Unwelcome emails from distant "relatives" in my father's NFOO

[sunkitten]

Right now I feel like that character in the Sopranos tv show, the one that uttered, "Just when you think you got out, they pull you back in..." (sorry, I can't remember the whole of the character's speech, so am paraphrasing it).

Today I got an email from my late uncle's older stepdaughter, going on about how she and her husband have spent many happy times hiking, snowshoeing and hunting on my late father's land. The two stepdaughters inherited my uncle's land when he died almost a year after my father. Both stepdaughters, along with their families, have been using my late father's land without asking me if it was okay.

(Backstory: My father was abusive emotionally, physically, financially, and sexually to me, and also to my mother. I disclosed my father's abuse to my mother at age 19 after one incident; there was another, worse incident six months later and I told my mother about that one too. She believed me without question. Unfortunately, after the second incident she then contacted the remaining members of my father's NFOO -- his brother and brother's wife and my father's half-sister. They accused me of making it up because my father refused to fill out and sign financial disclosure papers for my college. In the years since, my uncle, his wife, and my half-aunt have all died, along with my father, and the only ones left with any connection to my father's FOO are my uncle's two stepdaughters. Neither stepdaughter had any contact with my father since their marriages in the early 1970s except for Christmas cards and annual renting of his land during hunting season. The younger stepdaughter decided to start being "friendlier" to my father when he became terminally ill, and because my father was a malignant narcissist, was all too happy to lie to him regarding my hours of work, availability to run my father's errands on command, etc., in effect taking advantage of the strained relationship he and I had following many years of abuse. He signed over his retirement fund to her eight months before his death, keeping it a secret from me (I didn't know about the retirement fund's existence until after he'd passed away), but the laws in my country state the estate is liable for taxes paid on disbursement of a retirement fund after the owner's death. It effectively disinherited me as everything my father owned will go for the taxes on the money the younger stepdaughter received.)

I am really upset that my email address was given out by someone I'd recently contracted to harvest the timber on my late father's land, and upset that this older stepdaughter would have the effrontery to email me saying that they've been using the land and still want to use it. The timber man has been given exclusive access by me, not only to harvest the timber, but also to hunt on the land during the three hunting seasons between now and the end of 2016. I'm sure he's not aware of the backstory here and the older stepdaughter likely represented herself as part of my family in order to get my email address.

Every time I've had to have contact with any member of my father's NFOO, it's been like this: they might have had an arrangement with my father to use his land, but they have treated me like dirt since my mother disclosed the abuse many years ago, and have consistently discounted anything I had to say regarding my father. Nor have they ever asked me my own side of the story. They have never asked my permission to use the land, just gone ahead and used it whenever they wanted, making money off the landscape paintings they sell, having fun with their winter activities there. They also own an adjacent plot of land which they inherited from my late uncle, and IMO that should be enough for them considering everything else.

The problem with these continuing attempts at contact by the stepdaughters is that I get triggered into nightmares and emotional flashbacks. I expect that the older stepdaughter will be giving my email address to her sister, the one who has caused so much pain in my life when my father was in his final months, and that the younger stepdaughter's attorney will continue to demand money from me as happened last winter. They're not satisfied with what my father gave them but seem to want to take everything I have, which isn't much. Both stepdaughters have plenty of family support, good jobs, nice homes and businesses, yet they seem to think I, a disabled woman without any family, husband, kids, good job, etc., should just lie down and take it while they strip me of everything else.

I haven't answered the older stepdaughter's email yet, mostly because their continuing entitlement attitude upsets and baffles me and makes me want to tell her exactly what my father did to me, in detail. I know that's JADEing but I need to do something to get these people to leave me alone. My doctor has me on benzodiazepines, a small dosage, because of the stress... but that's not a good long-term solution to the nightmares. Help please?

[keepfighting]

Hi, sunkitten,



I am so sorry you were confronted with this. It's horrible and wrong on so many levels!

I am also sorry that this unsolicited email brought back so many painful memories for you. 

Two things you need to do now:

1) Talk to the person who passed on your personal information and ask him to check with you first should someone approach him about your personal details again. (No JADEing necessary - only ask him to respect your request)

2) Get legal advice concerning the trespassing of your cousins. Then answer the email - and only to let them know that you've gotten legal advice, that no trespaasing will be acceptable to you (...also not if they manage to get an invite to a hunting party or some such - they are never welcome on your land for any reason).

