My wife had a terrible father growing up and decided to cut contact with him in her early 20s. He passed away not long ago and left 30% of his will to her. He didn’t own a lot of things, but the money would be enough to pay off our mortgage on our condo.
Right now, we live in a small condo and our 7 months old daughter is sleeping in the same room as us. The alternative would be sleeping in the living room as our home is only about 540 square feet. It would be great if we could upsize and my wife’s inheritance could enable us to do so.
The problem is that my wife doesn’t want to accept her inheritance.
She says that she denied him as her father when he was alive and she will continue to do so in his death. She burned many bridges with her family when she decided to cut contact with him and she won’t show up now to claim her inheritance.
I told her that he is dead, it’s not like he will find out and it would be a meaningless gesture to decline the inheritance. We need a bigger home and that money would mean so much help for us.
She said that she never needed his help and she doesn’t need it now either and we will pay off our mortgage in 3 years anyway. She is mad and “disappointed” in me trying to push her to accept the money and that I need to understand that money is not everything.
I find this incredibly unreasonable and irresponsible, but I have a good relationship with my parents so I can’t possibly know what’s going through my wife’s head now.
Being strong-headed and stubborn is useless.