I’m a 31-year-old male and I have a 28-year-old sister who has honestly been the golden child to my mother but not my father for as long as I can remember. My parents divorced when I was a teenager because my mother cheated with an old high school ex-boyfriend. She has always been controlling, manipulative, and narcissistic, and sadly my sister was like her little mini-me. Our mother also seemed to believe that she had total authority over me. Any time she so much as snapped her fingers she’d snap them and order me around like a dog. It was demeaning, and my sister always backed her up too.
So no surprise, I went to live with my dad full time after our parents split up while my sister stayed with my mom. The two of them were very alike and both pretty much stopped speaking with my father unless it was about money. Though I’m more like my dad. My father was very business oriented and started teaching me how to do his lineup work as soon as I was 16. I got pretty good at it, and after 12 years of working for my father I was made a partner in his company. Things were great, but then about eight months ago tragedy struck.
My father had become somewhat immunocompromised due to being a heavy smoker for much of his life and he died at only 60 years old after he caught COVID. I met my mother and sister for the first time in years after we had a socially distanced funeral from my father over a video call. My father was cremated by his own request and buried in a local cemetery so there was no body or casket. My sister seemed to grieve but my mother looked indifferent the entire time, though I honestly was not surprised.
Sometime after the funeral my dad’s will was read. Apparently he figured that if his heavy smoking didn’t eventually do him in something else would, and he even joked about it in a pre-recorded video. He pretty much willed everything to me, all of his assets and most of his money from his business and his home. He left my sister a car, a 2015 Nissan Altima, and about ten thousand dollars in cash. My mother only got one thousand dollars and a few other items she’d been claiming were rightfully hers since the divorce. Beyond that I got the rest of it, and my girlfriend now lives with me in the house my father passed down to me.
My sister pretty much went from finishing two years of community college to living off her boyfriend and only working part-time online for several years. During that time she got pregnant but suffered a traumatic miscarriage. I wasn’t aware until after the funeral because we were practically no contact and no one else told me. When lockdown hit her boyfriend’s job started downsizing little by little and eventually he was only able to stay on part-time, which hampered hers and his finances to the point he was finally telling her she needed to look for better employment as well since he was trying to find a second job. Then she got pregnant. She claims she and her boyfriend were careful but they call it her miracle baby.
One evening I got an unexpected knock at my door and when I answered I was unpleasantly greeted by both my mother and my sister. They both walked right in without even asking and made themselves comfortable in my living room. My girlfriend and I shared a look of confusion and I asked why they’d come by. My sister was giggling, looking all over, opening doors, seemingly giving herself a tour of my home. My mother had just plopped herself on my sofa and snapped her fingers while demanding a cold bottled water. My girlfriend got the water for her and I asked what they were here for.
My sister seemed all giddy and just ignored me to continue snooping around my home, and before long I heard her yell from down the hall, “Mommy it’s perfect!” Yes, she still calls her mommy. My mother finally spoke up and said, “Well I think it’s time you did your brotherly duty,” to which I was like, “What?” My mother then proceeded to say, “Now that your father has passed this house should have gone to me since I was his only spouse, but you can still fix this. You make plenty of money and you could just buy a new house. Your sister needs this one so much more since she’s the one with the baby on the way. But if you’re determined on staying you could just keep to one room and cover all the bills until you decide to move out.”
My girlfriend and I read enough Reddit to know exactly where this is going and how it would play out if I let it go on, so I guess you could say we were mentally prepared. I took a deep breath and stated out loud, “That is not effing happening. You do not order me around, especially not in my own house, and yes I make plenty of money but like dad I’m gonna save it for when I really need it, not that you care.” My mother started snapping her fingers at me like she used to and started loudly stating, “Stop! I am your mother! You will do as I say because I brought you into this world and I’m the one in charge here, and as far as you’re concerned I am God! That means when I say jump you say how high! This house is rightfully mine and your sister will live here! Consider this your formal eviction, but since I’m gracious I’ll give you two weeks to pack up your bags and transfer the deed to me.”
In the back of my mind I’m thinking this can’t be real, but then I just grabbed my cell phone and started dialing. My mother quickly stood up and yelled, “What are you doing?” I retorted, “I’m gonna do what I should have done as soon as this started. I’m calling the cops to get you out of my house.” She started swiping at me and managed to knock my phone out of my hands, then she proceeded to try and stomp on it but I was quick enough to snatch it up before she could. “That is it. If you don’t leave I will force you out myself.” My mother proceeded to slap me across the face and I returned the favor twice as hard backhanded, so much so I ended up knocking her back down onto the couch. She held her hand over her reddening and smeared makeup face in total shock and then yelled, “How dare you!”
