Dear Agatha,
I am a widow. My husband died three months ago and his will was read last week. Before he died, I knew nothing about other women or children. We were married for 35 years before his death.
Not once in all these years did he tell me of any child. Like every other woman, I knew from time to time he indulged in one affair or the other. But all these affairs I thought ended without any incidences.
Besides, we had a fairly stable marriage. He never for once laid his finger on me.
If I were to grade him on his deathbed, I would score him above average as a husband. In fact, I did until the will was read and I discovered that he not only had three other children but was also married to their mothers under the native law and customs.
I knew his family never liked me but didn’t know they would go to this length to support this injustice against me.
My son being the first, got to keep the family house, while his other children who incidentally are boys, he made directors of the company as well as gifts of houses.
I am deeply hurt but since he isn’t alive to answer to his crime, I want to contest the will, as well as the paternity of those children. I suspect the will may have been doctored by the family to deprive me of what rightly belongs to my children and I. Even if these children are his, I don’t want them near any of his property or the company he made me chairman of.
That company belongs to my children and I, not these strangers that I don’t know. Besides, I have plans to sell off the company to reduce the interest of his extended family members in the affairs of my children and I.
What do you think? I am desperate for help. I want to fight for the rights of my children and preserve their legacy, which these people have come to steal.
Jadesola.
Dear Jadesola,
I understand all your hurts, pains and betrayal. Any woman in your shoes would feel all these especially as the person at the centre of it all is dead and unable to defend himself or explain his actions.
But this is the time you need the wisdom of God more than ever to prevent costly mistakes that would leave you more devastated than you are now. It is also time for you to take stock of your life as well as relationship with your in-laws, who may just be praying you make the mistake of going to court to extract their pound of flesh from you.
That nobody in your husband’s family told you about these other women and their children shows your weakness in this matter as well as a resolve in the family to deal with you. It also shows you didn’t really make the attempt to relate with your in-laws or that you didn’t treat them right.
However, trying at this point in time to understand why he did what he did would only keep the pains alive in your heart. So the first thing to do is to learn to forgive him without which you would never be able to move forward.
It’s the only way you can begin to see things from a very different perspective as well as accept the situation you have found yourself in.
Whether you like it or not, going to the court would cost you both time and money; generate more hatred than you can cope with within the family and for your children.
And because nothing can be done while the matter is still in court, everything would have to remain as they are until court resolves the case. The implication is that everything you helped your husband build, the legacy of the children you are trying to protect would all go to waste because the process of getting justice in Nigeria is a windy, complicating and time-consuming. It could last a lifetime.
As the mother of the house, opt for peace and try as much as you can to allow the past be. You have it within you to make the positive change in the family to heal this wound inflicted on you all. It couldn’t have been easy too for those children to be kept in the cupboard. He must have kept them really under wrap for you not to know about their existence. Like you and your children, they also have their grouse to nurse.
The wound of your going to court would be too deep to manage. These are not just other people, they are your husband’s children, people with the same rights to their father’s properly as your children. They are also your children’s brothers; a relationship nobody can erase. For these reasons, it would be unwise to fight them. Nobody goes to court and comes back to be friends.
Besides, learn from your late husband’s mistakes. Don’t leave bitter issues behind for others long after you are gone. You may think it is the right thing to do now but it is burning up permanently any chance of dialogue, as well as the settlement between all of you.
There are ways you can be in charge without rocking the fragile peace in your family. Your children are simply waiting for you to know the line to tow. If you adopt hostility, out of sympathy to you, they too will become hostile to their siblings and father’s families. Your only achievement would be to set your children against the entire family, a situation you may be able to weather effortlessly but which the children will not be able to handle since they will always need the support and approval of the extended family at some crucial times in their lives.
It is the future you must do everything to protect for your children; especially when you are no longer around.
First go round your in-laws to explain your position; let them understand that you are not against the other women and children but the concealment of their existence by your husband. Let them know you are hurting at the way they have treated your loyalty to your late husband. Make it clear to them that even if you are the worst wife they married, you deserve better treatment from the people you have spent 35 years of your life with. One or two persons among them would shift to your side because you would have succeeded in pricking their conscience.
After this, call the other two women for similar discussion. Ask them which one of them would not feel bad if treated the way your late husband treated you. Let them know you have nothing against them, as well as the fact that you are ready to absorb all three children into the family. This talk would debunk whatever they may have been told about you.
After this, get the children together and address all of them. Encourage them to get to know each other, form a united front against any member of the family who may want to use the situation created by their father to his or her advantage.
If you are sincere, fair and open in your dealings with them, with time they will come to regard you as a true mother to them all.
Go to God in prayer for help on how to be a good manager of your home and family.
Good luck.
Posts
