They're not letting me see my father who just had a ischemic stroke. Before my father's wife Anna found out that she is dying. She called two of her daughters and her favorite grand daughter Stephanie with two small kids to meet with them at their house. Anna told my father that she wants Stephanie and her two small kids to move in and imposed on her two daughters to be my father's caretakers. They did this without me and my sister knowing what's going on(we are the biological children ) After my father's wife died. My Dad and my uncle Mike paid for her burial. Dad inherited the house...well, the house is in both name. Since then those Step sisters keep coming to my dad's house a lot. We the biological kids hate that family! I'm like what happened to "Death do us apart".All they caused stress and confusion for my dad! I feel that I shouldn't compete for my dad. He is my father! They have their own father. I asked them not to be around my dad or at dad's house when I am visiting him. They can not respect this! They must be around and causing problems. They are the trigger to this problems. Can I sue them?
And in that time he seemingly has had a good relationship with his new extended family?
Frankly I don't understand why you even care about this man, he treated you badly and chose not to be a part of your life. You seem to believe that the death of his spouse of over 1/4 century would somehow free him from the "spell" she held him under and he would naturally return to the bosom of his first family (all of you almost total strangers to him), does that really seem to be a rational hope?
Your last statement, "I would say my father died in 1989", seems to be the truest thing you have said in all your posts. The loss of your father seems to have left very deep emotional scars, have you considered therapy to work through them?
Wouldn't the most simple solution be for your father to tell his stepdaughters, "Could you please leave for a little while, so I can visit privately with my daughter"? It is his house and unless he is totally incompetent and has a guardian he gets to say who is in his house. What would you sue over?
I am very, very sorry that you don't have a good relationship with these people who were so important in your father's life. Bringing up the "death do us part" thing sounds like you blame these women for the end of your father's marriage. Is that realistic?
Could you possibly start over, meet with these women, agree that you all want what is best for your father, and offer to cooperate with them? That would be extremely hard, I'm sure, but it would be wonderful.
My two sons and my husband's three daughters got along splendidly, and all 5 were involved in his care. Now that he is gone they continue to get along, socialize with each other, invite each other to life milestones, etc. A blended family can be an opportunity to have more people in your circle of love. I am so sorry it isn't like that for you.
Or ---- maybe we're being had. If so, the OP has lost control of the story.
Assuming the OP is on the up and up, and simply stressed into incoherence, I have a lot of concerns.
If the OP's father had only an 8th grade education, however hard he worked, Anna must have contributed a lot to the household economy, to the build up of equity in the house, etc. The OP gives Anna no credit for that, but feels entitled to whatever her father now has. Is that fair? Why aren't Anna's children justified in looking on her home as their family home?
What on earth makes her hate Anna so much? OK, the event that took place 27 years ago ---- but doesn't Anna get credit for any good done to the father in the years since then? That was a lifetime ago!
If the OP at various times has battled with her step siblings over POAs, etc., the estrangement of the biological daughters from the father must not have been total. Perhaps he didn't abandon them as completely as she suggests. In fact, her repeated use of the term "homewrecker" sounds like something her mother probably said at the time of the divorce. Sounds as if the OP and her sister have been poisoned against the father and stepmother by the first wife. What a shame!
And her insistence on the term "until death do us apart" makes me think she actually believes that at the time of death, everything that went before is cancelled out, undone, "done apart." The first time she wrote it, I thought she was making a little joke, but now I think there may be some profound misunderstanding about what happens to an estate and a family at death. Anna has died, therefore the last 27 years disappear? Her children and grandchildren disappear? My God, where does it leave the poor man, whose life they were/are part of?
This thread is either heartbreaking or infuriating. I wonder which.
See All Answers