My parents and grandparents died in a tragic accident leaving me with my stepdad and my step-brother. All of the inheritance, over four million dollars’ worth of assets including a house and stock portfolio, went to me. My step-dad tried to steal it all, so I made him homeless, made him lose his license, and he lost his job. Here’s how it happened.

Subscribe to Am I the Jerk on YouTube and hit the bell to turn on notifications. I’m a male who has recently turned 18, but these events took place before my 18th birthday. For a bit of context, my father passed away when I was younger, and my mom remarried several years later. She married a man who already had a son about the same age as me. Let me tell you, my relationship with my stepdad was not the greatest, but I did not say anything. She promised that he was a nice guy, but I was skeptical.

I’ve always been a quiet person who avoids confrontation, so most of the time I hide how I am feeling, and I let things slide when I should not. My grandparents were very wealthy, as they had made smart investment decisions in their prime. They invested in the stock market and real estate. I later found out that their total assets were worth between four and five million dollars. Not only that, but they also had a beautiful house worth about a million dollars as well, not far from where we live.

Our family has always been close, and when my stepdad came into our lives, he was very friendly and humbled towards them, so they accepted him. He claimed to have a degree in accounting and helped them out with basic things in the beginning. So when my grandparents retired, they hired him to take care of their finances and investments, as they trusted him. I did not think it was a good idea to leave him in charge of all the money, but it was not my money, and I was just a kid, so I did not say anything.

My stepbrother Brian and I did not get along at all. He was a spoiled kid from the day that he came to live with us. He was a bit of a bully and mean to my mom, giving me more reason to dislike him. While his dad was intelligent, he did not inherit the brains, unfortunately. He was always getting bad grades despite his dad enrolling him in classes and begging me to help him out. I found it unfair that when Brian would mess up at school, his dad would take him somewhere to make him feel better, but when I achieved something at school, I got no such treatment.

This was the reason I spent more of my time at my grandparents’ house. They were still very sharp in their old age, and they would give me life advice on how to save money, etc. Brian only came to their house to lounge in their pool and ask for money, so he never bonded with them. My mother and I got along well, but we became less close when she got married to him. I did not agree with my stepdad on most occasions, but my mother had changed after the wedding. She was always trying to make him happy and get Brian to accept her as his mother.

She kept on asking me to try and get along with my stepdad because she swore he was a good man, but all I saw was a shady guy. Even then, I knew that he would screw us over at some point. It wasn’t like I didn’t try. He would act like he was on my side sometimes, when he would want to butter up my mom or my grandparents sometimes, but when he was not manipulating me, he ignored me. As the years passed and I became a teenager, our relationship got so strained that I ended up hating him, and he bullied me subtly. He would make small jabs about how I did not have a girlfriend, etc., but when I told my mom, she said that he was just concerned about me, as if.

When I was 17, my grandparents decided that they wanted to go on a trip overseas for a while. They would be gone for a few weeks, but they promised to be back soon. I wanted to go, but I still had school. My stepdad also did not go because he said he was busy with work, and it was a critical time for the stock markets. My grandparents were not his only clients, and he occasionally helped other companies and individuals. Brian did not go as well, so I was left behind with my two least favorite people.

Brian left me alone most of the time because he had free rein without my grandparents, who have always tried to set him straight and discipline him. I kept in contact with my family for the duration of that time that they were there, but I could not always get a hold of them because of the time zone and the lack of service. Now I do not know if it’s a sixth sense or something, but I can get anxious about something and feel like something bad is going to happen, and most of the time it does. I could not get a hold of any of them for two days in a row, which was the longest I had gone without talking to them.

I asked my stepdad about it, but he told me to stop worrying. They were just traveling, and they would be home soon. It was around the days when they were supposed to be coming back, but I just kept on trying to reach them, even though he thought that I was being paranoid. All the calls went to voicemail, and the emails were not responded to. I called up the hotel they were staying in, but I was told that they had checked out two days ago. They couldn’t give me any further information, though, because of some privacy policy or something. I knew that there was no way they were still traveling. It did not take longer than a day to fly from where they were.

Later that day, while I was in class, I was called to the principal’s office, and my stepdad and Brian were there. I asked what was going on. They informed me that a hospital had just called my stepdad. Unfortunately, due to an accident, my grandparents and my mother passed away. There were so many questions in my mind because none of it made sense. I went into a hysterical fit, refusing to accept that my family was now gone. The principal sent me and Brian home after offering his condolences, but I don’t remember much of what happened that day.

I do remember my stepfather sitting me and Brian down and telling us what had happened. It seems that they were on their way to the airport, planning to come back, and they collided with a truck and had a car accident. My grandparents died on the scene, but my mother was in surgery for a couple of hours before she succumbed to the injuries. It was a massive shock. I don’t want to lie—even now, when I think of it, I cannot believe that such a tragedy took place. As anyone would, I wish that I could go back in time and do something, anything, but there was nothing much to do.

