A Great-Grandfather Felt That He Was Wronged By A Relative, So He Made Sure That They Would Never Inherit Any Of His Money
by Michael Levanduski
Having money can be great, but it can also make some people very hard to get along with.
When it comes to family with money, it can cause some serious conflicts because everyone thinks they are entitled to it.
That is the situation in this story that is being told by a great-granddaughter many years later.
Building an Apartment for Stepson, runs off with everything but ends up owning everything of Stepson in the long run
So this is about my great grandfather (who I called Pop-Pop), who was on my mother’s mother’s side.
He was a farmer growing up with his 12 brothers and sisters.
He had a large family and was the middle child.
He quit school when he was in 3rd grade to help out with the family’s farm.
After he turned 16 he worked for a plumber who would sell the business to him later on.
When he was in his late 20s he met and years later married his wife.
His wife (my great grandmother, or MeMe as my mother called her) was from a very wealthy family and was 10 years older than he was.
Unlike Pop-Pop, she was an only child and she was a widow from a very young age as she also had an adult son (my great uncle Bob, not his real name of course) at the time.
How awful.
MeMe’s parents didn’t live very long and had passed early due to illness along with her first husband (I’m not sure what they passed of, I think it was TB).
The fact that she didn’t have to worry about money helped her raise her son as a single mother as she didn’t have to work.
When her son was 18 he met a girl at college and they got married within a few months.
MeMe didn’t really care for her, we will call Jenny, and she clearly saw that she was just in it for the money as Bob was MeMe’s only child at the time.
Jenny was from high class family with money.
When my great grandparents got married, she gave birth to my grandmother.
It was an unusual birth as MeMe was almost 40 at the time and was very unusual for her to turn out ok.
Pop-pop was a very kind man and even though MeMe had a lot of money, he felt that it was her money and he would still work for a living to provide.
They lived very averagely; if you looked at their house you wouldn’t be able to tell that they were millionaires.
At the time, they were living in a 2 bedroom house.
My grandmother was only a baby at the start of the great depression.
MeMe was not affected that much due to it but Jenny’s family was affected as they made most of their money on Wall Street and banks that started closing.
Jenny’s father killed himself when he lost all his money and Jenny’s mother soon passed after that.
Jenny had 2 other siblings who were all older and were on the other side of the country with no way to contact them or get to them, Bob and Jenny were homeless.
When Bob and Jenny called, Pop-Pop told them to come live with them, no problem whatsoever.
When Bob and Jenny came over, Pop-Pop gave them the whole upstairs (pretty much kicking his family out onto the 1st floor) and renovated and added on the house so they could come and go without waking his new baby up.
He added an extra bedroom, a kitchen, bathroom, everything.
Bob and Jenny were having a hard time finding work (due to the depression), but Pop-Pop told him not to worry, stay as long as you like until you can get back on your feet.
This went on for about a year until one day he noticed that it had been a while since he heard anything.
While it was pretty typical to not see them every day, he hadn’t spoken or even heard anything for about 2 weeks.
He opened the door that he built between the two living spaces and saw the area empty.
The furniture, bathroom fixtures, the stove, everything; stuff that he bought and stuff that they brought with them.
He had no clue what happened and called the police as he thought something was wrong.
Why would they just leave?
The police caught up with them 2,000 miles away living in Florida.
It turns out Jenny’s uncle passed and left her with a huge sum of money, pretty much being able to rebuild their life overnight before the great depression.
As soon as they collected the money, both Bob and Jenny moved out of the house and took everything with them, including Pop-pop and MeMe’s items.
Pop-Pop was angry.
He didn’t care about being paid back, he just wanted his items he had let them borrow and just a good-bye, just let them know that they were leaving or something.
If they asked for the items he wouldn’t have had much of a problem but he got no word from them and stole the items.
As the stuff was easy to replace, he didn’t want to press charges and drag out the mess.
MeMe and him pretty much stop communications with Bob and Jenny due to this.
That is sad.
About 25 years later, MeMe has been tested positive for stage 4 cancer.
At this time, my grandmother had given birth to my mother and was living in her own house with my grandfather.
After she was tested positive, Pop-Pop and MeMe sold their house (the same house) to live with my grandmother to be taken care of.
My grandfather redesigned the basement of his house to have the two living in it.
My grandmother had known that she had a half brother named Bob and his wife Jenny but that was about it, MeMe gave my grandmother his last known number.
She wanted to at least try and tell them that she had stage 4 cancer and not much time left.
My grandmother placed a call in and found out what had happened between the 25 years.
Bob and Jenny never had any kids, but they still had her Uncle’s money.
