Reply #28: My evil stepmother grabbed it all

[LiberalEsto]

and had her daughter call me up and inform me that my father had died and since my brother and I were such rotten kids, we weren't getting a penny. Then she had his body cremated and supposedly tossed the ashes in the ocean.

My dad had left everything divided equally between myself and my brother in his will, but after he had his last paralyzing stroke, she haunted his hospital room in Florida with a slick lawyer and her sons in law as witnesses, nagged my dad for days until he signed everything over her - including houses in NJ and Florida. A nurse on his floor told me later that the woman was like a hovering vulture.

While he was dying in Florida in 1988, I was stuck home with two toddlers sick with the flu, and absolutely no money for a plane ticket or a place to stay. Afterward I tried to find a lawyer to fight her, but not one lawyer would take my case without a $10,000 retainer-- something I didn't have. The lawyers all told me I definitely had a case, but sorry, no retained, no lawyer. It wouldn't have been a lot of money -- maybe my share would have come to $35,000 after legal costs -- but it would have helped pay for college for my daughters.

This evil woman used to brag to my father how she "cleaned out" her first husband and walked away after their divorce with $300,000, leaving him broke and living in a trailer. But I don't understand why she resorted to so much chicanery just to grab such a small amount from me and my brother. It's not like her own kids needed it - her daughters were both married and well-off and walked around in mink coats.

Some people are just total assholes.