Inheritance stories are rarely fun, especially if there is a lot of money involved. Families get in such bad fights that the members might not talk to each other anymore because some people value money more than the relationships they had, forgetting that a person just died.
It’s even less fun when you are the one who has to decide how that money will be distributed to the late person’s relatives. This is exactly what happened to Reddit user ThatsDrAardvarkToYou and she was not happy to take this role, but seeing as she was given this opportunity, she thought she could teach her family a lesson.
More info: Reddit
Woman got the opportunity to divide her father's assets after his death and decided to have fun with her relatives she disliked
Image credits: Marco Verch (not the actual image)
The Original Poster (OP) is a 27-year-old woman who recently experienced the loss of her father. Her father was really rich as he became a successful businessman despite having no degree, starting around the age one finishes school.
She describes him as not a really good person as he was quite materialistic and liked to show off his wealth. She doesn’t remember him as a good father either, but what’s important to mention was that he wasn’t physically abusive.
The woman's father passed away in December of last year and left a lot of money, as well as possessions
Image credits: ThatsDrAardvarkToYou
Bored Panda got in contact with ThatsDrAardvarkToYou and she told us that she doesn’t really remember much about her father from her childhood as her parents divorced when she was young.
Seeing that she described him as not a very pleasant person to be around, we asked if she had any happy memories of him. The woman told us, “The fondest memory might just be the visitations we had a few times where he was obviously trying his hardest to seem likeable, however genuine or not that was.”
Despite it being difficult, the daughter managed to maintain a relationship with her father: “I got along with him decently as an adult, and he helped me out of a few tough spots, although we had conflicts then too.”
She described him as an unpleasant person to be around and she wasn't fond of his side of the family either
Image credits: ThatsDrAardvarkToYou
The OP’s father died in December of last year after he had just celebrated his 65th birthday. As the woman told us, he smoked most of his life and he had excess weight, so the family suspected that he probably had some health issues, especially because he had been in the hospital last year. However, he had been released and nobody expected him to pass away from a brain embolism.
After the man died, he left a lot of money, real estate and other possessions. Which made the family kind of lose their minds.
It all started at the funeral, which was a mess: “Due to covid there were restrictions on how many people could attend, and they were arguing over who would get to go, and who wouldn't, who was 'close' enough to get a spot, etc.”
To show how pompous and dramatic the man was, the daughter mentioned that he actually wanted a gun salute at his funeral, but it wasn’t legal, “so that was turned down, but my relatives were trying to outdo each other with the biggest flower arrangements possible, etc., etc.”
When he died, everyone thought that his oldest son would be his will's executor, but surprisingly, he chose his daughter
Image credits: ThatsDrAardvarkToYou
The woman revealed to us more details: “what ended up happening was that some of them stood outside in the snow in December because the chapel was too full. Also, multiple of my father's ex wives showed up and while they didn't fight or anything, there was lots of tension.”
What is more, the daughter didn’t know half of the people there or hadn’t seen them in a decade. She felt that they weren’t genuinely mourning but “it was just an opportunity for relatives to 'show off' how 'close' they were to [her] father.” The woman even speculates that “it almost seemed like they were already potentially angling for their share of the inheritance then” or they could have been grandstanding, she doesn’t really know.
So you can imagine how much tension there was even before the will was found and verified. The daughter remembers that the family accused her brother, who is one of the few relatives she has a good relationship with, of stealing from his father’s inheritance, even though he was just looking for some documents in his computer which might have been worth $2k of all the millions he had.
The OP was receiving a lot of messages from relatives she hadn't talked to in years, trying to get on her good side
Image credits: ThatsDrAardvarkToYou
However, she was not falling for the sweet messages as she remembered too well what kind of people they were
Image credits: Hotel Internazionale Ischia (not the actual image)
This wasn’t the first time the woman had been disgusted by her relatives’ behavior. She remembers how one woman from her family called her a slur when she got a boyfriend at 19 years old, and the family accused her of making her nieces hate their mother when she gave them food because their mother wouldn’t. It was actually their punishment for bad grades.
The father himself disliked that side of the family and wasn’t afraid to say that to their faces, like calling the OP’s cousin gold diggers.
Image credits: ThatsDrAardvarkToYou
When the daughter finally got a list of everything that her father owned, the first thing she did was to sell everything and turn it into money
Image credits: ThatsDrAardvarkToYou
When the will was finally verified, to everyone’s surprise, the executor wasn’t the OP’s brother who was the man’s oldest child or a family friend, or his wife but ThatsDrAardvarkToYou herself.
