Has anyone ever had front-row seats to WWE Family Smackdown: Trusts & Estates Edition?
2025 has been a year. My wife lost two aunts and her grandfather within three months. And now her stepfather likely won’t make it out of this year either. COPD plus influenza is apparently the world’s worst combo meal, and unfortunately he never exactly prioritized taking care of himself.
The real problem though is my brother-in-law.
I will openly admit I do not like this man. At all. He is simultaneously exhausting and aggravating, and possesses the single greatest sense of entitlement I have ever personally witnessed. Nothing is ever his fault. Ever. Every bad outcome is someone else’s doing, and somehow his needs always come first because he is perpetually the victim in a movie only he is watching.
I’m not completely without sympathy. His parents got together at fifteen, which already sounds like the opening scene of a cautionary documentary. He’s autistic and has Asperger’s. He’s high functioning and perfectly capable of learning and working.
The problem is he was never required to.
After the divorce, my mother-in-law basically bubble-wrapped him from consequences for decades. The results speak for themselves.
He lost a journalism job because he kept falling asleep at work. Why? Because he had to stay up late watching Star Trek. Fired from a delivery job because he damaged the vehicle and decided it “wasn’t that bad” so reporting it seemed optional. Chronic lateness killed another job. His grandparents literally gave him a paid-off house in York, PA, but York was “boring,” so now mom pays rent for him in Lancaster while he and his wife slowly destroy the place like raccoons with a lease agreement.
Cars? He drives those straight into mechanical hospice because oil changes are too much responsibility. And don’t you dare suggest something reliable like a Civic. He has standards. American. Preferably a Saturn?!?!
He is over fifty years old.
Fast forward to this weekend: my wife and I are reading her stepfather’s will.
And let’s just say…he knew exactly what he was doing.
Drafted two months before his marriage to my mother in law: After debts and funeral expenses, the remaining assets go into a trust controlled by my wife, not her mother, specifically because he knows mom caves to the son every single time. This was absolutely intentional estate planning by a man who understood the assignment. The money will be there to pay for the basic expenses for the mom and brother and nothing else.
Despite that I’m mentally preparing for the inevitable future where my brother-in-law treats my wife like a weekend ATM with feelings and we will have to remind him about the medical debt he will undoubtedly incur when he loses his left foot to the diabeetus.
And since I’m married to her, I fully expect to be drafted into this whether I want the role or not.
Send snacks because I will be eating my feelings.
).
