11/19/2025
After Our Mom’s Passing, My Sister Claimed I Had No Right to Inheritance ==== My mother raised two daughters: myself, Charlotte, and my older sister, Barbara. Naturally, Barbara was always the golden child. She was the one who got all the attention. Barbara craved a roast chicken? My mother had one cooking away the moment her words left her lips. Barbara needed dry cleaning fetched? My mother would jump into her car and fetch it. Barbara was also beautiful. Stunningly beautiful and never failed to make heads turn. She was blonde with piercing blue eyes, just like my mother. Meanwhile, I was the odd one out. I had dark hair, dark eyes, and to be honest, I never really looked like either of them. But I never questioned it. Why would I? I loved my mother. No, I adored my mother with everything I had. She was my entire world. So when she got sick, I was the one who put my life on hold to take care of her. I didn’t complain once. Not when bruises bloomed on my arms as she held onto me tightly when I took her to the bathroom. Not when she got frustrated and threw her food across the room. Not even when she would break down and cry for hours. Barbara, on the other hand? She was too busy chasing her dreams of becoming an actress. “I can’t take care of Mom, Charlotte. I have auditions. I have producers to meet. I have to stay relevant and seen at events. You understand, right? Right, Lottie?” And I did. Because that’s what I always did. I was always understanding, while Barbara lived her life however she pleased. I tried not to focus on her and how I could have done with the help. Instead, I let Barbara come in and out of the house, wearing her new clothes and showing off photos of her with actors and actresses that she had met. “This is a glamorous life, Mom,” she said one day when Mom was too weak to get out of bed to eat her soup. “And you should really clean up your look, Lottie. You need to get noticed. Your posture is horrible because you sit hunched in front of that computer.” “It’s my job, Barbara,” I said simply. Life continued in that way for months. And finally, Mom passed away. But that was when Barbara came back. And she wasn’t grieving. Not at all. She was hungry, starving even. For our mother’s money. After the funeral, we met with Alistair, my mother’s lawyer. Barbara walked in like she owned the place, dressed in black but wearing diamond earrings I had never seen before. I should have known something was off when she sat down with a smug smile. The lawyer pulled out the official will, but before he could even read it, my sister pulled her first stunt. Barbara reached into her designer bag and pulled out a yellowed, folded piece of paper. “Before you read that,” she said sweetly, “I have something interesting to share.” She slid the paper across the table to me. “Look what I found in Mom’s drawer when I was searching for her jewelry.” I unfolded it, and as soon as I read the words at the top, my stomach dropped. ADOPTION DECREE. Barbara leaned back with a smirk. “Well, well, well,” she drawled. “Looks like I finally know why you always looked so different from us.” My hands shook as I re-read the document. Once. Twice. Three times. “You… you’re lying,” I gasped. “You made this up! You got one of your strange friends to make this!” She let out a fake gasp, her long nails tapping against the desk. “Oh, Charlotte,” she said. “Don’t be so dramatic. My friends have things to do with their lives. And anyway, it’s all right there. You’re adopted. Girl, you’re not even Mom’s real daughter. I always knew that your brown eyes and brown hair had no place in our family.” I felt sick. I felt the bile rise in my throat. Had my mother hidden this from me my entire life? But why would she do that? Why not tell me the truth? Would it have changed anything? Not for me. I would have been more grateful for her. Barbara crossed her arms. “So, despite Mom’s will saying that we split everything, you know, she kept saying that, I’ll be making sure that you get nothing. You don’t belong in this family, so why should you get anything?” “Ladies, calm down. Let’s take a moment to think about this,” the lawyer said. But I was too stunned to speak. Barbara’s words had cut me. Deep. And that’s when I saw it. There was one detail she had overlooked in her ploy. The name on the adoption paperwork had been erased. Someone had deliberately tried to remove it. And that? That made me suspicious. “Please, Alistair,” she said. “You can do whatever comes next, but in terms of the estate, I want it all. I can wait until you sort out the paperwork.” The lawyer sighed and nodded. “But I think the two of you need to have a heart-to-heart before we meet again.” Barbara scoffed. “That’s not necessary.” Barbara was so confident that she had won. But I wasn’t about to let her take everything without proof. I didn’t want to be horrible about it, but I had missed two promotions in the months that I had been looking after our mother. I needed to know that I had the safety net of her money. I just needed to have something to my name… I decided to demand a DNA test. “What’s the point, Charlotte?” she scoffed. “You know what it’ll say, Lottie. That you’re not family. I wonder where Mom found you. Do you think your birth mother misses you?” I didn’t think anything other than the fact that our mother would be turning over in her grave at Barbara’s behavior. “Just do it,” I demanded. “Think of it this way. If I am really adopted and there’s proof, you’ll have more claim to everything.” That did it. She moved her head slowly from side to side. Suddenly, she got off the couch, martini in hand, and looked at me. “Fine. Let’s do it.” But the results? Oh my goodness. They shocked everyone. Because Barbara? She was the one who wasn’t biologically related to our mother. After the results came in, I went to my Aunt Helen, my mother’s younger sister.... (continue reading in the 1st comment)