Everyone was surprised because the OP is the youngest and also, she kind of distanced herself from all the family drama, so the woman’s guess was that maybe this was the very reason her dad picked her or because he knew it would annoy the rest of the family.
ThatsDrAardvarkToYou told us that she was really annoyed with her father’s decision to name her the executor, but she also realized that she was the most capable of fulfilling this duty. “I knew him to be overly grand and dramatic, so while it wasn't shocking, I was just super annoyed he'd put that on me, although of the 3 options, I was probably the best one. Had I turned it down, my brother would have been next, and I didn't want to do that to him as he's a lot softer with our garbage relatives and would have been a lot more upset had it fallen to him.”
Image credits: ThatsDrAardvarkToYou
She allowed herself to only keep a car and gave one to her brother, as well as a motorcycle as they both got along
Image credits: ThatsDrAardvarkToYou
But the OP wasn’t planning on being soft despite all the deceivingly sweet messages and calls she was receiving from her relatives, because when they found out about her role in the will, everyone wanted to get on her good side or try to advise her on what to do, which felt really cringey.
So the plan was to get back at all of them for being horrible people or to reward those who still had good in them by splitting the inheritance as ThatsDrAardvarkToYou found fair.
Image credits: ThatsDrAardvarkToYou
He was already content, but the little sister wanted him to have 25 percent of everything and a third would go to her stepmom as she is a genuinely good person
Image credits: ThatsDrAardvarkToYou
The first thing she did after receiving the list of her father’s assets was to sell what she could: real estate, art, cars, stocks, bonds and investments. She only kept one car for herself and gave one car and a Suzuki motorcycle to her brother, who actually said that was enough for him, but the little sister actually had bigger plans for him, which was about a quarter of everything.
She liked her father’s widow, who was a simple person who grew up poor, had to work as a cleaning lady and actually continued with that job even after getting married to a rich man. So she received a third of the money.
Other relatives would have to be content with a lot more humble amounts and some ironic charity donations in their names
Image credits: Pictures of Money (not the actual image)
Image credits: ThatsDrAardvarkToYou
The Redditor was mostly excited about the widower's daughter who was snobby and became really mean to the OP's brother
Image credits: ThatsDrAardvarkToYou
Her aunts, uncles and cousins received pathetic amounts if you compare them with the millions they could have got. The OP also had an idea worthy of a chef’s kiss as she donated money in the name of her relatives to charities that are completely opposite to what they stand for. For example, if they were an alcoholic, she would donate to a clinic for alcoholics, if they were misogynistic, they would donate to a women’s shelter etc.
The person ThatsDrAardvarkToYou really didn’t like was the widow's daughter. She was a person who liked to boast about money she didn’t have, trying to look rich when she was working as a security guard in a mall but at the same time looking down upon people who had honest jobs like her mom.
Because the OP didn’t like her and because she was really mean to her brother, the woman decided the widower's daughter would get nothing. She was 22, so the deceased didn’t adopt her, so technically she was just a random stranger.
As the widower's daughter wasn't legally adopted by her stepdad, she was optional in the will and the will executor skipped her in the inheritance list
Image credits: ThatsDrAardvarkToYou
Of course, the woman took some money for herself, but she doesn't really need it as she became financially successful on her own
Image credits: ThatsDrAardvarkToYou
The relatives don’t yet know about the woman's decisions on their inheritance as she just sent out the letters and it will take about two weeks to get to them. ThatsDrAardvarkToYou thinks she might do an update on their reactions, but for now, we wait.
As for the rest of the money, she will be taking a piece for herself, although not as big of a chunk as she gave to her brother, because she has enough of her own money. The woman plans to donate the remaining money to various charities she is already familiar with because she knows her father wouldn’t want that.
So a lot of the remaining money will be donated to charities as revenge against her father who would have hated the idea
Image credits: ThatsDrAardvarkToYou
If you are concerned that the OP might get in trouble for her irony and spite, she mentioned that it was all done with the help of professionals, so she should be fine.
We would like to hear your thoughts on this inheritance story. How would you have behaved in ThatsDrAardvarkToYou’s shoes? Do you think she was fair in the way she carried out her will executor’s duties? Let us know in the comments!