One thing about Bob and Jenny was that they were smart with the money and invested in it where as MeMe never invested in her money nor did Pop-pop, they jus t let it sit.
These people sound awful.
My grandmother was happy that she was finally going to meet her brother after all this time.
However, they never showed up, even though they said they were going to.
My mother said that the first time she saw them was at the funeral.
MeMe passed away 2 months later and my grandmother called them to let them know where it was.
So they got to the funeral and the first thing out of Bob’s mouth was “So what is in the will?”
Not even a hello.
My grandmother had all greeted them (as she didn’t know the history and why they disappeared, plus my grandmother was too overly nice to family) and was putting them next to the family seating when they saw Pop-Pop.
Pop-pop then said to “Sorry, only family is allowed to sit up front.”
Bob and Jenny started to contest when they saw the funeral guide.
My grandmother was listed as an only child with nothing saying Bob or Jenny was related.
They should be upset.
It turned out that both MeMe and Pop-Pop were angry by how they were treated all those years ago so in MeMe’s will and funeral arrangements were made to disown her son.
They were strangers to the two.
Bob and Jenny blew their top, and while my grandmother tired to cool things down, they left.
MeMe’s will left 85% to Pop-Pop and 15% of it to my grandmother, it even made references that Bob and Jenny would get nothing and were disowned.
Both tired to fight it but it didn’t work.
However, I’m still not done with the revenge; this part is more natural development than anything else.
My grandmother still kept in contact with her brother outside of Pop-Pop’s wishes (Pop-Pop still didn’t tell her what happened since he kept saying that he had no son) and that she knew he wouldn’t approve.
My grandmother, my grandfather and my mother even visited them at their house during a vacation.
My mother said that he always seemed two-face along with Jenny.
They would act nice but it was more of an act, my mother brought this up but my grandmother always shot it down (my grandmother was naïve) and she heard from Bob on what happened between the two.
Bob’s story was that after a year, Jenny’s Uncle passed and left them money.
It wasn’t a lot (a big lie) but enough to move out.
When they went to tell Pop-Pop about it, he blew up on them leaving and demanded that he wanted the money to pay for rent (another lie, Pop-Pop never asked for money) for a room that he built them along with the labor and construction of the area.
They had to leave under the cover of night to be protected from him and that he brainwashed MeMe into disowning him and only came back because she was ailing (which also was a lie, they didn’t show up until the funeral and asked about the will when they first got there, my mother remembers clearly.)
Since Pop-Pop owned 85%, he still had the majority of the money.
Grandma wanted to give part of her money, but she had since spent a majority of it buying a house and doing major renovations to it.
She would give him the money, but it would be after Pop-Pop passed away.
Since Grandma wanted to give money to her brother, they wrote up a contract that after Pop-Pop passing the money that Grandma got, 50% of it would go to her brother.
So they waited, and waited.
That never came.
What happened is too crazy enough not to tell.
By this point when the contact was made my grandmother was in her early 40s, Bob & Jenny was in their mid to late 50s while Pop-Pop was in his 70s.
Most of Pop-Pop’s siblings had passed away and his health was always questionable.
He smoked cigars, drank, and chewed tobacco on top of having bad knees so at the time; we thought he had only a while left to live.
Wow! He wasn’t going to let go!
He lived to be 103 years old.
Bob and Jenny passed away around 20 years after the contact was signed by them and my grandmother.
Since Bob and Jenny had no kids and Jenny’s other siblings passed away with no kids on their own, their money was given to my grandmother after no one else claimed it since Jenny and Bob had no will (I’m not sure the details of how she did it, but she did get it).
My grandmother later on found out that what they were telling her about the house was a lie, as she was cleaning out Pop-Pop’s room, she found the old police records and pictures about the apartment along with Bob and Jenny’s records about how much money they got.
This is pretty sad.
All of the money was wasted away years later by Pop-Pop (he got into heavy depression after MeMe passed away. He drank and gambled most of the money away trying to ease the pain) so even if he passed later on, Bob would not have gotten much, if any of it.
My grandma didn’t know about Pop-Pop’s money until she took over his finances when he went into a nursing home at the age of 102.
Yes, at 100 he was still pretty active with his finances.
Good for him, holding on to life for so long.
Hopefully, it wasn’t just out of spite.
Let’s take a look at what the people in the comments had to say.
Indeed he did.
That would be difficult.
It would be entertaining.
Now that would be funny.
It was more like karma.
People should never feel like they deserve an inheritance.
That’s not such a hard lesson to learn.
If you thought that was an interesting story, check this one out about a man who created a points system for his inheritance, and a family friend ends up getting almost all of it.
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