I know that it feels like it's all connected and of course it is - there is just no excuse for your second cousin's behavior towards you in the past or in the present. You owe them nothing - neither legally nor morally!!!!

You do have the power to put them firmly in their place for now and in the future. There are laws to protect you and your property - don't hesitate to use them in this case (I don't think you need to lawyer up right now - just get some sound legal advice of how to procede and if and when you might need to lawyer up).

Good luck to you! It's crazy that NFOOs tend to be so toxic that you need to protect yourself and your property against them, but obviously the trespassing has been going on for quite some time now so there's no hope of them respecting your boundaries any other way.

Kudos!

[schrödinger's cat]

Hi sunkitten, sorry that I have no advice. But I wanted to let you know that I'll be keeping my fingers crossed. It sounds like the very last thing you need right now is any kind of contact with those people. I hope you'll soon be able to shake them off.

But yes, a contract with the timber people sounds like a really, really good thing.

[Kizzie]

Right now I feel like that character in the Sopranos tv show, the one that uttered, "Just when you think you got out, they pull you back in..." (sorry, I can't remember the whole of the character's speech, so am paraphrasing it).

I use this same line all the time SunKitten and for good reason -- folks with a PD, well narcissists anyway, will continue to try and engulf, hoover, torture, make you crazy as long as you let them which is why I am LC with my NPDM and NC with the rest of my PD FOO.

So sorry to hear you are going through this     Can you just block them and be done with them entirely?  And in the case of the trespassing/money concerns - are you able to afford your own attorney?  If so, let the lawyers do the talking when/if the time comes. 

Your first priority in all of this is to take care of YOU!

[sunkitten]

Thanks for your replies, everyone.

I do have a signed contract with the timber company president to harvest the timber on the land, and he gave me a deposit which has already been put into my bank account. We made a separate agreement for his hunting party to use the land for this year, next year and 2016 and he's paid me in advance for that too.

Ironically, he got my name and address from one or both of my uncle's stepdaughters close to a year ago, and originally sent me a letter then offering to harvest the timber.

Four months before that, the younger stepdaughter showed up at my door waving around a folder of opened mail she'd had redirected to her house concerning the estate (she'd also convinced my father to give her his financial power of attorney eight months before he died, at the same time he changed the beneficiary of his retirement fund to her name instead of mine). She had refused to turn over any of the estate mail to me for years following my father's death despite my being the executrix of the will. I finally, after several requests to her to give me the estate mail which went ignored, had an attorney start probate last year. Probate finished the same week this woman showed up at my apartment door. She must have been calling the courthouse for years trying to find out when probate was finished. She'd opened all of the mail, which is a prosecutable offense here, and held onto it because she didn't want me to have it. When she showed up I asked her again to give it to me and she said she'd only give it to my lawyer. He called me two days later and told me she'd come to his office with the estate mail, and also told me about the tax bill (from 2010!) then as it was in the mail. It was absolutely devastating news as I had never been told how much she'd gotten monetarily until that point. Whatever she said to my probate attorney, it was enough for him to recommend I get an estate litigator involved.

I did meet with the estate litigator he recommended, who sent out a letter to her asking her to provide all documentation regarding my father's estate as well as her accountant's name and the name of the financial institution where my father's retirement fund had been. I can't afford the estate litigator's services on an ongoing basis and my next step after sorting out my housing and job situation is to call my province's Law Society to help me find someone who will take this case on contingency.

A couple of weeks after the timber company president contacted me last year I finally heard from the estate litigator, who sent me a copy of the response from this woman's attorney stating that I should be able to find out all of this information myself and that if I wanted copies of the estate documentation I should pay her and her "client" $14,000. Guess how much the timber company president had offered me for the timber?

This is all aside from the fact that both stepdaughters have been using the land for years without paying me and without permission.

About my housing/job -- there is a five-year waiting list for subsidized housing here, and jobs are hard to find for healthy young people, let alone a person who is disabled and almost 55. I moved here originally to attend university (after seven years spent looking after my uNPD/ASPD father) and when my father became terminally ill, he needed so much care I couldn't go back to school once he'd moved in with me. He lived with me a year before going into the nursing home, and I did everything from taking him to doctor appointments, his bank, changing his colostomy bags, cooking for him, cleaning, etc., but during that year my student loans came due. I'm paying out half my monthly income on student loans and medication for chronic pain.  It's not sustainable, even with a roommate, unless I have a job. I had to leave my job last year and have been living on my small income annuity plus the proceeds from a small life insurance policy my father had. My only hope is to take my uncle's younger stepdaughter to court regarding the money she got, and win... unfortunately, my counselor/MSW seems to think I should just let it go. It's hard to do that, considering that the money is several hundred thousand dollars, and considering that there is a huge difference between what I did for my father and what my uncle's younger stepdaughter did for him in the last seventeen months of his life (she bought him his favourite cookies, and had her husband take him for car rides, and once they had financial POA they wrote out the occasional check for him).

