How a Small Inheritance Saved My Life But Cost Me My Only Sibling
Leaving unequal amounts to your children, or if there’s perceived favoritism, can also leave a legacy of grief and estrangement
There were two times that my life fell apart — in 2001, when my 14-year marriage exploded, leading to a divorce three years later, and in 2009 when my 80-year-old father’s fall and emergency brain surgery sent my family spiraling into five years of medical hell.
I was flying back and forth across the country as a divorced co-parenting working mom of two tweens after my father ended up in a nursing home in Florida, where my parents lived, and then my mom went to the Cleveland Clinic for her second heart surgery and died months later after a late-night fall in a rehabilitation center, still in Ohio.
Both events were devastating in and of themselves yet I had no idea what would follow in its wake — inheritance. While I was incredibly thankful that my parents gifted me with an inheritance —not enough to retire on, albeit more money than I would ever have been able to save — it cost me my relationship with my only sibling.
I am not the only one to experience a family fracture over money.
