When hypergamy hamster collides with maternal instinct.

Long comment, but maybe a good - if infuriating - read.

My step-mother is prime hypergamy/maternal material. My parents got divorced when I was young and my mother specifically chose to not divorce-rape him. (According to my mother, her lawyer said she could have taken the house and reams of child support and alimony and totally screwed dad, but instead took a buy out for half the equity in the house, little if any alimony and a sub-par child support agreement - certainly by today's standards.)

Enter step mom who was several years younger, but not ridiculously so. She wanted her own baby so my half-brother is 16 years younger. She never had a real career; my dad was at the top of his profession and consistently made 6-figures.

Plus, dad managed my grandfather's affairs. Grandpa was blue collar but he had a modest post-war house and a pension and some other investments that dad probably worked into a cool million.

For his own part, dad kept the house in one of the best parts of town and it ended up worth close to a million. He also acquired two other properties plus land on the east coast.

At age 65 he wrapped up his professional practice and prepared for retirement.

Then out of the blue he is diagnosed with stage 4 brain cancer and - two operations and 3 months later - her dies.

I don't know all the details but apparently his will left everything to my step-mother, and if I had to guess it might be close to $5 million.

The kicker comes afterwards.

My father had fronted my sister the downpayment on a home near his (otherwise her and her husband could not afford it) so, ostensibly, he could be close to his grand-daughter. He was on title and there was some sort of loan agreement drawn up but he told my sister that it was zero-interest and they could pay it down as the refinanced the mortgage (the property value doubled over the course of a few years) and that if he died that the loan would be written off as a portion of her inheritance. The other thing he told her was that his intention was to give everything to my step mother and then for whatever was left to be split 4 ways: me, my two sisters, and my half brother.

Unfortunately, he never put any of this in writing and it seems he never gave any legal effect to his intentions. So he dies abruptly and step-mom becomes a millionaire.

She then insists on getting back the downpayment loan on my sister's house. At first she tried to claim half the equity in the house, which would have been almost double the amount of the loan. Sis was going through a divorce and they sold the house, paid step mom the loan, and then her and hubby split the remaining equity.

Step mom sells the family home for about $800k. It could have been worth a million but it was poorly maintained and she wanted to dump it. Somebody bought it up as a tear-down and build a 3000 square foot monster home.

A while after, step mom announces that she intends to leave everything to my half-brother (and while not saying this directly, cutting me, my sisters and my nieces out of the will). She even had the gall to ask my sister to be her executor, a role traditionally reserved for people who are not beneficiaries under a will.

So to summarize, she bags a divorcee at the top of his career, has a kid with him, takes all his money (and his father's money) when he dies, and then decides to give it all to her only child and nothing to her now-dead husband's three other children and two grandchildren.

If there is a lesson to be learned it is that you can't trust women to do the right thing when you are alive, so you certainly can'tr trust them once you are dead.

If you are getting married or having children or both, then get your legal affairs in order with whatever combination of legacies, trusts and such so your (ex)wife/widow can get by but not at the expense of you, your future, or the future of your kids.