My Sociopathic, Thieving Brother Should Rot in Hell

1-25-16

X.:

Enclosed is the Deed of Distribution to the ________ property, along with the property tax notice for the first part of 2016.

Our father’s estate is now closed and all court proceedings are at an end.

Also at an end is any further association between us. From this moment forward, I do not know you, nor do I care to. You are not my brother, not my kin, not my acquaintance. I do not wish to hear from you ever again, in any form, nor will I acknowledge any communication from you. I do not care what becomes of you. As far as I am concerned, you do not exist. You are a despicable and dishonorable person and I have nothing but contempt for you.

You are such a sociopath and narcissist that you probably can’t understand why I feel this way, despite the fact that you stole the major part of my and my children’s inheritance, blackmailed me for the ________ property, and cruelly immiserated our father in his final years.

When I first learned that you were taking large sums of money from Dad, I let it pass. As stunning and dismaying as it was to hear that a middle-aged man was depending on his aged father to take care of him financially, I imagined that the total sum probably amounted, at most, to a couple hundred thousand dollars. Knowing that our father had a good income, I decided to let it slide for the moment.

Imagine my shock on discovering after Dad’s death that you had taken him for more than $675,000 over 15 years – nearly $45,000 a year! I had always wondered how you and [your wife] could afford to take cruises, to fly back and forth from ________ all the time, to own two gas-guzzling vehicles, to go to all those retreats in ________, etc., when it was apparent your so-called “business” never amounted to much.

Now I know.

Your claim that these “loans” were solely for “the development of the business” is a feeble lie. Oh, perhaps the first $100,000 or so was, but the rest was just supporting you and your lifestyle, including taking care of years and years of back taxes and paying for all your cruises and other jaunts. When Dad first mentioned to me a couple years ago that he was having financial problems, I couldn’t imagine why, with his pensions, annuities, stocks, and paid-off house. I finally wrote to him, very reluctantly, about the money he was giving you. Among the other things he mentioned when he responded was that he had given you the [credit card] to use strictly for business purposes, but that you “immediately started abusing it” to pay your personal expenses.

I also read through years and years of emails from you to Dad begging for money – right up to just a few days before he died. You sound like a toddler pleading hysterically for candy, like a kid coming up with one excuse after the other for not having cleaned his room or turned in his homework: “Oh, please, Daddy, can I have $15 for gas? I must have put that check I was expecting in another account that’s in Florida and it won’t clear for a couple days and I have to drive [my wife] to the grocery store.” “Oh, please, Daddy, I have to go to ________ to be with [my wife] because she’s so lonely at her resort retreat, so can I have an extra $1,000? Please, Papa, please.”

Pathetic.

I also read years of emails from Dad to you repeatedly asking you to be responsible and not use the [credit card] because you were going over the limit and incurring interest and penalty payments. Time after time after time, he told you not to use the card and you went right on cavalierly using it, oblivious and indifferent to his pleas.

But that is hardly surprising. Indifference to the needs of others is a hallmark of the sociopath.

Perhaps the foulest use you made of Dad’s money was to “pay” for special things for him, like the birthday trip to ________ to _________. You made Dad pay for his own birthday gift. And for the gas it took to get there!

You are such a hypocrite. You Tea Party-supporting right-wingers are so angry about all the supposed layabouts living on the public purse, but you are the biggest “welfare queen” ever! It’s one thing for a worthless loser in his 20s to sponge off his parents, but a man in his 50s and 60s – how much of a loser does he have to be? Of course, you have a long history of sponging off Mom and Dad. They let you live in the _____ Street house rent-free for years, but you complained mightily when they finally asked you to leave so they could rent it out. (By the way, that was Mom’s idea. “Tough love” she called it.) Did it ever occur to you that the house was part of their retirement package and that by letting you live there for free all those years they were damaging their future security? No, of course not, because like all narcissists, the only thing that matters to you is you. A normal person would have thanked them for their long generosity. A true son would have thanked them profusely.