Every time I have to hear from or see any of the people associated with my father's FOO... every time I wake up in such severe pain that it's hard to do anything... it's a reminder that my father must have really hated me to give his money to people who were at the most acquaintances. Their entitled attitudes just make it worse. I don't know how any of them can live with themselves or how they can sleep at night.

[Rain]

Oh, sunkitten.

This is so much you are dealing with.   An incredible amount.

I think your counselor is saying your emotional health is what is most important.   One can be in the right, and still be on the losing end.

I've had some times I have had to cut some serious losses and move on.   Likely, we all have.   Yours is an extreme example.   Dying people can will entire fortunes to a dog, and ignore caretakers and family, like that hotel woman some years ago...it's their right, fair or not.   It is just is the way it goes.

The timber company.  Personally, I have seen what the land looks like after a timber company stripped what they wanted, abandoned equipment on the land left for the land owner to deal with.   The land I saw looked like a bomb hit it, I never expected to be so shocked.    Potentially, water runoff issues afterwards.

I hope things clear up soon for you, sunkitten.   

[sunkitten]

Oh, sunkitten.

This is so much you are dealing with.   An incredible amount.

I think your counselor is saying your emotional health is what is most important.   One can be in the right, and still be on the losing end.

I've had some times I have had to cut some serious losses and move on.   Likely, we all have.   Yours is an extreme example.   Dying people can will entire fortunes to a dog, and ignore caretakers and family, like that hotel woman some years ago...it's their right, fair or not.   It is just is the way it goes.

The timber company.  Personally, I have seen what the land looks like after a timber company stripped what they wanted, abandoned equipment on the land left for the land owner to deal with.   The land I saw looked like a bomb hit it, I never expected to be so shocked.    Potentially, water runoff issues afterwards.

I hope things clear up soon for you, sunkitten.   

Thanks, Rain.

I know dying people can do what they want with their money, but (besides the NPD/ASPD) my father was also on some pretty strong medications for pain while he was in the nursing home, medications which he was not used to receiving long-term. And he maintained right up until his death, even after he changed his financial POA, that I was "all he had" and that he would be leaving everything to me. There is legal precedent here, in my country, where unfair distribution of assets between *siblings* has been overturned by the court and this woman is not even a member of my family except by marriage of her mother.

My father knew I dealt/deal with chronic pain and spinal deformity and that this would inevitably lead to a point where I could no longer work full-time. There are tons of medical records which support this, and combined with my lack of assets compared to those of my uncle's younger stepdaughter, plus the fact that she had virtually nothing to do with him until the last seventeen months of his life, and other evidence on top of all of that, most courts I think would take it all into consideration.

I've been seeing this counselor since 2007, on and off, and was seeing her at the time my father made these changes (at least the ones I knew about at the time). She seems to think that if I just go to social services they'll get me all set up with an affordable place to live right away, but they won't -- due to that long waiting list. I'm sure she is concerned with my emotional health, but having to leave behind all of my possessions and my beloved cats and live on the street until a unit opens up in five years isn't exactly great for my emotional health either. I lose the annuity with no fixed address.

[Kizzie]

"There is legal precedent here, in my country, where unfair distribution of assets between *siblings* has been overturned by the court and this woman is not even a member of my family except by marriage of her mother."

Sunkitten - you mean that a previously set precedent has been overturned rather than upheld correct? Hard to believe if that's the case!

This is a long shot idea here but you just never know.  What about seeing if there are any watchdog style journalists in you area that might be interested in investigating your case?  I just saw one on TV last night that brought a lot of attention to bear on a guy's experience of having his girlfriend steal his credit card and rack up tons of charges, and even though she "confessed" (and got 20 hrs of community service and had to write a letter of apology to him), the credit card company was still making him repay the charges.  Since the reporter got into it though they company is "reevaluating things" a little bad press can go a long way it seems.   

It may be that in your case being disabled and not having the resources to fight this case in which an an in-law (out law) is trying to take advantage of you may capture a journalist's attention.  Long shot I know, but if it worked it might be a way of getting some quick action without forking over a bundle of money.