It's been about a year since my relationship with my older sister, "Gigi" blew up in my face. What started the ball rolling in the direction of permanent estrangement was our mother's debilitating stroke in January 2009. Things then unravelled in a way that showed all the weakness and dysfunction in our family, and the instability of our sibling relationship.
It was a huge disappointment that it's taken me a while to dissect and understand. But I recently came across a framework (which is outlined at the end of this blog post) that lays out five critical human desires that must be addressed in any negotiation and, believe me, settling an estate among siblings IS a negotiation.
In my case, every difference between my sister and me (from personalities and motivations, to life circumstances) became a major stumbling block. We were ultimately unable to communicate, never mind constructively collaborate, respecting our mother's care and organizing her financial affairs with a focus on proper estate planning (which our mother had not done, despite her paying a lot of lip service to it over the years).
Now, I'm a very open and straightforward person, and assumed Gigi was too (or at least would be with me). But she actually keeps things pretty close to her chest and doesn't let you in. She' also capable of nursing grudges, which is something I didn't know.
Gigi put a lot of emotional and geographic distance between herself and our family starting back when she was 18 and left home amid high drama (I was 14 at the time). For about the past 25-30 years, she's mostly lived around 3,000 kms away and rarely visited my parents during that time. The hurts and crap between her and my parents had nothing to do with me but, because I had a less fraught relationship with our parents over the years, I now think that somehow threatened her.
I was the daughter-on-the-spot who dealt with everything over these many years - from our parents' severe marital discord, to always sticking up for my absent sister when my parents carped and criticized her lack of contact/connection with them and her questionable choices in life and love, right through to our mother's complete mental breakdown and commitment to a psychiatric hospital. And these are just a few of the familial "lowlights" that I faced and handled without any help or involvement from my sister. Throughout it all, Gigi stayed away, seemingly content to let me handle all the crises and trauma, and all the while I responsibly kept her up-to-date, in the the communications loop and fostered a sibling relationship with her. With the exception of a three week period in the late winter of 1995 when our father suddenly became ill and died, Gigi was pretty much missing-in-action until 2009.
I essentially served as family "glue" and a communication conduit for decades, but I mostly understood and didn't resent my sister's choice to keep her distance. I knew she had her reasons and didn't expect from her that which she could not give. But I also thought she grasped the burden I shouldered for the both of us, and that she had some appreciation for my efforts at maintaining some semblance of family connection. It turns out I was seriously mistaken.
At the point our mother became physically ill and incapacitated, I stepped in to use the Power of Attorney (PoA) she had granted me years before. I searched out and organized our mother's total rat's nest of financial affairs and undertook the proper estate planning she had failed to do.
I kept Gigi informed (verbally and in writing) every step of the way. Everything I did was in accordance with what our mother said she intended to do for us and in accordance with her will (i.e., to equally divide and leave us everything she had) and done with my mother's awareness as well as the involvement and consultation/advice of her financial advisors, two accountants, and with lawyers' review and advice (Gigi's lawyer and mine). It was untold hours of work and a lot of stress for me, but it needed to be done and I happened to be the responsible offspring on-site with the PoA authority to carry out the work. And so I did it.
Throughout, I was representing and acting in our equal best interets as eventual beneficiaries, as well as safeguarding all of our mother's ongoing material interests and her care needs. However, as the estate planning decisions and actions started to become more concrete, my sister resisted and rebelled against me - in much the same way as she had always rebelled against our parents. Things have always had to be her idea and/or mesh with her unique perspective, or she would just not cooperate - no matter how logical or rational the strategy.
What I experienced as a weary, thankless role in doing all the hard work and "heavy lifting" respecting our mother's care and estate planning, I think my sister saw as some powerful, privileged position that I had, and that I could possibly screw her over. She seems to have imagined some sort of a "good daughter/bad daughter" dichotomy, where she perceived me as the advantaged "good daughter" living in close proximity, with influence and control over our mother. The sad reality of the situation was that I was an abused adult daughter and totally taken forgranted by our mother who wore me out with her constant demands, manipulations and basic insanity. And Gigi, it turns out, had zero understanding or empathy for any aspect of my situation.