A normal person would also have apologized to his sibling for taking so much money from their parent for his own use. A normal person would have said he was ashamed that he couldn’t pay back all those loans. But all you had to say was that the loans “had bothered” you. Had “bothered”you! For 15 years! When I suggested that I take all of the pittance that was left in the estate, after you emptied it of nearly $700,000 for your sole benefit, your response was that I should give you $10,000, then we’d split the “asset” of the loans, and then you’d get half of everything left over. In other words, you were to get all that you’d already taken plus a bonus of $10,000! This makes sense to you because you’re so self-centered. So what if you’d taken advantage of a father’s love and failing judgment for so many years? So what if you’d squandered the inheritance of your niece and nephew, for whom you profess so much love? So what if you’d betrayed your brother by violating your father’s wish that his children should share his estate equally? All that mattered was how it affected you.

True to form, you went off to consult a lawyer to see if maybe you couldn’t squeeze a little more out of your father even after his death by weaseling out from under the loans. What did you care that you’d already gotten $675,000? That was so yesterday! And so you came back with the demand that I give you the ________ property – after all, “That’s what Dad intended.” (Really? Did he also “intend” that you rob him blind for so many years? Did he “intend” that you take his grandchildren’s patrimony and piss it away?) I gave into this blackmail just to make you go away, so I could settle the estate and get back to my family.

Did it ever occur to you – ever? – that maybe I would like to take my family on a cruise? Did it ever occur to you – ever? – that I have two kids I have to put through college? Did it ever occur to you – ever? – that maybe I might have hoped to buy a little cabin somewhere with my inheritance? Hope that “bothers” you, too, bro! But I’m sure it doesn’t. After all, what has any of that got to do with your needs?

It’s bad enough that you stole from me and from my children. It’s bad enough that you dragged out settling the estate and shamelessly blackmailed me into giving you the ________ property on top of your other spoils.

Far worse is what you did to our father, making his last years miserable. It’s inexcusable. I have tried to be charitable about this whole awful business, to act in a (secular) Christian way and somehow find it in my heart to turn the other cheek and forgive you. But what you did to our father with your blind, selfish cupidity and greed is unforgivable.

Unforgivable.

Dad’s final years should have been easy and carefree. Until you started badgering him for serious money (let’s not even consider his previous financial help to you), Dad had a paid-off house and another one almost paid off, had two government pensions and an annuity on top of Social Security, plus dividends from stocks and bonds and interest from money in the bank. He should never have had to worry about money. But you changed all that. You robbed him of his peace of mind as much as you robbed him of his money. You condemned him to a years-long struggle to keep up with your greed, to fund your narcissism. By the end, he had to sell the _____ Street house, and to mortgage the _____ Street house (leaving no equity – in fact, putting the house “under water”). He had to take out loans, open multiple lines of credit and constantly shuffle money between accounts. He had to plead with you repeatedly to stop abusing the [credit card]. Week after week, year after year, he had to scramble and fret to keep things together. Week after week, year after year, he was forced to fritter away his retirement funds, only so his misbegotten, self-centered, thoughtless, useless, middle-aged, crybaby of a son wouldn’t have to get a real job, take responsibility for his own life, and start living as an adult instead of extending his dependent childhood into late middle age.

Did it never once occur to you what you were doing to Dad by constantly badgering him for money? Did you never think, not even when the “loans” reached $200K or $300K or $400K, that you would never be able to pay them back, that you should stop taking his money? Did it never occur you how you were affecting the future of your brother and your niece and nephew? Did it never once occur to you what would happen if Dad ever needed long-term care and no longer had the money to pay for it because you had spent it all? Did you not care if he ended up in some miserable old folks’ home because you had plundered his nest egg? Did you never once think about his welfare and not yours?

No, of course you didn’t. You looked around and all you saw was yourself, all you considered were your needs, and all you thought of was Dad’s money, and how you could get your grubby hands on more of it. Your ingrate of a wife, meanwhile, was happy enough to keep taking Dad’s money even as she snidely called him a snob behind his back.

Not only are you a narcissist, you are a fantasist. You’ve had the delusion for over 30 years now that in just a little while – this year for sure! – you are going to be a huge success and become a millionaire. How will I ever forget, after I informed you that Dad not only had been forced to mortgage the house, but that it was now worth $20,000 less than the mortgage, that you said you’d “make it up” to me someday? Make it up to me? Hah! Do you even hear yourself when you say these ridiculous things?

