The Midults: My mother left my sister £100k more than me, and I can’t move on from the injustice
QMy mother died last year and left £100,000 more to my sister, who lived locally, looked after her for years and works for a small charity, than to me. I moved to London in my 20s, work in finance and do not need the money. I see the logic in it, but it just feels like a slap in the face. I had a good relationship with my mother but I feel betrayed by her and angry with my sister (with whom I’m usually close to and is offering to split the money). I don’t know what to do with these feelings as I know they are petty but they don’t seem to be fading. Rejected
Dear Rejected
AThere is nothing petty about your feelings. Death and money, love and money and money and money are all ingredients that combine in a potentially toxic alchemy. You have every right to feel strange, even if logic dictates all the things you know: that your mother was intending a kindness to your sister rather than a rejection of you; that you had a good relationship with your mother and a stable place in the family hierarchy.
Nevertheless, you feel hurt, of course you do. It’s always a shame when people don’t clearly signal their intentions before they are gone. In our totally unscientific vox pop this week we have heard an agony of inheritance woes – everything from children being usurped by step-families, to primogeniture pain between siblings, to children panicking about parental irresponsibility, to parents panicking about their children’s lifestyles and whether they should support those choices. It is easy to say “everything should be fair” or “as long as it’s equal”, but nothing is fair or equal – we don’t lead equal lives and therefore, rightly or wrongly, decisions are made. For some, these decisions can feel heartbreaking, a different flavour of grief to add to the unappetising amount already on your plate.
The problem is that money ascribes value and we often confuse value with love. When the will was read, you probably had an awful thought when you heard about the imbalance – I am worth £100,000 less. Worthless. And so your lizard brain activated, the one that latches on to all the negative ideas about yourself like a demonic fairground attraction: “Oh look, I’ve hooked the ‘my mother didn’t love me’” teddy or the “My sister was always the favourite” duck. Once the negative loop begins, it’s hard to get those thoughts out of your head.
We spoke to Kelly Hearn, psychotherapist and cofounder of Examined Life (examinedlife. co.uk), about your sticky situation. She agreed that money has this peculiar emotional power. “Money is as much about our psychology as it is our bank balance,” she says. “Unlike other determinants of value, money can be quantified, which allows for a kind of faulty emotional accounting – £100k less lovable? Less valued? Less important? The questions may sound absurd and yet feel true.”
Hearn suggests that, behind the facts, this might be an opportunity “to get really clear what meaning – and indeed power – you are projecting on to the money in your inheritance. This may help explain why you are feeling short-changed despite understanding the logic in your mother’s thinking. Perhaps these feelings are familiar, part of a pre-existing family dynamic (and so inform the lens with which you view the inheritance). The feelings may not be fading because you are fixating on the wrong thing; the money becomes a distraction.”
It is worth thinking about some counselling to tease out the knot you have become tangled in. There’s a myth about therapy that once you start it is a lifelong process, but really you can use a short burst to help examine a particular problem. In this case, as Hearn says, it might be to “refocus on all the non-financial ways you felt valued and loved by your mother – to intentionally not let the inheritance money become a shorthand for esteem or affection”. And perhaps this might also help you reframe your situation, and eventually feel that your mother did a good thing in supporting your sister after her years of well-intentioned service. Hearn says: “When we disentangle our projections from money, we’re able to see it for what it is – a means of payment for goods and services – and relegate it to that.”
We would also suggest you talk to your sister as a way of not letting this bombshell tear apart your lives. Maybe there’s a way of donating some of the money to a charity that means something personal to you: a little bit of growth, a green shoot of hope. We do not think that what you’re going through is easy, Rejected. Graveyards are littered with inheritance tears. But we really believe that, with a little bit of digging, you will feel at ease again.
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Do you have a dilemma that you’re grappling with? Email Annabel and Emilie on themidults@ telegraph.co.uk. All questions are kept anonymous. They are unable to reply personally