Family keeps me a secret because my dad is my mother's sister's husband

i grew up not having any father figure in my life and when i was about eight i started asking who my father was at first my mom was very evasive on the subject and finally gave me his name i instantly realized it was my uncle's name and started asking questions my father has never acted as a father to me from what my mom has told me when she told him she was pregnant he wanted nothing to do with it and i believe he essentially wanted me aborted edit whether you want to look down on my mother for this is up to you believe me i have had all the arguments the name calling and let out my view on her doing that over the years i can't understand why she would have gotten that situation but she thought she was in love and even though i don't understand it's happened and it's in the past i have no relationship with him i have never received a gift from him cards for birthdays or christmas etcetera directly from him or had no direct communication he spoke to a lawyer when i was a baby who apparently told him to give the bare minimum in terms of financial support this would mean my mom wouldn't have to go via court to force financial assistance this figure was less than what the official child support system would have him pay but i think my mother felt so guilty for what she had done behind her sister's back and felt so ashamed that she didn't pursue it my point of this post is to ask for advice about what to do up until a few years ago i thought maybe i would just keep this secret for the rest of my life from my dad's other children and my other cousins they probably think my mother had a one night stand and the man disappeared i know my father and his wife are adamant they should never find out all of his children are now grown-ups between 18 and 28 and therefore i don't see why this should be kept secret from my father's benefit and for my auntie who doesn't want to bring up the topic my mother and my auntie have put this behind them and actually have a good relationship as sisters they remain close i believe this is maybe because our side of the family are catholic and we don't have much family drama i've always been treated well by my auntie she has given me christmas cards and small gifts stuff like toiletries and pajamas i don't want to upset her as she is an innocent party to this as i am but i am so tired from being the family secret my father has worked a decent job and over a number of years has built up a business of buying properties to be rented out i never knew how many properties were actually being managed until a conversation with my half-sister three years ago we sat at dinner and she essentially boasted how her and her brothers don't need to worry about the future as they will be able to use the property portfolio in the future to support themselves financially i've mauled on this for a long time and i'm at the point where i want to tell my half-sister everything she is the one i grew up closest to for the past few years since that conversation of her telling me about his assets i felt pissed off that he could have done more financially and i felt more guilt from hiding the fact that we are not just cousins from my half-sister after her telling me about the property portfolio our father has i sat there thinking this man has acted like he doesn't have enough money to give to my mom for me my mom could barely afford to look after me growing up and i missed out on stuff because we couldn't afford it when i got to about 15 he conveniently kept forgetting to send my mom the support check he was meant to it would be christmas time and he would be up at their house on our departure my mom would have to usher him and remind him to pay up in front of me i didn't know any of these conversations had happened until recently but when i went to university my mom asked if he could help his response was that he has four other kids to pay for and that he won't she has also asked him if he will leave anything for me as inheritance he told her it's none of her business and only said how do you know i won't leave her anything which i view as a cop-out and to believe i will never receive anything if he has his way there is no legal documentation of me being his child i also asked to have him on my birth certificate two years ago and he refused to even discuss it my mom had to then unexpectedly turn up at his house to try to have a conversation about it he refused again and my auntie refused to let the conversation happen under her house as the situation goes this is currently a lose-lose situation for me i have already lost out on having a father figure growing up my father won't acknowledge me as his child and i have grown up having to keep this secret from my half-siblings for his benefit in return i have had minimal financial assistance and will probably never receive anything in inheritance he has refused to put his name on my birth certificate or let his own family his mother his sisters etc find out about me sadly his mother passed away last year from cancer he also lost a sister a few years ago from cancer and whilst i know they had good relationships with my half-siblings they never knew i existed as his daughter just because he wants to keep this as a secret doesn't suit me anymore i've matured and realized i'm not protecting my half-siblings from anything they would be shocked but this wasn't my fault and i shouldn't have to keep up a facade for the sake of a man who doesn't care this may seem like i only care about the money this is not true i have accepted that i will likely get nothing from him however i want to sit my half sister down and tell her the truth once he passes and it turns out he left me nothing he may look heartless if they do know by that stage we are siblings if this were you how would you deal with the situation and how would you tell your family in reality i don't expect anything financially i don't want to go down a route of blackmail either i don't see why i should still be a secret this is still a very emotional subject for me i used to not be able to talk about it without breaking down and genuinely thought his actions of disregarding me reflected my value in the world there was a point in my teenage