you when you need them.

I'm so sorry you are going thru this. 
I have confronted my family a number of times.   I always feel that I should NOT have done it afterwards because it seemed to make things worse..
  if it happened all over again I would have gone to LC to Medium chill to VVLC ..... Grey rock. instead.  When I brought things up in the past...
A--THEY DENY
B--BLAME ON ME OR MY HEALTH ISSUES (I am a cancer survivor)
C--THEY NEVER LOOK IN THE MIRROR AND NEVER WILL

as far as disinheritence.... I am pretty sure I have been disinherited all together... my NF came to me a few years ago and told me to my face he was only giving $ to GCNsis and not me. I never did anything wrong...I was always helpful, reliable,  compassionate... I was stupid enough to keep helping him and hanging around even tho he denounced me as his daughter.
My NM still alive.... i'm grey rock with her now... I am not expecting an inheritence at all

Good luck and hope you are able to live every day to the fullest without thinking of THEM     

[Starboard Song]

I've done the face-to-face version. I achieved nothing for the relationship, but it did help me to know he'd been confronted with some truths.

If you are thorough, dispassionate, and exceedingly polite, I think you can get a true feeling of relief:  well, good to get that off my chest.

If success is bigger than that for you, better maybe to stay away.  Ask yourself, am I violating my own boundaries? Do I want what may come of this? Is this kind and decent, given the circumstances, or vengeful? Those questions really could go either way, so I have no answer for you. But I believe there is a course of more calm, and more peace, for you to discover. Whatever you decide, take great care and get a second set of eyes on anything you send.

Be good. Be strong.

[Fortuna]

When I brought things up in the past...
A--THEY DENY
B--BLAME ON ME OR MY HEALTH ISSUES (I am a cancer survivor)
C--THEY NEVER LOOK IN THE MIRROR AND NEVER WILL

They will Deny it happened, they will blames  anyone else (I once had my mother blame the GC if it got her out of trouble), and they will not change.

Sending a letter might be cathartic but it won't do any good.
As far as inheritance goes, the best course of action is to assume there is none. Just pretend inheritance is a made up thing in fantasy novels and your parents stuff evaporates after they die. Or assume everything will be sucked up by nursing homes. They won't change whatever they have planned, and it will just make you feel slighted once again.

[Lillith65]

I'm an advocate of writing a letter but not sending it. That way you will clarify things for yourself and you may experience some catharsis.

The only reason to send the letter is if you are expecting to be able to work through things with them. Your family sound a lot like mine; discussing people who have hurt you as if they are friends, bringing up painful events as if they are ordinary things; and the only effect a letter of the type you describe would be to create more drama and uproar.

While they would thoroughly enjoy all the drama, I assume that you wouldn't. So my advice is to write the letter if you think that it would help you, but not send it.

Concentrate on your own wellbeing and let the cats fight amongst themselves.

[JustKat]

Hi StayWithMe,

I'm so sorry to hear about your health problems and all that you're having to deal with right now.

As much as I wanted to write my Nmother a letter telling her how I felt, I knew it would be a mistake to go there so I never did. There was never any doubt in my mind that she would have used it against me by weaponizing it and holding it up as proof that I was the vindictive daughter she had claimed I was. Any letter I sent would not have remained confidential. It would have been shared and used to create further drama, so I chose to let her pass away without further contact.

You had asked me elsewhere about my own disinheritance, so I can give you some insight into what happened there. When my Nmother was diagnosed with cancer I was NC. Within a week of her diagnosis, I received an email from my GC sister saying the will had been changed and that both my formerly GC brother and I had been disinherited for being "mean to Mum." In my case, I was the scapegoat, and in GC brother's case, he married a woman Nmother didn't like (he was apparently told he'd be reinstated in the will if he divorced her, which of course he wouldn't do). The wording in the will was quite cruel and stated their reasons.

A few days later my enFather called me and told me the same thing. He blamed me for being mean to my mother and that I needed to be punished. He made sure Aunts, Uncles, and other family members knew, something I'm sure he did to make Nmother happy. She wanted me to suffer and wanted to see it while she was still living. When I didn't react, he had his lawyer send a second copy of the will along with a much older copy showing their assets being split evenly between the three of us. The mailing also included a letter that I was supposed to sign and return saying that I accepted my punishment and would not contest the will. Since the lawyer was stupid enough to send this without tracking or signature confirmation I ignored it.

My enFather is now 88 and constantly sends me cards and letters acting as though he has no idea why I won't come visit him. I've had no contact with anyone in the family since going NC with my mother so have no idea what others think of this disinheritance. Maybe they see it for what it is or maybe they think I deserved it, who knows, but it's out of my hands so I try not to dwell on it.

I will say that when the disinheritance first happened I was devastated. I was inconsolable and eventually ended up in the ER with what turned out to be a severe panic attack. Disinheritance is really the final cut, and when it's announced years before they die it's clearly done with the intent of inflicting pain. It took a while, but I now feel pity for them and not for me. I've come to realize that this act will hurt them more than it ever hurt me. Sure, I could have used some inheritance money, but it would have been dirty money. My mother died without ever seeing me again, as will my father. They thought they could hoover me back in by using money as a weapon and it didn't work.

[Leonor]

Hi Stay,

I wrote the letter and then read it out loud to my m at a session facilitated by our respective therapists. I said absolutely everything, including the things I was grateful for, the parts of our relationship that I enjoyed, the parts of her that I lived. I said I was writing to tell her about my experience s growing up and how they affected me now. And I said we didn't have to agree about what I said, but that I needed her to acknowledge that they were my experiences.

