Asking Eric: Stepfathers Remove Stepdaughters from Wills After Parents Die

Dear Eric: My parents divorced when I was 5 and my brother was 3. He went with our father and I with our mother. We saw each other on vacations and summers. Both parents remarried and had two more children. There is a gap of seven to nine years or more in our ages.

My brother and I were treated less like family and more like resentment. Fortunately, we had loving grandparents who showed us love and created safe places for us when we were with them.

Fast forward to today, we are both retired, have families and have been doing well in every way. We work hard to build and maintain a relationship with our parents and step-parents/siblings. I thought progress had been made.

Both parents died within a two-year period. Both stepfathers redid their wills and excluded us from them. I was surprised. Less for me, but for my children and their grandchildren.

I am left with an angry residue of past resentments that have resurfaced. There is nothing about my parents that I want. It’s not about money; There’s not much, I know. I just don’t know how to move forward. Do I ghost them? Stop calling, writing, and visiting because it seems too one-sided? I have done most of the work and effort to maintain a relationship.

– Despised stepson

Dear Despised: What mean people your stepparents seem to be. They can adjust their wills any way they want, but it’s very telling that they didn’t make the big change until your parents were gone. It doesn’t sit well with me. You feel callous and calculating. And unnecessarily.

Despite the machinations with their properties, you can still decide what you want from them. There’s a version of this where you decide these are people not worth knowing. They came into your life at a tender time and they were not kind. It can be very liberating to say, “I deserve better than this; “I am leaving this relationship in the past.”

Alternatively, you can say, “I want to be in a relationship and this feels one-sided. What can we do to change that?” And see what they come up with. But honestly, I don’t know if it’s worth my time.

Lastly, if you haven’t read Ann Patchett’s magnificent and perfect novel “Commonwealth,” you might want to read it. This is a blended family and some of the themes may resonate strongly with you in a way that you find cathartic.