years i used to cry myself to sleep now i'm in my 20s i've processed it a lot more and can see why people may have chosen to keep me secret but i'd rather it be in the open i'm closest to my half-sister we are only a year apart and she is the one i would probably tell i can back it up with a dna test if she's skeptical i know i should also speak to a lawyer if i go down the inheritance route but before i do i want to know other people's views and maybe get some advice in regards to any potential inheritance as people are bringing it up i live in the uk and i am entitled to his assets as his other children though he may have written me out of his will or leave me one pound it's easy to say i'm greedy whilst looking at it but i've been carrying this burden emotionally i will never have a relationship with him in that way he's made it clear and i don't want it either whether you view that as greedy is up to you but as i said i'm currently in a lose-lose situation also i would not want to go after his assets now whilst he's alive trying to go after back payments of child support etc would just cause a lot of drama although i see why people are suggesting it my mom contacted a lawyer two years ago after my dad refused to put his name on my birth certificate the lawyer said my mom can obtain backdated bank statements showing him sending her bi-annual checks and this could be used in the future as well as the knowledge within my family of him being my father which could be used in the future in court to dispute a will only my mother's own siblings know about this i don't believe their own children do there is also the option to take a dna test i could do this to prove to my half-siblings that what i am saying is true my mother did write to my father when she first told me about him being my father she never told me i couldn't tell anyone so i tried to tell my half-sister she asked my father who denied it i also tried to bring it up in front of my half-sister again when she was with some kids from my father's side of the family this was in front of my maternal grandmother who also denied it we were only about eight years old but those shoot downs were enough to make me believe i should never try to tell anyone again and forget it i believe my grandmother only denied it because she was put on the spot and didn't know what else to say as we were all children my whole family will continue to go on about life like we are cousins unless i decide to reveal the truth the last time i saw my father was five years ago as i now avoid visiting partly because this situation upsets me and partly because i feel guilty for keeping this secret as i also see his kids when i'm there he would sit there asking me a few questions about my job life and i have to sit and politely answer in front of my family without being able to acknowledge the truth or ask him the questions i really want to know the answers to this is such a unique family situation that i can't just google and answer i just really need some advice on how to deal with it i don't want to cause drama in my family and don't want to upset my auntie but i'm sure there will be a lot of shock and possible anger my half-siblings are old enough to know and i want them to i am not a secret and shouldn't have to feel like i need to continue in life not sharing this information with them i would hugely appreciate others perspective on how i should deal with this i mean this as kindly as i possibly could be in this situation you seem delusional you say your mom and your sister have a close relationship and there isn't any drama on your side of the family your mother ducked your sister's husband that is the definition of drama you also seem to think you will make this big reveal and everyone will be welcoming you as a half sibling more than likely they will hate you for forcing them to see their father in a not so favorable light they would have to acknowledge that both of their parents lied to them their whole life they will also hate your mother i'm not saying you shouldn't tell them i just think you need to prepare yourself as much as you can that you are going to tear your entire family apart this is all one hundred percent the fault of your mother and your father they chose to cheat they chose to lie your mother cruelly chose to tell you the truth but expected you to carry the burden of the truth with you your entire life i really am sorry the adults in your life failed you so horribly you may want to talk through all of this with a therapist before you decide to approach your cousin sister it's very easy for people to say to just cut ties with her father and start a new life how will you feel if you were in her shoes do you know the meeting of bastard no one wants to be that everyone in this world wants to have a father at least on a birth certificate her aunt knows the truth she is selfish and only thinks of herself what about op her life was miserableness because of these irresponsible people in her life she deserves justice he has to pay for all of these it's not revenge it's called getting recognized her father didn't recognize her up until now what do you think will change yes there might be a way to force him legally to acknowledge his daughter but there will never be a father-daughter relationship and forcing him might bring the rest of the family against her at least if money is involved that's hardly worth it i might not know what it means to be a bastard but i do know what it means to be unwanted the easiest way is to accept it and move on yes it takes time but in the end it's in my opinion the only way to happiness everything else will end in misery for op no you are wrong it's not even about having a father-daughter relationship it's about her identity it's about having a father's name on her birth certificate when his other children had all luxuries in life while she was denied how was it fair to her her auntie and other siblings might turn against her but they will understand one day that it's not her mistake and she had all the right to do so if you feel that she should not fight for the right to her father's money then you pay her that much money if you cannot then shut up i disagree with you having her father's name and her birth certificate