I went back to dialing on my phone and said that if she didn’t leave I would have police come and remove her by force. My sister came barreling in between us holding her arms out and saying that I should just do the right thing for once in my life and be a good big brother. I snapped and said, “Oh really? I’m a bad sibling? The last I checked I was the one who had to work for a living since I was a teenager. I had to do all the chores in the house where you just sat on your butt playing video games or talking with your friends all day, and you used to steal my hard-earned money to go out shopping after you spent all of your allowance. You are a complete mooch and a thief. I don’t owe you squat. Now both of you get out of here before I decide to dial this last number.”
My sister started to tear up crying like a baby and said, “Mommy please make him stop.” My mother then began hugging her, kissing her cheeks while giving me a death glare. Then she seemed to think she’d gone smart and said, “You know if you do call the police I can just tell them that you hit me and who knows, I could maybe say to everyone that you wanted to do a lot worse to a poor pregnant girl in need. I don’t think that would be a very good thing for you.” I cut her off with a raised hand and said, “Just stop. If you hadn’t noticed my girlfriend over there has had her phone out recording this entire time and that means we have recorded evidence of you assaulting me first and openly stating that you’d lie to the police. I don’t think that’d be so good for your reputation at your job or your little Airbnb.”
If looks could kill my mother would have blew me up like a tactical nuke, but she quickly deflated and started dragging my crying sister out by the arm. My sister was somehow acting like a complete toddler and broke loose of our mother’s grip to sit down on my porch step and have a tantrum. I just gave my mother a look and said, “Do you see now? This is the result of the spoiled way you raised her.” She glared at me and then I was treated to a show of my mother trying to drag my sister off my porch steps but she latched onto the porch handrail and kept saying, “You promised me,” over and over again. I let out a cackle and told them both from the door to never come back.
My mother flipped me the bird and then went back to trying to drag my sister off the porch. It took a few minutes but finally she got my sister to get up and leave with her by saying that I am a cruel and heartless jerk who will go to hell for this. I laughed some more and said, “There’s also a special place in hell for liars and narcissists who try to manipulate others to get their way.” My mother clenched her fists and was about to say more when I just held up my smartphone again with the recording and said, “The clock is ticking, mom. Get off my property.” My mother then walked my sister to the car, gave me one last snooty look, and drove off.
I thought that was the end of it, but letting things go was never something my mother would do. After a few days I started to get messages from people I know and some relatives online. A lot of them were furious with me but others just had questions about what was going on. I tried to check my Facebook but I couldn’t see anything they were saying because my sister and my mother both blocked me on their social media, but my girlfriend could still see everything because they kept their profiles set to open. We screenshotted everything and then printed out some of it.
Both of their profiles had posts that called me a greedy heartless jerk who stole the house that was meant to be my sister’s inheritance right from under her by paying off the lawyer who handled dad’s will, which is a complete and utter lie and they both know it. I called my lawyer who was also my father’s lawyer and trusted family friend and gave him copies of all the screenshots from Facebook and the video that my girlfriend had recorded the day my mother demanded my house. He wanted to just write a formal cease and desist but I wanted to take it further than that, and he sent them a letter I told him to write via express mail that they had to be signed for so I know they got it.
My mother called me in an absolute fury the same day the letter was delivered. I told her that if she and my sister didn’t redact all the untrue social media posts they made about me and tell the absolute truth then I’d send all the information I have to the whole family, her boss, and upload the videos we recorded of her online, and then I’d sue her on top of it. She called me unreasonable and that she just did what she did for my sister’s sake and then went into a full-blown lecture reiterating her belief that my sister still needs my house more than me. I bluntly stated that I didn’t care what she thought and that if she didn’t redact everything and tell the truth then I’d make sure her career would be over. She begrudgingly said, “Fine, you win. Keep the stupid house,” before hanging up the phone.
That very evening all the lying posts disappeared from their profiles. I was unblocked and my mother gave me and everyone else a halfway apology claiming she jumped the gun with everything she said and because she thought my sister needed my house more than me because she’s broken pregnant, but the house was rightfully mine according to my father’s will and she knew that before my father even passed away so she had no right to try and claim it. As for my sister, she also apologized but more or less just parroted everything our mother said while claiming she just went along with her ideas and then she blamed what she did all on our mother and her pregnancy hormones.
The replies poured in for some time on both my mother and sister’s profiles, many furious with them for trying to take my house. I got a lot of messages of sorries and my bads from people who previously believed her, but all it really did was show me who was more on her side to begin with since they were all believing her nonsense so quickly. They were mostly people from her side of the family anyway. No one on my father’s side believed her at all and openly said so.
My sister and her boyfriend ended up moving in with our mother to save money, but she put them in the basement in order to keep her Airbnb running, and my sister started to cry on social media that she can’t live upstairs. I’m pretty sure that the two of them are fighting with each other because all my sister did after that is complain online and my mother barely posted anything anymore because of the previous stunt that she tried.