Did it "work"? Not if by work I mean my mother experiencing an epiphany, apologizing, embracing me and moving into the future. More like getting up, walking out of the office and never speaking to me again.

But it did work, in that I heard myself speak in a grounded, honest and straight forward way to her. I was able to hold and express all my feelings while leaving space to listen. I was like, wow, I can say this, and feel this, and be this. This line grown-up person!

And it helped later, and still does, when the FOG rolls in and I wonder if I ever said this or should have explained that. I have the letter, and I can show myself some compassion by realizing that I did say it. It's just not possible for her to listen. But I did say it.

That was powerful and that's why fore it was worth it.

Gentleness to you.

[Adria]

StaywithMe,

I'm so sorry for what you are going through.  I have written a couple letters. I knew better than to expect anything good to come from them regarding my parents as I had written many letters to my father when I was a child, because he never acknowledged my existence, to no avail.

However, I didn't do it thinking they would care. I sent them for myself. And, yes, I would do it again. I was finally able to say some things that ruminated for years in my mind, those conversations in your head that never are able to happen.  By sending the letters, I was able to say some things my father would never sit still and listen to, but I know he read the letters because I heard he showcased them at a family fucntion in an effort to prove that I'm the crazy one. 

Even so, I would send them again because it gave me some closure as I finally was able to speak my mind. I wasn't mean or crass, just upfront and honest.  Of course he is never wrong or to be questioned, so I'm sure he laughed it off as he did me.

If you decide to do this, write the letter, let it sit for a couple days and then reread it. I have found that the first copy can be full of emotions. By coming back to it a day or two later, you may see some things you want to change. 

For me, I would have regretted not sending them, only for myself. 

Do what's in your heart and you can't go wrong.  I wish you all the best. Take care. Hugs, Adria

[Fortuna]

There nothing better than assuming there will never be any inheritance. It's freeing.  Pretend that in the end the money and land and jewelry get buried with them in a pyramid, or that there's a new law stating everything has to go to charity, or that the nursing home will eat it up. Once there is no possible money to hang over your head you can be you and not the servant they want you to be.
I always assumed my mom would fritter away any money she had and anything left the nursing home would take. It makes it much easier to say, you know, I'm not going to do this unreasonable thing you asked me to do. I've even gotten to the point where if somehow there is some kind of inheritance, I know which charities I'm donating it to. Her financial incentives have never come to fruition. She'll only ever spend money on herself or on stuff that makes her look good. Since I've never assumed I'll get anything, I've never had to think about being disinherited because I said no or didn't come for whichever holiday I was supposed to drop everything and come to her over any other family I had.

I've written a short letter, after three days 'hashing it out' where she did alot of denying, deflecting, blaming anyone else, mocking me after demanding civility, giving me ultimatums, and so on. I basically said that the talks didn't change anything other than to confirm my resolution to not allow her to be alone with kids, her ultimatum cost her any summer time with the kids even supervised and I mentioned the unacceptable behaviors that she exhibited specifically in the session to hash things out.
The only thing I got in response was a 'Wow.' and a whole lot of silence after.

[JustKat]

There nothing better than assuming there will never be any inheritance. It's freeing. 

Since I was a teen I had always assumed the GC would be sole heir and I would get nothing. There was no question in my mind and it really was freeing. I saved my money and planned for retirement without it, and was perfectly okay with it all. But it went down in a far different (and worse) way than I had expected.

I was shocked when they announced I had been disinherited at 50 and sent me a copy of a much older will that had their assets split equally between the children. I would have rather just found out after they died that I was getting nothing than to learn I had once been in the will and later removed.

I really have no explanation for that earlier will, though things were different then. My grandmother, who had been keeping Nmother in check, was still living. They were also relatively young when they made the first will. Maybe it was their plan all along to include me and then remove me because it certainly hurt more than if I had never been included in the first place. That one remains a mystery to me.

Short story, I was correct to assume there would be no inheritance but completely thrown off guard by the way they chose to do it.

[Fortuna]

Maybe it was their plan all along to include me and then remove me because it certainly hurt more than if I had never been included in the first place. at one remains a mystery to me.

That sounds about right. Like it was punishment, maybe they were trying to use it as a stick to get you fall back in line. Reasonable people don't send you a will you were included in while telling you you're not in it anymore.

[StayWithMe]

Thanks for all your responses.  A certain amount anger is pushing me to do this.  I'm starting to have more memories.

For example, I had completely forgotten that my parents had my sister 2 new cars in the span of 2 years. By that time, my parents had bought my older brother 3 cars over 5 years. Me nothing.  We were all university at that time.

One incident that I am going to write in detail has to do with the fact that my mother was reading a cook book and thought it would cute to ask me how to pronounce a certain French word.   mind you, she had never studied French.  For those who know, one does not pronounce the final "s" in a word.  that was one assumption that my mother made which ignited her tirade about stupid I was and how she was wasting her money at the private school where I was learning this French.  I didn't know what to say as I was still at the level the parent must be right.

But now when I think about it.  I had been at the school for a full academic year which means that my mother was required to review and sign my report card 4 times.  It seems to me that reviewing your child's report card is the moment to complain about whether something is worth the money or the effort.  My inability to pronounce in the way that my mother expected me never resulted in her encouraging to do my homework ........ because housework was more important.

I want all that in writing and acknowledged.