Lion share of dad’s property opens my life to danger

Agatha, gataedo@yahoo.com, agatha.edo@gmail.com, Tel: 08054500626 Dear Agatha, I appreciate this isn’t the kind of problem you solve. But I don’t have anywhere to go to. Like I mentioned in my text message to you a month ago, you are my role model, hence my decision to come to you. I live in Port Harcourt. I am the last child of my father and the first child of my mother. My father married my mother a year after he officially divorced his first wife. According to what I heard, he found her in the arms of another man right in his living room. Unfortunately, my mother couldn’t give him another child after she had me, but they were very happy together. My father passed on two years ago and my mother who was so miserable after the death of her husband, died a month after his burial. They were very close, so it didn’t come as a surprise to me when she couldn’t cope without her husband. She didn’t hide her desire to join her husband, immediately he died. Through the help of my father’s associates, I was able to complete my education. I am currently doing my masters programme. Late last year, my father’s Will was read. In it, he gave me and his second child from his first marriage the lion shares of his estate. He actually willed the bulk of his fortune to me: his houses, business and stock to me. His largest investment, he gave to my mother. Giving reasons for his decision to leave my mother, his second child and I his estate, he said, he doubted the paternity of his other children. He mandated the lawyer and executors of his estate to insist on a DNA test before they can inherit what he left for them. He also added a clause, to give me what he left for them, if they fail the test. This is where my problem started. While all the other children are united against me, determined to fight me with whatever means, including using assassins to eliminate me, my father’s immediate younger brother, who believes he is entitled to my father’s wealth has joined forces with them to fight me. One of my father’s friends who stood out to fight them is today down with a strange illness that daily defies solution. My mother, an Auchi woman, came with her aunty to Port Harcourt when she was just 10 years of age. They didn’t go back. According to her mother, her parents died during the civil war. The aunty she came with was her mother’s only sister. Unfortunately, this aunty didn’t marry so I really don’t have anybody from her side to run to. The kinds of nightmare I am having since the Will was read are frightening. The funny thing is that they are not concealing their identity from me. I don’t know what to do. My friends and the lawyer insist I fight for my rights – that they only want to frighten me off my rights. But the latest thing is a strange man breaking into my home armed. I don’t know what happened because at the point he was poised to kill me, he changed his mind. He told me to leave the house for the time being because those who sent him would get someone else to do it. My friends insist I involve the Police but I don’t want the matter more complicated than it is since they are my only family. I want to go to them to see if there is a way we can avoid killing ourselves over this property issue. The other members of the family have told my uncle, who is supporting them to desist from his course of action, but he is insisting I cheated him out of my father’s inheritance. Their mother too is backing them in this fight, claiming she worked with my father to make all these things possible. I am just 23 years of age. I am so confused and lonely. Please help me. Ese Dear Ese, Dead people don’t worry about property. If you die today, someone else will inherit the things left behind by your father. I empathise with you but when dealing with people, who are unreasonable, desperate and as well determined to do anything, it is always best to avoid such persons. There is no way they will ever agree to the Will left behind by your father because they see themselves as the rightful heir to his estate. Unless by divine intervention, they will always gang up against you because not only are you from another woman but obviously the favourite of your father going by the way he distributed his property. Therefore going to them is an exercise in futility. The worst kinds of battles to fight in life are those that have to do with blood relatives as well as those involving landed property. Whether one is right or wrong, such battles never get settled unless a life or more go for it. Do you want to lose your life over something, which at the end of the day isn’t important? These things may have become yours now but have you also stopped to reflect on the fact that the original owner, your father, who spent his energy, time and life working for these things, is dead? Also, the fact that their own mother is alive will never make them listen to you. As a matter of fact, she is the one using her children to fight this battle because she sees it as her chance to get even with your father, mother and you. Hell has no fury like a scorned woman. Your father humiliated her by not only leaving her to marry your mother, but also announcing to the world his reason for doing that. You and your mother represent an opened wound in her life and until she sees the end of you, her wound will never heal. Added to this is the clause your father left that the paternity of her three children be investigated. Even from the grave your father is still dealing with her; making it impossible for her to bury her shame silently. If nothing else, she will stop at nothing to hurt your father too in his grave. Knowing he loved you more than her children, the only way to get back her pound of flesh is to deal with you. In her current state of mind, she doesn’t care what it will cost her to terminate your life. The example of the strange illness of your father’s friend as well as the armed man that broke into your house are clear indications of how far she is prepared to go to actualise her claims. She is beyond reasoning at least, not in her current state of mind. Going to the Police will only make things messier for you. The combination of your stepmother and uncle is too strong for you to battle on your own. Your late parents would not want you to give up your life defending their property. If they could amass such wealth, nothing says you cannot do better than them in life. Many great and famous people started out with nothing. Only those who think they lack what it takes to make a success of their lives go to the extent your siblings and uncle are going. The sensible thing is for you to live the administration of the Will in the hands of the executors until all these troubles blow over. If you can, leave the country to a place where you can have the presence of mind to finish your studies and establish yourself. At any rate, everything in life is transient; nothing is ever permanent. God is the only everlasting person in life. Even if you live for a century, one day the property will still pass on to another person. None of you involved in this battle will live forever. Today they are in a position to oppress you but it could be your turn tomorrow to have the upper hand. He who runs away to fight another day is the wiser person, not that the one that stays to fight and die a needless death. It doesn’t matter if you are called a fool; what matters is what becomes of you later in life. There is also the possibility that some people too are hiding under the misunderstanding among members of the family to ensure the lack of peace in your family. Unless you do the adult thing of leaving, the truth will never be revealed. Importantly, learn to pray and get very close to God because He sees and knows everything. It is the only way for you to stay alive to tell this story and give the credit of your life to God. Good luck.