I was incredulous when Gigi baselessly started speculating that I could be "feathering my nest" at her expense; she also accused me of being "in cahoots" with the lawyer providing me advice on managing all these affairs. When the government Land Titles Office was slow to provide the legal documentation proving I had voluntarily had my name removed from the title of our mother's condo (I had been on title since our mother purchased it in the 1980's), Gigi immediately hypothesized I could have done something crooked to ensure I would solely inherit the condo and cut her out of her rightful share! I found her constant suspicions outrageous and insulting in the extreme.
All Gigi had to say to explain herself was that she was committed to "protecting our inheritance" and would not stand for any decision or action that, in her view, might in any way jeopardize the future of that inheritance (meaning she thought our mother could disinherit us on a whim). But, despite Gigi's use of "our", I understood she was talking about protecting and ensuring HER share of the inheritance. She felt very insecure in this regard.
Our mother died early in 2010, and settlement of her estate in a straightforward, financially prudent, and transparent manner is only possible because of all the legwork I did in the prior months. Up to the point of our estrangement, I had cared both about my sister and our joint inheritance, but soon came to feel that all Gigi cared about was the money. God knows, she needs it - she doesn't really have or own anything of any value.
Sadly, our story is a very common one. I have since heard and read that this type of family dynamic abounds in these situations - that, more often than not, family hurts, mistrust, and sibling rivalry rooted in the past get resurrected and end up colouring the present and influencing the future.
I recently came across some information that concisely explains what I feel went wrong a year ago. Directors at the Harvard Negotiation Project have written a book called "Beyond Reason" that lays out the five basic human desires that have to be addressed in successful negotiations. In my opinion, Gigi breached all five in her dealings with me about our mother and estate planning. Here are the five things:
A Fulfilling Role - Gigi completely failed to recognize that the role I was stuck in was not fulfilling. Being caretaker, administrator and general sanity-keeper of the difficult woman who was our mother was completely thankless and unrewarding. It did not remotely give me the feeling of fulfillment that the authors say is one of the five critical pieces of constructive deal-making. Further, Gigi often second-guessed and "armchair quarterbacked" me from 3,000 km away. Her ideas and proposed solutions were most often impractical and/or outright idiotic (e.g., uproot our very ill mother and move her 4 provinces east, with no plan in place for her care or even an available nursing home placement).
Appreciation - I never felt Gigi properly valued the work I was doing nor the role I was fulfilling in looking after our mother and responsibly ensuring our potential inheritance was secure. Rather than having and expressing appreciation, at the first sign of initial discord between us she quickly moved to accusing me of all manner of nefarious motives and dealings - all completely baseless and insulting. When she was proven wrong, there was never any retraction or apology.
Affiliation - this is about having a feeling of connection. I felt I was abundantly demonstrating my affiliation to my sister and showing that I had her back and was looking after her interests equally with my own. However, it became apparent she felt no connection to me, as demonstrated by her lack of support and outright opposition to estate planning work that had been underway for months and of which she had been fully informed (and had never previously gave any indication she was not totally on board).
Status - this is about feeling respected. Gigi did not acknowledge or respect my in-depth knowledge and familiarity with the situation that stemmed from the fact I knew our mother a lot better (having lived in the same town all my life, whereas Gigi had seen our mother about 6 times in the past 30 years), I had the PoA and had done all the financial research and legwork to organize these complex affairs, and I was the one on-site managing our mother's ongoing health care and medical/nursing needs. No, Gigi still acted like she knew best when, in fact, she was clueless. She refused to listen to anything I (or my lawyer) had to say.
Autonomy - this is about feeling you are free to make decisions. Although I had all the proper legal powers/authority and had followed all legal steps and legal/accounting advice with respect to estate planning, when I wanted to move ahead with some actions, my sister obstinately said "No way" and seemed to feel she could simply veto my conscientious efforts from across the country. I did not move ahead on the contentious issue as I never did get my sister's agreement, but I deeply resented her unilateral insistence on controlling a situation for which she had such scant understanding and appreciation, not to mention absolutely no formal role or legal authority.
I hope knowing these five basic desires and how they come to bear on a situation like this may help someone else navigate these treacherous waters. It's too late for Gigi and me. We've both written each other off. The estate is almost completely settled now and, on final division, we'll be going our own ways.
I have no interest in trying to repair a relationship with someone who I feel used me for years and ultimately betrayed me. And, now that Gigi has her money, there's no longer any reason to try to keep me in her orbit - I've obviously served my purpose, which was to keep her looped into the family in way that cost her nothing, yet ensured she got her 50% share of the inheritance without ever having to lift a finger.
Todo bien. (It's all good.)
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