By Dr. Jeanne King, Ph.D.
Sometimes life reveals its harshest truths through the people we once trusted most. This story traces how betrayal and moral inversion within family lines can become a teacher in disguise—showing us not only what we’ve endured, but what we are finally free to release.
There are some stories in this industry that I don’t like sharing because reading them makes normal people sick, even when told with a silver lining. However, hearing this story could save you in ways beyond words.
It’s a story of lost legacy… thank God, on the surface only. If you are in a domestic violence divorce, you might want to know that these things do indeed happen.
A Mother’s Passing Can Be the Foundation for Finding Oneself
Melinda’s mother passed nearly eighteen months ago, and she is caught in a legal battle with her convicted-felon brother, who is eagerly pursuing her in this way to conceal his financial exploitation of their mother in the last two years of her life. Or possibly his motive is to do as promised years prior: tie up her life in court for not giving him access to their mother’s Trust while she was alive.
Now the sick part about this sad state of affairs is that the grandchildren trampled her life like pigs beginning about sixty days after her mother was announced dead. They did this—apparently with some knowing their uncle’s or father’s plan—to smokescreen a crime that Melinda was unaware of, by using a civil legal proceeding against her after securing their distribution.
Every week from that moment on, she was confronted by phone with one of them manipulating her into releasing their inheritance ASAP so one of them could buy a house… a house they were already shopping for before the estate was settled, which they insisted required the inheritance distribution for the purchase.
One of them pleaded for his inheritance so he could make an IRA payment by 4/15. This being demanded all while Melinda couldn’t even get her own taxes done on time. She had to file an extension simply to deal with the load of their relentless demands, bullying, and aggressive, hostile battering from this son continuously campaigning for that money before it should have been released.
One kid after another, week after week for four solid months.
Why four months? The criminal brother remained in hiding (from Melinda). The pressure built as silence became its own weapon.
The majority of them spent over a month accusing her of preparing to withhold or steal the very inheritance she had protected for them for nearly six years. She served as the barrier to several people’s efforts to take this money from the Trust. These kids continued to manipulate, gaslight, bully, and badger her until she released the funds.
The confrontations were so over the top that Melinda had to block her nephews’ numbers just to get through the workday. At one point, she recalls saying to her second son:
“Would it be okay with you if I go to the bathroom?”
What amazed Melinda in all this back-and-forth with her estranged children was that during their chase for this money, they went out of their way to withhold any humanly appropriate gestures that come with anyone losing a parent or burying a loved one.
All they wanted was that money—with no care whatsoever for how their actions impacted their mother.
It only occurs to Melinda now that this behavior is normal and acceptable from their perspective, because Melinda is “not supposed” to be their mother as children of parental alienation.
They were propagandized out of having that right over the last eighteen years (as was Melinda)… even though some of them carried on as though re-unification was happening.
This is how these adult children of parental alienation have been trained to regard their mother, and the mother of their mother:
Grab the money and leave the corpse. Forego dignity.
That’s acceptable to them.
What We Bring to a Situation: Ourselves and Our History
Melinda reached a point in their relentless back-and-forth where all she wanted was to get that money out of her hands so she could breathe, even though both she and her second son knew it was not advisable for her to do so without the criminal brother’s agreement, which could not be obtained because he was “in hiding” from Melinda for nearly six months following their mother’s death.
The pressure from those grandkids generated the exact same feeling she had with their father—that painful pattern of giving in just to turn him off. His requesting and demanding would cascade into a relentless chase that only ended with her submission.
I trust you are following this important insight for Melinda, as it might be an insight for you too:
Her response to their behavior—and what it stirred up within her—was all her doing.
The Reality of Domestic Violence by Proxy
After Melinda distributes the inheritance to each of her estranged children, one at a time, she sits down to write to her nephew—the one who co-conspired with his father to convince her children she was preparing to steal from them.
She is weeks away from tax filing deadlines and knows she must first do the preliminary preparations for the accountant. Yet the grandsons demand that all her spare time be spent on this continued inheritance distribution chase (before closing the estate).
