Bullying brother exploits my parents, but I live too far away to help them

DEAR BEL,

I LIVE in the UK, my parents and brother live as neighbours in Brazil on my dad’s plot of land. My older brother has always been a bully, able to cow my parents into compliance to keep him from getting angry.

This has resulted in them swapping their larger home for his smaller one and even buying my brother’s old car, only for him to use it more than they do.

Each time they made these decisions despite my advice not to do so. My parents are in their 70s and have only small pensions.

I send a few hundred pounds to help them out each month. But there is a legal issue for both their properties that requires £2,000 of payments to a solicitor in legal fees, and about ten times that for the actual settlement. My brother says they are to pay the solicitor’s fee. I only discovered this by accident.

They do not want me to intervene, as my brother would fall out with me and they don’t want that. Yet I am frustrated.

I’d speak to my brother, but know that even if I were to anger him by defending my parents, they would revert to complying after my intervention and we would be no farther forward.

Other than turning off the payments and forcing them to face their lack of funds and ability to pay these bills, I am at a loss as to what I can do.

What do you suggest?

You are the second reader this week (see Ellen) to send two versions of the same letter, one very long, the other concise and ready for print. It’s very helpful.

Also like Ellen, you are living far away which makes it so hard (no — impossible) to address the complicated issue in any hands-on way.

Your longer letter offered chapter and verse of your brother’s high-handed methods and the way he has — to the outsider — cowed and manipulated your parents.

But they probably love him very much and have grown to depend on his presence in their lives.

What’s more, your brother has two children, which will matter hugely to them.

I’m sure they talk between themselves of ways in which they can help make the future secure for beloved grandchildren.

If you resent the fact that your brother is, in effect, exploiting your generosity, then perhaps you should invent a small financial glitch here that makes you stop your payments for a few months.

I’d calmly let your brother know that, just for a while, support of your parents will be down to him.