So basically the story goes is that my grandmother collected something really expensive and when she died she left the collectibles to my mom and her two sisters. The grand total of these collectibles was thousands of dollars.

My mom's mom always wanted to be able to afford to send my mom to college but she had my mom young, as a teenager and couldn't afford it, so my mom put herself through college. Because of my disability I can't work and therefore can't afford to put myself through college. My mom was going to use the money from the collectibles to put me through college. So in a way it would fulfill my grandmothers wish to put her children through college, by putting one of her grandchildren through college.

But we went to split the collectibles up only to find out that most of them were missing and my one aunt was acting very suspicious. My mom told me later that years ago right after my grandmother died my one aunt went into the house and stole most of the collectibles and they had to change the locks. We got 180$ worth. We decided to keep the collectibles there until my grandfather passed away a year ago.

The thing is, is that it's not even about the collectibles. It's the principle that she stole from her family and she knew exactly which ones to take and left the crappy ones. It's the fact that I really looked up to this aunt my whole life. And I had really bad stuff happen to me as a child and therapists will often say children that have stuff like that happen have an adult who is a safe person and if not then they turn into antisocial/psychopaths, I always considered her my adult. My dad passed me off onto my abusive step mom and my mom was dealing with her own issues and she was my safe person, even if she lived 4 hours away. And now she's not safe anymore. And I'm so hurt that she would do that.

How can family steal from family?

[Leed]

You'd be surprised how often this happens, honey when you're dealing with money or things that are expensive. People get greedy, and they don't care who they steal from -- they just want the money. You wouldn't think that family members would steal from family members but it happens all the time. And when a family member dies, other family members FIGHT over the possessions left by the deceased --- I could NEVER understand that. When my Mom died, my sisters' and I just discussed what each of us wanted, and that was that!! There was no fighting at all. WE just calmly split up what we wanted, and the rest was given to needy people.

But like you say, I don't understand either how family can steal from family. Our family would never think of doing anything like that. But thousand and thousands of families have gone thru this and it's caused a LOT of heartache and distance between other family members.

I'm sorry it happened with your Aunt. She shouldn't have done that. It was a rotten thing to do. God bless you sweetie, and please take care. Hugs, Lee