My father had a near-fatal heart attack five years ago and developed dementia from brain damage, and now basically can’t form new long-term memories and has problems with complicated tasks, but is still semi-functional on a day-to-day basis, but is increasingly becoming less so.
He literally does nothing all day but watch television. When I do talk to him, we have nothing to talk about, and he can’t remember what we talked about five minutes later anyway.
I think he only half knows who I am. My stepmother controls access to him by always being the one to answer their one phone. She also says that he is suspicious of me because “He thinks you’re trying to get his money” (note: he has no money to get). To put it mildly, talking with him is depressing and unrewarding (especially compared to how he used to be and how I remember him when I was a kid), and I have a hard time forcing myself to talk to him nowadays.
I haven’t lived with my father for over 30 years (my parents were divorced when I was 8). I have one sister who lives overseas from my father and I live about 60 mins away. My stepmother’s kids both live in the nearby as her and they assist her and my father with things as needed.
Anyway early this year my grandmother finally passed away at a quite advanced age. I helped handle the cremation arrangements (my stepmother and father didn’t want to have a funeral for her). After that, the will (a 50/50 split between me and my father) went into effect. My stepmother told me I wouldn’t get any money from the joint checking account (“because that’s not ‘the inheritance’, ‘the inheritance’ is other money that your grandmother had” as she put it), and that there was no money to get anyway (from this account) since they had to spend a lot on my grandmother’s end-of-life care (no receipts provided). Another note: I don’t care one bit about any inheritance money.
My stepmother wanted me to get named estate executor because she believes my grandmother has large amounts of hidden assets sitting in several banks. So I did that, going through a lawyer (at considerable personal expense) and probate and finally being named executor about 5 months (probate takes a long time) after my grandmother’s death (Note: I don’t believe these assets even exist).
I just got the executorship this month and haven’t looked for these supposed assets yet. I took a short vacation (my first in 2 years) this past week and was coming home when my stepmother called me and chewed me out again for not calling my father enough and ‘not caring about him,’ and told me she won’t be notifying me when he passes away, that “you can find out he’s dead when you read his obituary in the paper”.
She then reiterated how great her own kids are and how much they do for her and my father and that I do nothing for him/them. Then she hung up on me.
I really don’t know what to think anymore.
submitted by /u/northwindlake
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