My dad’s new wife, Ivy, is younger than me — he’s 61, she’s 27, and I’m 32. When he told me last month that he’d updated his will so that everything — the house, the savings, all of it — would go to her, I was stunned.
When I questioned him, he just shrugged and said, “Your mother left you the heirlooms, and you’ve got a good job. That’s more than enough. You’ll be fine, but Ivy’s young — she needs security and someone to take care of her.”
I could feel the heat rising in my chest. I was fuming. And Ivy? She just sat there with that little smirk — the kind that says she’s already won.
But she was wrong. I wasn’t going to let it go. Something inside me snapped — not out of greed, but out of sheer disbelief that my father could erase my mother’s memory like that.
So I did some digging. After checking the property records, I discovered something he clearly hadn’t told her: the house he’d promised Ivy was still in both his and my late mom’s names. The ownership transfer had never been finalized — which meant half of it legally belonged to me.
I wasn’t about to sit quietly while someone else claimed what my mother built. So, I went to a lawyer and filed my claim.
At our next family dinner, I decided it was time to tell them. I looked across the table, straight into my father’s eyes, and said what I had to say. The color drained from both their faces. Ivy froze, her fork midair, when she realized the mansion she flaunted online wasn’t fully hers to inherit. She may have thought she’d secured everything, but I made sure she got far less than she expected.
Now, my father barely looks at me. He says I’ve robbed Ivy of her “security,” as if she’s the only one who deserves protection. There’s tension between them too — cracks in that picture-perfect marriage he thought he’d built. He calls me selfish and jealous, but all I ever wanted was fairness.
Was I really wrong for standing up for what was legally mine — even if it shattered my dad’s so-called happy relationship?