{"id":198465,"date":"2025-10-08T19:06:13","date_gmt":"2025-10-08T19:06:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/198465\/"},"modified":"2025-10-08T19:06:13","modified_gmt":"2025-10-08T19:06:13","slug":"i-inherited-some-property-from-the-last-person-who-i-would-have-expected-to-leave-me-something-im-torn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/198465\/","title":{"rendered":"I inherited some property from the last person who I would have expected to leave me something. I’m torn."},"content":{"rendered":"

Pay Dirt is Slate\u2019s money advice column. Have a question? Send it to Kristin and Ilyce here<\/a>. (It\u2019s anonymous!)<\/p>\n

Dear Pay Dirt,<\/p>\n

I just learned that I\u2019m inheriting a significant amount of property from the last person I would have expected this from.<\/p>\n

I had a brief marriage to a much older man when I was in my 20s. He basically started cheating on me with his ex as soon as our honeymoon was over. He tried to play off their continued relationship as mere friendship and said I was just paranoid about being forced into continuous close quarters with her. Eventually I walked in on them together. The divorce was quick but very painful and it took me several years to learn how to trust again.<\/p>\n

I am now happily married with two beautiful children and I thought this would remain an ugly memory. Only my ex unexpectedly died and bizarrely left me a significant amount of property that has been his family for decades. His parents and brother both are deceased as well.<\/p>\n

Frankly, taking the land and selling it makes me feel icky. But my husband thinks it is basically the least of what my first husband owes me after all this time. We could put our kids through college without a care with this money.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know what could possibly warranted this, except as another mind screw for me and his ex. They had a significant on and off again relationship, including two broken engagements. His ex has reached out saying she wants to \u201cclear the air.\u201d I have zero desire to engage with this woman. I don\u2019t know if she wants an explanation or absolution, but I don\u2019t want to open that door.<\/p>\n

What should I do here?<\/p>\n

\u2014Blast From the Past<\/p>\n

Dear Blast From the Past,<\/p>\n

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You said it yourself: You have no desire to open that door. And you don\u2019t have to. You don\u2019t owe your ex\u2019s ex anything. Best case scenario, \u201cclear the air\u201d means she wants to clear her conscience, apologize, and ask you to forgive her. But even if you\u2019ve moved on, her guilt isn\u2019t your responsibility. Maybe I\u2019m being too cynical about this, but the timing is suspicious, and I think a more likely scenario is that she wants to clear the air so she can inquire about that inheritance. It doesn\u2019t sound like you\u2019re interested in that, either.\u00a0 Trust your instincts and leave it alone.<\/p>\n

Your ex left the property to you for a reason. Maybe he felt he owed it to you\u2014who knows? It sounds like you\u2019ve spent enough time trying to figure out that relationship. I get that it might feel weird to accept an inheritance from someone you no longer care about\u2014 or worse, someone who really hurt you\u2014and I don\u2019t want to nudge you away from your gut feelings, but guilt is not always a reliable compass. You\u2019ve made your peace with the past. If you feel like keeping this money might disrupt that peace, that might be the only reason to do something else with it. Maybe consider donating even just a small portion of the sale to an organization that\u2019s important to you.<\/p>\n

But ultimately, you get to decide what to do with this money. My two cents: Take the money, use it to support your family, and think of this as the final chapter in that story. You\u2019ve earned your peace.<\/p>\n

\u2014Kristin<\/p>\n

More Money Advice From Slate<\/p>\n

My spouse is an amazing, justice-seeking, do-good-in-the world professional who makes a surprisingly decent living considering the good she does. And she is absolutely murder on our finances. So much of my life consists of asking her to put her earnings in our joint account (she has a private practice, so it\u2019s not a direct deposit situation), asking her to do her billing, begging her not to use the credit card we agreed not to use (or at least to tell me if she\u2019s using it), paying parking tickets she\u2019s incurred\u2014the list goes on. All this is part of a broader struggle she has getting certain important things in their life and mine done that has financially torpedoed us at regular intervals. I can\u2019t remember the last time she saw a doctor. Years ago, she forgot to sign up for her free university health insurance, and only realized it after our first baby was on the way. It was a mess.<\/a><\/p>\n

The latest sex, parenting, and money advice from our columnists delivered to your inbox three times a week.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Pay Dirt is Slate\u2019s money advice column. Have a question? Send it to Kristin and Ilyce here. (It\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":198466,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[8786,64,63,99,186,184,185,3637,13190],"class_list":{"0":"post-198465","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-personal-finance","8":"tag-advice","9":"tag-au","10":"tag-australia","11":"tag-business","12":"tag-finance","13":"tag-personal-finance","14":"tag-personalfinance","15":"tag-relationships","16":"tag-slate-plus"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198465","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=198465"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198465\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/198466"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=198465"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=198465"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=198465"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}