Hiding His Money
Long story as short as possible, when my mom and her siblings were between six and 14, their father just up and left one day—on my grandmother’s birthday of all things. No notice. But he revealed to my grandmother he’d been having an affair with a co-worker, and since the house was in his name, he wanted her and the kids to be out within a week.
She never had the resources for a court case and never went after him for child support. So she gathered up the kids and their things and they left. He never gave them a penny and would rarely come pick up one kid at a time for his visitation days, plus he and his new wife were mentally awful when he had them. My poor grandmother worked three jobs just to make ends meet.
Once the kids were old enough to work, they had to help with bills. My mom always used to say if she wanted anything besides basic necessities, they had to work to get it themselves. He married his wife without telling anyone. Well, he just passed last week and my mom and I are the executors of his estate. It’s been a lot of emotions—but one detail is particularly brutal.
We’ve been seeing just how much money they saved over the years. More money than we’ve ever seen, which all has to go to the care of his wife as she’s sole beneficiary and needs to be in a nursing home. But when I was calling the life insurance policy to notify them so she can get her payout, there was a big twist. The woman on the phone said “wait, who is [grandmother’s name]?”
Turns out he had taken out a separate life insurance policy after he abandoned them and made my grandmother the beneficiary. It’s worth five times as much as the one for his wife. Since my grandma passed in 2016 and he kept paying the premiums, it’ll be evenly split between my mom and her siblings. Her siblings, who all went no contact with him as adults, are convinced he must have forgotten about it. I think the truth is much different.
I know him and how careful he was with his money. I remember one day last year when I went to drop off groceries for them and he was in a fuss because he couldn’t account for $1.75 in one of his bank accounts. We can say what we want about him, but he was a highly intelligent person. He knew what he was doing when it came to his finances.
There’s no way he was paying four figures a year on an insurance policy and didn’t know what it was for. I don’t know how I feel about it. Maybe it shows some remorse or humanity, but all the same, I don’t care. They needed money then. An insurance payout after a lifetime of pain doesn’t absolve him of his guilt and selfishness. How he could pass with a fortune and my grandmother passed with just enough to cover her cremation.
I kept him in my life for some reason but dealing with all of his post-passing things is making me hate him.