Making Progress in Keeping My Emotions In-Check and Doing What I Have To Do

[VIDEO: "What is parental alienation?"]

I am sticking to my plan to end all legal disputes with my sister with NPD and brother with BPD. As many people on this board know, it takes time, patience, courage, and maintaining healthy boundaries, to get to a point where more of the legal issues are resolved and we are not so emotionally overwhelmed by our past and present challenges with high conflict people who are/have been part of our family.
Right now, I am refusing to sign an agreement to not sue my brother before all the money from my mother's estate is distributed. His lawyer is moving forward in probating the estate while continuing to make the bogus claim that it will be enormously costly if I refuse to sign an agreement to not sue. What I have learned is there will be some extra cost in legal fees to the estate if I refuse to sign this agreement, and I could lose a lot more money if I give up my rights to sue if my share of the money is not distributed. In the meantime, a family friend has given me the name of an estate lawyer who is competent, trustworthy, and can give me referrals to anything she does not handle, like a good real estate lawyer to get a court to order the summer house I own with my sister to be sold. (My sister insists: I pay my half of the house while she takes all the prime time during the summer and all the holidays, I pay far more than my share of the expenses , and I sign an agreement to continue this practice which I am of course refusing to sign.) I think my brother's lawyer who has replaced the lawyer my mother hired and only took over this case as a favor to the other lawyer so she could retire, is on to my brother and fed up with his behavior. She wants to be done, and has made it clear she will not drag out settling my mother's estate forever.
I am planning to use the estate lawyer recommended to me by my friend to get my own estate planning done. I do not want my brother and sister to get anything I have, though I am far from rich. I want what I have left to go to the many kind people who have been there for me, and to charity. While I am doing my own estate planning, I will surely learn a lot about how estates are supposed to be settled and possibly some information useful to me in the settling of my mother's estate.
In the meantime, I have an email from a cousin, one of my sister's flying monkeys, that claims she needs my phone number for reasons that make no sense. I have gotten a new phone number which I do not want my siblings to have. Now they can only contact me by email and snail mail. My sister in particular has written some emails to me that are pretty incriminating and the letters from my brother's lawyers show that my brother, the executor, has refused to follow their directives to do what is in my mother's Will.
Anyway there are days when I feel so heartbroken and distressed about what is going on. I feel a little lighter just writing about this, and know that the people on this board get it so much better than most people who just don't understand what it is like to have high conflict family members who are cruel and looking for ways to hurt me instead of taking the obvious steps to resolve problems that should not be all that complicated if everybody put their best foot forward.
Thank you for reading this, and I appreciate your understanding and feedback.


 

[zachira]

I am sticking to my plan to end all legal disputes with my sister with NPD and brother with BPD. As many people on this board know, it takes time, patience, courage, and maintaining healthy boundaries, to get to a point where more of the legal issues are resolved and we are not so emotionally overwhelmed by our past and present challenges with high conflict people who are/have been part of our family.
Right now, I am refusing to sign an agreement to not sue my brother before all the money from my mother's estate is distributed. His lawyer is moving forward in probating the estate while continuing to make the bogus claim that it will be enormously costly if I refuse to sign an agreement to not sue. What I have learned is there will be some extra cost in legal fees to the estate if I refuse to sign this agreement, and I could lose a lot more money if I give up my rights to sue if my share of the money is not distributed. In the meantime, a family friend has given me the name of an estate lawyer who is competent, trustworthy, and can give me referrals to anything she does not handle, like a good real estate lawyer to get a court to order the summer house I own with my sister to be sold. (My sister insists: I pay my half of the house while she takes all the prime time during the summer and all the holidays, I pay far more than my share of the expenses , and I sign an agreement to continue this practice which I am of course refusing to sign.) I think my brother's lawyer who has replaced the lawyer my mother hired and only took over this case as a favor to the other lawyer so she could retire, is on to my brother and fed up with his behavior. She wants to be done, and has made it clear she will not drag out settling my mother's estate forever.
I am planning to use the estate lawyer recommended to me by my friend to get my own estate planning done. I do not want my brother and sister to get anything I have, though I am far from rich. I want what I have left to go to the many kind people who have been there for me, and to charity. While I am doing my own estate planning, I will surely learn a lot about how estates are supposed to be settled and possibly some information useful to me in the settling of my mother's estate.
In the meantime, I have an email from a cousin, one of my sister's flying monkeys, that claims she needs my phone number for reasons that make no sense. I have gotten a new phone number which I do not want my siblings to have. Now they can only contact me by email and snail mail. My sister in particular has written some emails to me that are pretty incriminating and the letters from my brother's lawyers show that my brother, the executor, has refused to follow their directives to do what is in my mother's Will.
Anyway there are days when I feel so heartbroken and distressed about what is going on. I feel a little lighter just writing about this, and know that the people on this board get it so much better than most people who just don't understand what it is like to have high conflict family members who are cruel and looking for ways to hurt me instead of taking the obvious steps to resolve problems that should not be all that complicated if everybody put their best foot forward.
Thank you for reading this, and I appreciate your understanding and feedback.


 

[worriedStepmom]

You sound a lot stronger and more determined this time.  I'm glad that you found a lawyer to help you work through this.  I hope that it can be resolved quickly now.

[zachira]

Yes, I do feel a lot stronger and more determined this time. Some of my biggest challenges have been to not succumb to learned helplessness, feeling depressed, accepting that my family members are high conflict and will not change. Thank you for validating that I am indeed moving forward. I feel relieved to know there is a lawyer that I can likely work with to help me with the resources I may need. I do not think any of this will be over soon, yet I am doing better in doing what I can to move things forward.