I demanded to see them and make sure that it was them, because I still believe that there had to be a mistake. My stepfather confirmed that it was them. He had seen them. It was hell waiting for them to be transported back to us. Some extended family members were there to offer support, but I did not know them that well, so it didn’t really help. Going through the motions was difficult. I mean, how often does someone have to bury three family members? They did get dignified funerals, and I did try to say my goodbyes even though it was difficult.

I got a few weeks from school to grieve, and at that time I avoided everyone. I did not get why Brian managed to get time off. He was never close to my mom and especially not to my grandparents, but that is beside the point. Soon enough, the matter of the estate had to be discussed. My mother did not have a lot of assets. She had a simple office job, and to not always concern herself with having too much money, she had sold our house when she got married, so that all that was left were some savings that were divided between the three of us.

I had not been expecting anything from my grandparents. I just assumed the property would go to some distant family or to some charity organizations, as they were big humanitarians. I was surprised when their lawyers called and me and my stepdad came in. Their estate had been equally divided between my mother and me. However, in the case that one of us was deceased, the other would get 100% of the estate, and if both of us were no more, then it would go to charity. I was told that everything had been left to me, but there was a clause: I had to be 18 years old before everything would be transferred in my name. In the meantime, my legal guardian would safeguard everything.

My mother was supposed to be my legal guardian, but since she had passed away, the responsibility fell onto my stepfather. I could tell that when the lawyer said that everything had been left to me, my stepdad was not happy already. We did not get along at all. I was also surprised that my grandparents did not leave him anything. They had trusted him with their money, after all, but I guess his scheming had been for nothing, and blood was thicker than water.

After the lawyer had explained everything to me clearly, he left us. It took a while to process everything that had happened over the past couple of days. I was now the owner of the house, and on top of that, I was now several million dollars richer. As I said earlier, my relationship with my stepdad was strained, especially since we had always been fighting in my teenage years, but he started being nice to me. He checked up on me several times a day, asked if I needed to talk about anything, and offered support to me. He also told me not to trust the extended family members because they would try to take advantage of me, but he was going to take care of me.

His son tried to be friendly with me as well, acting as if we were suddenly brothers, but I could see right through their acts, and I knew that soon they would reveal what they wanted. During this time, I established relationships with my extended family and kept them updated about my own health. I was about to inherit a lot of money, and I had no idea what to do with it, so I asked some of my uncles for advice, etc., and my stepdad did not like that. I eventually asked him what was up with him not wanting me to have a relationship with my own family. He said that he was taking good care of my money, and he would continue to do so if I wanted him to, but I told him that I would no longer require his guidance, as my family would help me instead.

But he tried to convince me to officially sign everything over to him once I turned 18. So there he revealed his entire motive. He said that I was too inexperienced with money and would not spend it wisely, but since he knew more about money, it would be best for him to have everything in his name. How stupid did he think I was? He was the last person I would trust with my money. He even said that it would be best for me so I could focus on college once I graduated high school, as if he ever cared about my education. He had only shown support to his son, who was not bright at all, in the past.

I told him straight up that I was not going to sign over anything or give him any money. He then claimed that I owed him, since I was living in his house, he was paying for everything that I had, and he had taken care of everything when my family had passed on. I had known in the past that he was an opportunistic man, but I never believed he would stoop so low. We had a huge argument over the whole matter. The both of them ganged up on me, as usual, trying to guilt-trip me and using my mother to manipulate me, but I was hard-headed, and I refused to give in.

But the problem was that for the next couple of months there was nothing I could do about getting my stuff because I could not go against the clause. He had everything in his name for the time being, and he was making things difficult for me. One thing I would say about him is that he is so good at playing mind games. I began to feel guilty about how my family died. Things he said about me not being able to handle the money and wasting my grandparents’ hard-earned money began to feel like they were going to come true.

It was all too much for me to handle, and I did not tell anyone about it. I knew my mother’s family meant well, but I barely knew them, and I feared that they would try to use me for money like my stepdad was doing. Home became a toxic environment, but I had nowhere to go. The only time I could catch a breath was when he was at work, but I tried my hardest to be brave even though he tried everything to convince me, even going as far as to threaten me. It was after he had threatened to, quote, do something to me that I decided I could not stay with him anymore.

I left home and stayed with a friend for the last few days until my birthday. I ignored his messages and calls for those days, but I found out that they were now living in my grandparents’ house. He threatened to do everything he could to make sure I did not get my money as I was supposed to. I did not know a lot about the law and what happened in the case of wills, but he had many years of experience dealing with financial matters, so I was a bit scared. But when I turned 18, I called my grandparents’ lawyer, who I had informed a few days ago about what was happening with my stepdad. We began the process of transferring the estate to my name, but my stepdad made it very difficult and tried to contest the will.

