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Family relics hold so much value and are precious to us because of their ability to give us insight into our departed relatives and the past.

However, how do you handle a situation when one family member is trying hard to preserve these memories, while another is perfectly content with discarding them?

This is currently happening to a woman whose cousin threw away everything after inheriting her grandparents’ house. Well, the tables turned when the poster received original pictures of her cousin’s grandparents.

What would you do in this situation?

Check out the full story below.

AITA for refusing to give my cousin hard copy photos of her grandparents?

First of all, I’ll admit it, I hate my cousin Trina. She’s a **** person. Because of word count I’m not getting into it.

I love old photos and old memorabilia. I love the snapshots that I see into the lives of previous generations.

Because of this I get a lot of old photos from both sides of the family, as well as letters, documents, and sometimes old keepsakes, because I love those too.

About three years ago Trina inherited a house from her grandparents. It was not hoarded but it was quite full of things.

She decided that going through anything at all would be a waste of time so she rented a dumpster and some workers and had nearly everything thrown into the dumpster.

It was a hopeless situation because of her cousin.

She wouldn’t let anybody come into the home and take anything away.

She wouldn’t even give a single day for that.

I was devastated by the loss of memorabilia. Additionally her grandparents stupidly thought that she would honor their wishes to give things of theirs to certain family members, which she did not do.

Anything not written in the will, she did not do.

Then something happened.

A couple of months ago I scanned in a batch of photos that included a lot of photos of her grandparents in their 20s and 30s. The lot included some photos of just Trina’s grandparents.

I shared those photos with some other cousins who had family members in the photos and one of them shared the images with Trina.

Trina immediately called me, demanding that I “return her property to her” or she would take legal action.

I laughed at her, told her she was a dumb ******** and that she would never get anything from me, then I hung up on her.

My family is really torn on this and it’s caused quite a lot of fighting in our chat groups. A lot of people think that my behavior was fully justified.

But not everyone agrees.

Some people think that my behavior was justified but that I should give her some of the hard copies that are just of her grandparents.

Other people think I was a total ******* about everything and that I should be apologizing to her and giving her all the hard copies of her grandparents, plus some other hard copies, to smooth things over.

I think I owe her jack ****.

But she wants to know if she’s in the wrong.

There is no way to know how many photos, letters, and documents got tossed when she cleaned out her grandparents’ house.

If she really cared she wouldn’t have done that. Even if I liked her I wouldn’t trust her with any hard copies.

I am willing to give her high-resolution digital copies of any photos she wants.

I actually have an album of them that she could access but I don’t think she deserves anything more than that.

Hell I think she barely deserves that for the way that she acts.

AITA?

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I must say I agree with her. Why give it to her cousin if she threw everything away like that?

But what did Reddit think?

A reader shares their thoughts.

Yup.

I agree.

A suggestion on what to say.

Another reader chimes in.

There are two distinct issues involved here: the cousin’s decision to throw away all these possessions of her family and the issue of who legally owns the photographs.

Obviously, her attitude towards the inheritance of her grandparents angered the poster, especially since she was not the only relative whose rights were violated.

If she cares so much about the photographs, which I doubt she does, she can seek legal help.

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Author

Mila Cardozo

Yells her own name like a Pokémon sometimes.

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