Can My Stepmom Legally Cut My Funds? Should I Contact My Grandfather?

On the third day after our divorce was finalized, my ex-wife, Georgie Anderson, sent me a text message. [Why haven’t you transferred your salary from this month to me?] I thought she was joking. [We’re already divorced.] [So? What does it matter if we’re divorced? You should transfer nineteen thousand dollars from your twenty-thousand-dollar income, just like you did before. The remaining one thousand dollars will be your pocket money. When you were unemployed, I was the one who took care of you. Now that we’re divorced, you’re turning your back on me?] I stared at her text messages and fell silent for a really long time. Throughout our three-year marriage, I gave her nineteen thousand dollars out of my twenty-thousand-dollar salary. She was responsible for "budgeting" our household expenses. However, she spent my money on her civil service exam, afternoon teas with her besties, and even on her study partner, whom I’d never met. As for me, I handled all the house chores—cooking dinner, mopping the floors and doing the laundry. But when I took a little time after work to game, she would yell at me for being lazy. She was demanding money from me even after we were divorced. Her reason was that I might spend the money without thinking. I blocked her number. Three seconds later, she sent me a text message from another phone number. [You’ll regret this. I’m trying to help you one last time.] I laughed. ‘Helping me?’ I thought. Nobody had ever helped me in the past three years.

The day I'm promoted, my mother gets on her knees and begs me for a monthly allowance of 500 dollars to cover her living expenses. Yet I refuse without any hesitation. Left with no choice, she gets an influencer to put me on blast. "I only need 500 dollars a month. 50 packs of plain pasta can last me two months, and I can grow some vegetables to save on groceries. "I'll even split my high blood pressure pills in half to make them last. Please. I raised you. You can't just abandon me now that I'm old!" On camera, my expression remains cold as I shoot her down. "I've got money, but I'd rather spend that money on dog food than give it to you. And that's because you don't deserve a single cent!"

My grandmother, Gabriella Lorne, begs my uncle, Daniel Saldano, and his family to take me in after Mom and Dad pass away in an accident. To repay Grandma's kindness, I take care of her for seven years after she develops dementia and breaks her leg. I tell myself that I can't die when I'm lying in the emergency room after getting into a serious car accident. Grandma still needs me to take care of her. I hear the doctor's anxious voice coming from outside the door. "The patient is in critical condition. You're his family. You need to pay for his medical bills as soon as possible!" "We're not going to save him!" Grandma exclaims energetically in the next second. "We don't have the money to pay the bills." "Let's contact Mr. Anderson as soon as Jasper breathes his last breath," my lazy cousin, Ashton Saldano, chimes in excitedly. "He's been looking to buy a corpse for 100 thousand dollars. That's more than enough for me to buy a marital home and find myself a wife!" Grandma scoffs and says, "Pretending to be demented for the last seven years is finally paying off. The shaman told me that I'll be able to absorb this jinx's vitality once he's dead. He should feel honored that his death will fund Ashton's new home." My heart throbs painfully. It turns out that my beloved and respected Grandma is nothing more than a "man-eating" monster!

After my wife, Shannon Stewart, suggests that we each support our own parents, I set up a million-dollar retirement fund for my dad. However, when I review this month's household expenses, I notice that every single payment is made for the father of Sean Gardner, her childhood friend. "Sean's family is struggling. Why wouldn't I help them out? It's not like it's a lot of money." Shannon brushes it off. There are 13 separate expenses of around 100 dollars each in a single month. Yet when my dad needs 300 for medical bills, she prints out the receipt and tells me to reimburse the household account. Tired of arguing, I toss the statement aside and head inside. Then my dad's condition suddenly worsens, and he's hospitalized again. I rush to the bank to withdraw money from the retirement fund. "Your father isn't the beneficiary of this fund," the bank employee states coldly. "Are you sure you have the right account?" My mind goes blank. How is that possible? Every cent in that account is my hard-earned cash. The employee impatiently turns the computer monitor toward me. The account name on the screen clearly reads, "James Gardner's Retirement Fund." James is Sean's dad.

After my father died, my mother remarried and took my younger sister and me with her. But her new husband had one condition—she could only bring one child. From people who used to hang around my dad, I later learned that my grandfather was actually a wealthy antique collector. My sister clung to him for her own future, refusing to let go. But in his eyes, her only job was to get straight A's; everything else—her clothes, her meals, her allowance—was kept to the bare minimum. I went with my stepfather instead. His business took off, and we eventually moved into a huge mansion. He even set me up with an engagement to the heir of a powerful, wealthy family. My sister was eaten up with jealousy. One day, she doused me in gasoline and dragged us both back in time to that day we had to choose our futures. This time, she lunged for my stepfather's hand and held on tight. "I want to stay with Mom and Dad," she announced. I didn't miss a beat. I immediately ducked behind my grandfather. 'Fine, Phoebe. You're the one who chose a life as a bargaining chip. Don't blame me for it. You can have it.'

When I'm accompanying my daughter, Alina Stone, to the hospital for a chemotherapy session, an employee from the social security center calls me. "Ms. Lewis, an error has occurred with the bank card that's set to receive your parents' pension. Please make sure to change to a new card." I'm left feeling stunned. My parents have been dead for three years. Why would they even receive more pension in the first place? After asking the employee, I find out that my parents' pension has been wired into the bank card as normal throughout the years. My husband, Christian Stone, was the one who had previously updated the bank card details at the social security center. Once I get home, I demand answers from Christian after playing him the recording of the phone call. He falls silent for a very long time before telling me the truth. It turns out that he never registered my parents' death back then. Till now, their corpses have been stored in a freezer in my childhood home. That bank card had received a total of 90 thousand dollars' worth of pension over the past three years. Christian has given all of the money to his ex-wife, Lydia Swanson, in order to support her financially. But the thing is, he never gave me a single cent for Alina's treatment before.