That was when I decided to sue him so that he could get out of the way of me getting my inheritance. I opened a case against him for threatening me to sign everything over to his name after my parents died. His defense was that I was too young to inherit the money and that he had proof that he had been taking care of the estates. But then an investigation was done into the accounts, and it revealed that he had been stealing money from my estate and putting it into his account, which was fraud. I learned that he was only allowed to use money for necessary expenses and not squander it on expensive clothes and gadgets. Not only that, but he was also letting his son spend my money for all that time.

I won the case, and I got my inheritance. He also had to give me back all the money that he stole from me. Not only that, but he also had to cover all the legal fees. The money was so much that he had to sell his house and car along with all the things that he bought with my money. I also kicked both of them out of my grandparents’ house and told them to never come back again. What he did was very unethical, and his license to practice his financial services was suspended. He is going to have a disciplinary hearing very soon. So now he has no house, no job, no income, all along with his son, and I have cut off all contact with them so that I could focus on more important things.

The last couple of months have been such a whirlwind, and things are only starting to settle down now. So was I the jerk for completely cutting my stepdad off after he tried to steal my multi-million dollar inheritance, even though he was taking care of me this entire time?

There was a small window of opportunity where the OP might have actually believed that the stepdad did have good intentions and did care about him being upset for losing his entire family, and that window was in between when it happened but before they went to the lawyer’s office, because the OP says that the stepdad and the stepbrother all of a sudden started being really nice to him. But that was after the lawyer told him that he had an over five million dollar inheritance coming his way, and then all of a sudden the stepdad wanted to check on him every day and make sure he was okay and say that he’ll take care of him and that the stepbrother and him are just as close as brothers.

Sometimes people that are really cruel can be very kind in moments where it’s this extreme, but if that was the case and it was genuine that he actually was like that, it probably would have revealed itself right when they found out that the OP’s family had died and not after the lawyer meeting. The entire time, I kept thinking that during that interim period where the stepdad had control of all the finances, that he was going to do something to squander that money before the 18th birthday of the OP. But it seems like that wasn’t possible in this case, and not only that, all the money that had been siphoned off from before, he had to pay back all of that. He probably was just going ham on the spending because he figured nobody else could ever catch him doing it and spent way more than he would have otherwise, so much so to the point that he ended up losing his house and becoming homeless, and even the license for his work was compromised.

Getting five million dollars at 18 years old is probably going to be one wild ride, with tons and tons of charlatans and scammers coming after you for the rest of your life. But hopefully all of this was a big lesson learned to the OP, and he’s able to stay safe from all the future scammers that are going to come his way. But let me know how you would have handled the situation down below. And jerk or not a jerk, and why?

Am I the jerk for not giving up my second free seat next to me in the plane? I am obese—like I am comfortable having two seats in the plane type of obese. I am well aware of that, and I don’t really like to bother people with my weight. A week ago, I was going to a conference by plane, and because I was going alone (usually I fly with my boyfriend, so I don’t buy two seats since he sits next to me), I bought two seats. I fit in one, but my side is usually touching the person next to me, and I feel uncomfortable for them. It happened to me that they were giving me nasty looks, and I felt extremely uncomfortable the whole flight.

So I sat down on the plane and put the armrest up so I would be really comfortable. Some couple came, and they both sat next to me because they got separate seats, and they noticed the seat next to me was empty. Exactly what I was afraid of happened. My side kept touching the guy next to me, and he even pushed me a bit when he moved into the seat. I was feeling extremely uncomfortable and asked him if he could go to his seat because I bought this one for my comfort. He told me no, since the seat is empty and he wants to be with his girlfriend.

Well, I told him I understand, but I feel uncomfortable, and I paid for the second seat so exactly this doesn’t happen. He refused again and started to chat with his girlfriend. I called the flight attendant and quietly told her what is happening. She asked the guy to leave my second seat, and he and his girlfriend gave me a nasty look. The girlfriend mumbled something like “freaking fat b—” under her breath, but nothing directly to me. So am I the jerk for insisting on him to leave?

I mean, clearly in this situation the guy must have known what the original poster was saying was true if he’s even trying to push her body out of the way to get into the seat. I’ve seen a lot of those public freakout videos where people on planes buy an extra seat for their kid and the kid has to sit on their lap because the kid is too young or something, so I thought this was gonna play like that. I thought that the flight attendant was gonna force the original poster to stay in one seat, but the flight attendant actually supported the original poster here and enforced the concept that the OP bought the seat—both of them—so therefore both of these seats are the OP’s.

It sounds like the boyfriend and his girlfriend were just jerks. They probably could have explained the situation nicely, and maybe the OP would have heard them out, but they were rude to begin with. So let me know how you would have handled the situation if you were her, and jerk or not a jerk, and why. When you subscribe, make sure to hit the bell to turn on notifications. To finish listening to all the stories in this series, use the playlist at the top of the description. And next time you livestream, use the cream of the crop music—search for Cream of the Stream on Spotify or whatever music platform you use—for copyright free music to use for your stream. It’s free. Cream of the Stream. Either way, thanks a lot for listening. I’ll see you guys next time.