Oh, good. Another one about my mother.

Apologies in advance for length.

I’ve been studiously avoiding my mother since Christmas. This makes me both very happy (no mother! Woo!) and slightly guilty (Fifi Sis gets all the gubbins. Boo). However, mother has now thrown a large spanner in the works by instigating (potentially) her own financial downfall, and wanting to discuss it in detail with everyone.

A bit of background for anyone who’s still reading despite this being another post about my mother:

My mother and stepfather divorced over ten years ago. My stepfather is, um, extremely rich. When my stepfather (who I am not, by the way, generally sympathetic towards – the man was a violent, alcoholic bully who made various people’s lives a misery for a good few years) tired of my mother and decided he would rather marry the colleague he’d been doing for some months, my mother set to work on the divorce settlement. She came out of it with a Spanish villa, a lump sum and a monthly alimony payment, which was to be paid to her for life (out of my stepfather’s estate should he be selfish enough to die first).

Fast-forward to the present day.

Mother, for reasons known only to herself, wrote to my stepfather to inform him that she has, ahem, met a man (we will cover this in a separate post. Probably). Would this affect the settlement, she wondered? Somewhat reasonably, my stepfather wrote back to say that yes, it probably would. He explained that he had been paying her monthly for over ten years now, and that, frankly, it was becoming a bit of a stretch. Would she agree to a lump sum payoff, or perhaps less money?

At this point, mother went into a flat spin. I will now present, for your delight, a paraphrasing of the monologue she launched into when I gritted my teeth and returned her call this afternoon:

….so I went to the Citizen’s Advice, and I asked them what could I do? I mean, at least I’ve got a car now that I’m happy to keep [mother buys a brand new car every time the new registration comes out] but I’ve got three holidays to pay for. And it’s not that he can’t afford it, he was on £massive salary when he left ***. And I looked in the estate agents today and his house [in Gloucestershire. Mother lives in Essex] must be worth at least £number plucked wildly from the air. I expect it’s all in offshore accounts though. And the letter had obviously been dictated to him by a solicitor as it was full of long words he wouldn’t be able to spell [stepfather was deputy chairman of a multinational company when he retired. I expect knowing how to spell wasn’t very important or anything ]. And when I rang the solicitor the girl on reception didn’t seem very interested but once I told her I was getting three thousand pounds a month from my ex-husband she soon found the senior partner for me. And it’s all very well him changing his will, but all it means for me is that when he dies I’m left with nothing! Nothing! And I’ve got three holidays to pay for. All I’d have left is £reasonable amount of money a month! And he’s been paying me three thousand pounds! A month! And once he’s dead it all stops! I mean, it’s hardly fair……

……and on and on and on and on and on. For fifteen minutes. I interrupted once to ask how her recent MRI scan went and she had almost completely forgotten about it, pausing only briefly to tell me it went ok (dammit) before talking about the money again.

I’m sure they just LOVE that “three-thousand-pounds-a-month” stuff in the Citizens’ Advice Bureau.

Witch.

(Cue vague terror that mother will google "three thousand pounds a month alimony" and find this blog)