My dad used to wish that his family had a business that he could work for and inherit someday. It can seem ideal from the outside to grow up with an automatic career path laid out for you and may come with quite a sizable paycheck.

But a successful company isn’t something you can take for granted. A bad boss who makes bad decisions can destroy the company from the inside, so stepping into a family business doesn’t guarantee success.

In this story, we hear about a great-grandfather who had multiple daughters but only one son. He wanted his son to run the family business, but his son definitely didn’t have it in him to make the best decisions. In fact, he was probably the worst choice possible.

It took a long time for the great-grandfather to learn his lesson about trusting his son with the family business, but eventually he knew what he had to do. Keep reading for the full story.

Depth form the grave, a story of money.

So this is the scenario: My grandma comes from a family of 5, 4 girls, 1 boy.

My great-grandfather (Henk) was ecstatic with the boy, we will call him Jack.

One more important thing is that my great-grandfather ran a very successful company that made high-end clothing and bathroom silks/towels/bathrobes. He made a fortune with his company and made sure everyone who worked for the company got his fair share.

He also looked after the family, all his children got a education, all his children got the chance to get their driver’s license. It was in the 1960s so it was a big deal back then, they were the first in my home time with a car, radio and tv.

His son was the golden child who could do no wrong, even though he did a lot of things wrong.

My great-grandfather treated everyone equal , that changed when his first and only son was born, he already had 4 girls and now finally a son. The road map was laid out for him, he would be the heir to his company.

So began the upbringing of Jack, he was let’s say a kid with a mouth. This wasn’t bad perse, the thing was that his father allowed it.

Jack got kicked from his first school, jack got caught for shoplifting, Jack got kicked from his second school, Jack got caught joyriding and so on and so on.

Henk did not sit Jack down and told him the severity of his actions but he would shrug it and tell his wife(great-grandmother) Anna that it were just childhood quirks.

Jack had to work his way up in the company.

Anna tried to make something out of Jack but it was a lost cause.

Jack became 18 and Henk decided that it was the time too introduce him into the company, the company did better than ever and the whole family was involved.

Jack began at the bottom of the ladder and had to work his way up, this is were Jack began to “shine”.

With shine my grandmother meant that her brother was not a bright light at school but he was a hard worker and had a nose for business, not so much for people.

Jack’s wife was a huge problem.

Jack was being a jerk as per usual and got married to his first Karen, his first wife was a, Karen . She wanted to start her own company and her Father in law Henk wanted to retire.

She pushed Jack to take over quickly and push the rest of the family out.

Jack listent to her and talked to his father how he was ready and how his sisters and their husbands were tearing the company apart if they would stay in their leadership roles.

The thing was that only one daughter an son in law were involved in the company at this point(1980). My grandmother oversaw the seamstresses and the quality department , and my grandfather oversaw the financial and the supplier’s.

Karen got her way.

Karen wanted full control and started a little fire in the family, she spread a rumor that grandfather stole from the company.

I do not know what transpired but in the end my great-grandfather bought out all the family and Jack bought out great-grandfather.

The company was Jack and Karen’s company now and things went badly pretty quickly.

Seamstresses quited, bills were not paid and Jack had to take a loan from great-grandfather.

The great-grandfather had to rescue the company.

The family company was barely scraping by and Karen left Jack because he could not provide for him.

It became apparent that Jack could not make it work and was looking for a way out .

After a while great-grandfather had seen enough and bought back the remnants of his company and sold it too a bigger company that wanted to expand.

This made the wealth he amesed even bigger, he did set up different banking accounts for his children and said that if someone was in need they could take money form that account.

At least the great-grandfather seems to have learned his lesson about Jack.

He told Jack his cut was smaller as he was the reason he sold the company and that he was let down by the carelessness his son had run his company into the ground.

Jack was angry and told his father that he could had make it work if he had more time. It remained a sour point between the two of them

Things went well for a while but Jack married a second time with a women named Helen, Helen like Karen wanted her own business.

Jack agreed and took money from the account in order to start Helens company. The business was a little barbershop and ran pretty well, they were spending their money on luxury and did not save anny money.

Jack really messed up this time!

After a while my grandmother got a call from her little brother Jack if he could store some good in her garage.

My grandfather did not trust Jack and told him No and grandmother did not agree but they agreed to it.

A few weeks later Jack got caught for “possession of stolen goods and drugs smuggling”.

It was not a surprise but none the less a let down for my great-grandfather Henk, this time he would not help Jack and told him that he would no longer stand behind him.

It got worse for Jack and the great-grandfather.

After a few years Jack got out and was again a divorced men, he married again and divorce another 3 times and each time he gave these women a business and live lavishly, new cars, big House’s, expensive vacations.

He drained his money and robbed his emergency bank account dry, he loaned a lot of money from great-grandfather and soo on.

In 2013 great-grandfather befell ill , it was clear that he was not gonna make it and took his final days in stride.

At this time Jack became very buddy buddy and started to help great-grandfather sell some stuff.

OP’s grandmother was concerned.

At some point my grandmother sat down with her father and asked him were the money went for the sold stuff and great-grandfather told her not to worry about it, he took care of it in his will.

After his 95 birthday he passed away quite and in peace.

After her funeral they all went too listen to the will of their father, all except Jack who had given a power of attorney to my grandmother to sign the will in his place.

All the children get their fair share but at the end the notary public tells them to signe the papers and the inheritance is completely theirs.

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Grandma needed some help getting her inheritance.

At some point my grandma called my dad, she has inherited some collateral papers, all sorts of papers that stated that someone owned my great-grandfather money.

My father said that she has to call a lawyers office to get the money from these papers.

A few days after this call to the lawyers office my grandmother gets a call from her brother, why was she taking his money from the inheritance.

My grandmother tells him she has inherited some collateral papers and that she wants too get the money from them.

Jack was really upset.

Jack was furious and told her that that was illegal.

Jack was wrong, great-grandfather had documented every penny his son had loaned from him and constructed his will in such a way that the rest of his children could get that part of their money from there money drain of a brother.

Also great-grandfather found out Jack stole from him. You see Jack was putting the money he made from the sold stuff on his own banking account instead of giving it to his Father.

Great-grandfather was done with Jack.

After this ordeal Jack has not contacted my grandmother or his sisters, he has since then paid everything back and has never seen a penny from his inheritance.

Great-grandfather has confided in a letter why he did this, he was done with his son, all the lying , the careless things he had done to his company, all the money he had blown and not taking any responsibility.

He gave his final lesson to his son from the grave.

It’s too bad Jack let the women in his life destroy him.

If you enjoyed this post, check out this story about a sister who canceled a family dinner after realizing she’d been the only one putting in effort for years.

Let’s see how Reddit responded to this story.

Perhaps.

Jack clearly didn’t learn from his mistakes.

I agree with this comment.

Not exactly since in this case the father (great-grandfather) created the wealth but his son squandered it.

Jack was clearly the wrong person to trust with the family business, but even though he messed up a lot as a child, it sounds like he started out okay when he started working his way up in the company. If he had never married Karen, the whole situation might’ve been very different. While Jack had a lot of faults, it seems that the biggest problem he had was marrying gold diggers. He clearly didn’t learn from his mistakes and kept marrying women who took all of his money.

I’m glad that the great-grandfather in the story eventually learned his lesson about Jack and provided for his other children at his son’s expense…even if it was from the grave. I’m also assuming the company survived with Jack out of the way. I’m a little bit curious who ended up buying the company and if it still exists under another brand name.

Perhaps the lesson here is that gold diggers can destroy a family business.