Your self-absorption knows no bounds, your narcissism has no limits. You have no concern for others, only for yourself. Keeping a herd of goats in your backyard on _____ Street and expressing astonishment that your neighbors would be so inconsiderate to object to the smell of mounds of animal feces baking in the summer sun. Violating the zoning rules in ________ for years and getting cross at the neighbors for having the temerity to object to your lawlessness. Not paying your taxes for years on end, and then having the audacity to complain about all those welfare cheats out there living high on the taxpayer’s dime. (LOL! Good one!) Taking money from that guy in ________ and never delivering the product or answering his emails, leaving him to believe that you’d gone out of business. (That’s actually what he says on his website.) Taking money from _____ and not delivering anything in return, and then having me delay turning the deed to the ________ property over to you so _____ wouldn’t find out about it. (By the way, attempting to conceal from the court an asset you have inherited, whether or not you actually have the deed to it in hand, would be a crime.) In fact, your major accomplishment in business seems to be taking money from customers, spending it willy-nilly without a thought to the future, and failing to deliver the product!

For sure, it’s not just businesses that you screw over. How many people in ________ have a story about how you hired them for thousands of dollars’ worth of services and then refused to pay – or even to acknowledge the debt? Short list: ________, ________, ________. You should Google yourself sometime and see what the ________ community really thinks of you. But, of course, as with all people with narcissistic personality disorder, all of this is never, ever your fault. The dog ate your homework! The check didn’t clear in time! FedEx must have misdelivered the package! Sorry, no time to talk, the wife and I are headed to California to spend your money on a Mexican cruise! I’ll get to those [products] next month, honest!

Of course, the great irony in this – which I am sure you won’t properly appreciate, since you’re going to make that fortune any day now – is that if you hadn’t stolen all of Dad’s money over the years, if you’d made your own way in the world like a normal, middle-aged man instead of relying on Dad to wipe your bottom for you, his estate would have been worth well over a million dollars. Your half would have funded a lot of Caribbean cruises and flights to ________. But, now, alas, spendthrift criminal that you are, you’ve got not a penny in the bank and can’t even afford to replace your crappy, banged-up truck.

Have fun scraping by on Social Security.

I have chosen not to inform ____ and ____ about any of this. There’s no need for them to drink the bitter herb of your thievery and betrayal. You can keep in touch with them, if you want. Just leave me out of it. If you have any decency, you will leave the ________ property and the rest of your miserable little estate to them, if you should outlive [your wife]. It would be truly sad if the remainder of Dad’s estate wound up going to [your wife’s] son instead of your father’s only grandchildren.

It is shocking to contemplate how much you took advantage of Dad in his later years, and how much money he turned over to you. He always seemed to have a soft spot for you, no matter how much you disappointed him. Overlooking your abysmal performance in school and never disciplining you. Funding your dumb patents and even dumber [company]. Paying for all your years of goofing off in college, though you passed no classes. Letting you stay rent-free in the _____ Street house though you were an adult in your 30s. Shoveling money your way year after year after year, instead of telling you to grow up already. I suppose he felt somehow that he had failed with you, that he was somehow responsible for your failures in school, your incompetence in business, your Peter Pan-like inability to grow up and take responsibility for your own life. Even so, I cannot fathom why he continued to indulge you and your childish behavior well into late adulthood, updating the amount you owed him each month, as if there was even a snowball’s chance in hell that you’d someday repay him. He did tell me he worried about you and [your wife] starving to death. (I have to admit, it would have been delicious to see you Palin-worshippers sign up for food stamps.) If there is a life after death, Dad and I will have to have a conversation about all of that.

The last time we discussed it, Dad told me he was “ashamed” that he had given you so much money. He asked my forgiveness and said he felt he had been “stealing from ____ and ____.”

No, Dad shouldn’t have been ashamed.

You should be ashamed.

No, Dad didn’t steal from ____ and ____.

You did.

There’s a special place in hell waiting for you.

Z.