The Step Monster

The day after my father's funeral service, my stepmother, who my friends frequently referred to as my Step Monster, tossed me out on the street. Somehow, she had forgotten to toss out my grandmother's jewelry, my aunt's antique vases and my father's 1984 Mercedes 300SD, which she did not know how to drive. She also held tight to the newly created living trust that she and her sister coerced my father into creating. This new trust left me, his only child, entirely out of his inheritance. Along with my Step Monster, her two nephews (the sons of said sister) would be inheriting five houses in Hawaii, even though these two nephews lived in Toronto and Seattle. I could have used a house in Hawaii, since I was sitting on a sidewalk wondering what to do now that I had no roof over my head, and no father.

The thought did occur to me that I should fight this miraculous living trust that so favored my Step Monster and her nephews. I walked to a local cafe with my computer and started a search for attorneys. The first attorney told me a trust always trumps a will (my father had a will that left me 50% of everything). The second attorney told me it would cost me six figures just to get things rolling to a point where I could stand a chance.

The third attorney asked me two questions. First, he asked me if my father would want me to fight for the estate. I did not have an answer. Then he asked me if there was a better gift my father could have given me besides the five homes in Hawaii. I thought long and hard. Yes, there was. The best gift was to never have to have my Step Monster and her family in my life again. "Then you just won," said the attorney.

Funeral Fund