won't give her an identity she already has one she has a mother a family and she knows who her father is the birth certificate is just a piece of paper it's a proxy for being recognized he won't do that voluntarily and if it's forced it won't change anything and yes she may deserve some of that money i'm not denying that she can go after it she will get some inheritance if she wants it but probably at the price of her family turning against her is that fair hell no op did nothing wrong her father aunt and others did if she goes for the money she should be aware of the consequences sounds to me like this is partly about wanting to be acknowledged as being your father's child and about the inheritance based on what you've said you grew up not having much while your siblings got more than you did it feels to me like part of you want some inheritance based on that you have to decide whether all this is worth the potential backlash whatever you decide to do it's gonna suck there is no guarantee that your siblings will open arm except you i can tell you from personal experience my uncle had an affair with a woman and had a child we found out a couple years ago apparently his wife knew about the affair the other woman was a family friend and we all had met the child before to us she was a friend after this all came out the child who was now 25 reached out to her siblings they wanted nothing to do with her they stopped talking to their dad and refused to speak to her the rest of the family was forced to pick sides we still maintain contact with uncle's kids we have limited contact with my uncle he and his wife are still together some of the family had tried to include the affair child in family events and every time she comes half the family that is upset about the whole situation including her siblings leave the event and it ends in disaster my uncle's kids basically told the family that if their half-sister is at any family events they will not come or be a part of it two years later nothing has changed it's still a mess most of us don't have any contact with the affair child basically it came down to picking sides and because we all grew up with my uncle's kids most of us just have family events with them it sucks i feel terrible for her because she wanted to be accepted by the family i ended up maintaining contact with my uncle's other kids and not her for the simple fact that i didn't know her well at all we had met a couple times i grew up with the other kids since we were little i chose that relationship over her and that's pretty much how the rest of the family went i think now she's probably in more pain i'm not saying this situation is what is going to happen to you you could have a good outcome i hope this isn't about money for you so ultimately you have to decide that the possibility of this blowing up badly if this is something you can live with or not if you can then go for it and see what happens i was with x for about three years during the three years we talked about baby names x came up with reasons he hated my name ideas until i didn't even like them anymore x then said that he had an uncle chris so he wanted to name our firstborn either christopher or christine i loved both names x and i broke up due to him asking for a pass to cheat on me over two years after the split i had a one night stand the next morning we realized that he was related to x they aren't close i saw this other guy twice in the three years x and i dated didn't remember him at all and it was a total coincidence i got pregnant from the one night stand i told the guy who said if i decided to keep the baby he wouldn't be involved and needed his identity kept private i agreed i kept the baby i named her christine i know how it sounds but i forgot about x's uncle x had put me off the other names i liked and outside of him i loved the name christine is now 13 months old x and his wife have a son christopher who was about six months old a month ago was christine's first birthday i made a cake that said happy birthday christine and posted it online it was shared by enough friends that it got all the way around to ex and wife wife messaged me four days ago demanding a paternity test on christine i blocked her and x began asking for the test to prove he isn't the dad as wife is apparently threatening divorce over this wife's reason for wanting the test christine's bio dad is unknown christine and x are both blonde x has a history of cheating and she says i wouldn't have used christine for a child that wasn't exes i told them x is not christine's father refused the test and blocked them both on facebook they've since tried to contact me directly and through mutual friends about five hours ago wife knocks on my door and yells that she'll stay until i come out so boyfriend steps out and tells her to leave wife shows him that she's got one of those paternity test kits that they mail to you and you send back boyfriend says christine is not ex's child and she needs to leave wife only left when boyfriend threatened to call the police i don't even know how she got my address about four hours ago someone sends me a screenshot of wife's facebook page she posted that i am trying to ruin her marriage by claiming that christine is ex's kid which i never did then refusing a paternity test which i did do everyone seems to believe her except for a handful of friends who replied to her post saying that christine isn't ex's kid wife has blocked all of them i have no idea what to do wife is dragging me through the mud online and i've received a bunch of hateful messages from her friends family i can't allow the dna test because it'll reveal that x is related to christine through the actual father and out the bio dad in the process what do i do is there a way out of this that doesn't involve taking the test is there anything i can say do to fix this without the test

Channel: Ask Girl

Views: 17,843

Rating: 4.8644066 out of 5

Keywords: reddit girl, reddit, r/askreddit, reddit sister, r/sister, r/entitledparents, reddit entitled parents, askreddit, reddit family, askreddit girl, askreddit sister, reddit parents, r/parents, askreddit parents

Id: yAWzGRMBpPI

Length: 19min 15sec (1155 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 17 2021