My “golden Child” Sister Tried To Have Me Declared Mentally Incompetent To Seize My Trust Fund. She Didn’t Realize Grandma Set A Legal Trap For Her Two Years Ago. Now She’s Left With Nothing.
The Golden Child and the Black Sheep
I’m 62 years old now and I’ve learned that the people who smile the brightest at funerals are often the ones counting their inheritance before the flowers have even wilted. My sister Catherine proved that to me 30 years ago, 96 hours after we buried our grandmother, Eleanor.
96 hours, 4 days. That’s how long Kathy waited after we laid Grandma to rest before she walked into a lawyer’s office in downtown Portland and filed paperwork to have me declared mentally incompetent.
She was smiling when she did it, too. I later found out she was smiling like she just won the lottery while I was still sleeping in Grandma’s guest room.
I couldn’t bear to go home to my empty apartment surrounded by the smell of her lavender sachets and the weight of grief so heavy I could barely breathe. But I’m getting ahead of myself; let me back up.
My grandmother Eleanor wasn’t just any grandmother. She was the kind of woman who wore pearls to the grocery store and could silence a room with just a look.
She’d built a small fortune through careful investments and a real estate portfolio she’d started back in the 1960s, back when women weren’t supposed to know anything about money. By the time she passed at 87, she was worth close to $3 million.
I was 32 when she died; Kathy was 38, and we couldn’t have been more different if we’d tried. Kathy was the golden child, always had been.
She married a lawyer named Robert when she was 25, had two perfect children, and lived in a perfect house in Lake Oswego with a perfect lawn and a perfect life. She wore Ann Taylor suits and belonged to the Junior League.
She was everything my mother had wanted in a daughter. I was the black sheep.
I dropped out of college to travel through Europe with a boyfriend who dumped me in Paris. I worked as a freelance photographer, which my mother called not a real job.
I lived in a tiny studio apartment in Southeast Portland with a cat named Kerouac. I wore thrift store clothes and forgot to call home on holidays.
I was everything my mother had nightmares about. But here’s the thing: nobody outside our family knew Grandma Eleanor loved me more.
It was not because I was better than Kathy, and not because I deserved it more, but because Grandma saw something in me that reminded her of herself when she was young. This was before she learned to wear the pearls and the perfect smile, before she became the woman everyone expected her to be.
A Wild Heart and a Final Warning
“Margaret,”
she’d tell me using my full name the way she always did,
“you have a wild heart. Don’t ever let anyone cage it.”
Kathy hated that. I could see it in the way her jaw would tighten whenever Grandma and I would sit in her garden talking about my latest photography project or some book I’d read.
Kathy would hover nearby trying to insert herself into the conversation, but Grandma would just pat her hand absently and turn back to me. The last time I saw Grandma conscious was 3 days before she died.
I’d stopped by her house in Eastmoreland bringing soup because she’d mentioned feeling tired. She was sitting in her favorite chair by the window, the afternoon light making her white hair glow like a halo.
“Sit down, Margaret,”
she said,
and her voice had that serious tone that meant she wanted to talk about something important.
I sat.
“I’ve made arrangements,”
she said,
“for after I’m gone. I want you to know that you’re going to be taken care of.”
“Grandma, please, I don’t want to talk about—”
“Hush,”
she held up one elegant hand.
“I’m 87 years old. We both know this conversation is overdue.”
She looked at me with those sharp blue eyes that age had never dimmed.
“Your sister is going to be upset. Very upset. And she’s going to try something. I know she will.”
My stomach twisted.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that Catherine has always believed she deserves more than everyone else simply because she followed the rules and married well and had the right kind of life.”
Grandma’s voice was gentle but firm.
“And when she finds out what I’ve done, she’s going to try to take what’s yours.”
“What have you done?”
But Grandma just smiled and squeezed my hand.
“You’ll find out. My lawyer, Thomas Brennan, has all the details. Promise me you’ll trust him no matter what happens.”
“I promise.”
“Good girl.”
She closed her eyes suddenly, looking every one of her 87 years.
“Now tell me about that photography series you’re working on, the one with the abandoned buildings.”
The Condescension of the Estate
3 days later she was gone. Massive stroke in her sleep; peaceful, they said.
Though I don’t know how death can ever be peaceful when it takes someone you love. The funeral was everything Grandma would have hated.
There were too many flowers, too many people who barely knew her, and too many platitudes about her living a full life. Cathy orchestrated the whole thing, wearing a black designer dress and accepting condolences like she was the only one grieving.
Her husband Robert stood beside her like a well-dressed sentinel and their children, 14 and 16, looked appropriately somber. I stood to the side in my thrift store black dress holding a single white rose and tried not to cry in front of people I didn’t know.
After the service at the reception, Kathy cornered me in Grandma’s kitchen.
“We need to talk about the estate,”
she said,
her voice low.
“Kathy, can we not do this right now? We just buried her.”
“I know, and I’m devastated too. But we need to be practical.”
She smoothed her already perfect hair.
“Robert’s going to handle everything. He’s already contacted Grandma’s lawyer. We’ll need to go through the house, inventory everything, figure out what to keep and what to sell.”
“Grandma’s lawyer is Thomas Brennan,”
I said.