One son, whom she had not communicated with in over six years—because he claimed that would make his father sad—shows up like the hero on a white horse. And she discovers a snake.
He writes in a text that if she doesn’t get the nephew his inheritance by X date (which was impossible for her), he would block her.
Not once did he say:
“Mom, is there a reason you can’t make this your number one priority?”
It was both disgusting and clarifying all at once.
That child didn’t even have standing to facilitate the distribution of these funds, having elected to disengage from Melinda years prior. Yet he pushed around his sense of entitlement and hijacked much of the process, enhancing the conflict between Melinda and her criminal brother.
Their interaction culminated in one more email and text in which he declared:
“Never contact me again.”
This is what she gets after giving him $25,000—because she chose to take care of time-sensitive business obligations rather than be bullied.
Then the second son texts her, saying:
“If you bring forward the statements from the bank with the missing $30,000, I’ll block you.”
The criminal brother has effectively enlisted Melinda’s kids in hiding his crime—exploiting their grandmother to the tune of $30,000.
Melinda was so utterly stunned by this, on top of what she was getting from the other kid, that she wanted no more to do with either of them.
She tried to go back to work… Not acceptable to them.
The oldest son told her that the only way she and her criminal brother could come to terms finalizing the inheritance distribution was through counsel.
Next thing she knows, she is met with a civil legal action by her criminal brother, alleging that $30,000 went missing while under her control. Yet, Melinda never had control of, nor access to, the account in which the $30,000 went missing.
Still the chase is on anyway.
Lawfare as a Weapon of Control
For the next nine months, every single week Melinda faced some new intrusion or demand from this bogus act of lawfare—a campaign of harassment designed to fabricate a false record and entangle her indefinitely in court.
Even after satisfying accounting and all other wishes, she couldn’t get it to stop.
Because the criminal brother was using this civil proceeding to mask his own criminal behavior.
Or possibly, by that point, he was continuing the battle simply to keep Melinda tied up in endless lawfare. He refused to take his portion of the inheritance while demanding that Melinda pay his legal fees… keeping the insanity going.
You see, this man lives on his Social Security and a very modest salary. Yet he has aggressive counsel for nine months.
One might ask:
Who is paying his legal fees?
One of the grandchildren?
Melinda’s ex?
Who is officially helping him conceal this crime of financial exploitation, and engage endless lawfare at Melinda’s continued expense, emotionally and financially?
Mind you, Melinda had no intention of holding him liable for his “early dipping.” She just didn’t want to serve as his scapegoat.
To add insult to injury, the oldest son carried on with Melinda for over a month while she helped him transition into a new apartment—without mentioning the legal action underway.
Everyone received the initial pleading except Melinda. He didn’t think she should know.
Silver Lining and Compassionate Understanding
Here is the silver lining:
Melinda now knows these are not the people she would trust with her life, her affairs, or her wellbeing — now or ever.
What she thought would be a bridge became an exit ramp. Suddenly, she is no longer chasing something that no longer exists.
From here, a new and authentic direction unfolds for Melinda.
That’s the silver lining.
In the end, it wasn’t the betrayal that ended it for her.
It was the inversion of right and wrong.
Once that turned upside down, there was nothing left to respect.
Once you lose trust and respect… the landscape is completely different.
For the adult children of parental alienation, the conditioning runs so deep it’s like repeated injections of belief—each one reinforcing the false story until it feels like truth itself.
These injections of lies and propaganda often persist throughout adulthood. Efforts to address the history or the harm can be met with hostility or refusal to consider anything beyond the story they are taught to believe, keeping the conditioning firmly intact.
Those living under its spell can’t see the distortion… only the stability it promises.
That deeper pattern is a story for another time.
For clear insights on legal domestic abuse, visit InnerSanctuaryOnline.org and get a copy of the Legal Domestic Abuse eBook when you join the Inner Sanctuary Online Library.
© 2025 Mind Matters Media™ | Dr. Jeanne King, Ph.D.
Domestic Violence Prevention and Intervention