The LW wrote: My father is 70, and the fact that his life savings is now gone due to his naiveté and a family of parasites doesn't really seem to bother him.

This should raise a red flag as to the father's competency. Get him examined by a doctor and see if there is some deficit or illness that makes him so passive. Ask the lawyer what, if any, legal difference it would make if the new wife and her famiy took advantage of a sick or mentally incompetent man.

it's the lens of the stepson, the one who is bound to resent the new wife and her family no matter what the circumstances are. it's the son who is grieving his mother and the loss of his own family as he knew it.

the lw is, therefore, not a reliable narrator.

my first reaction to this letter is that the son should mind his own business. what his father does with his own money is his father's own affair.

We don't know what the LW is, except a concerned child. And frankly, the concern seems reasonable.

Is there any chance that drugs are involved? Is the LW's dad using drugs? Is his second wife? Is his sponging son-in-law?

If drugs are involved, there's not point in trying to make sense of it. Irrational fiscal behavior is par for the course.

"my first reaction to this letter is that the son should mind his own business. what his father does with his own money is his father's own affair."

I would tend to agree with this if the father is still able to be financially independent.

However, if the father has blown all his money and now has little to no retirement and no means of support, and the son will now be responsible for financially providing for him, then the son should certainly contact a lawyer and do all he can to recover some money, even if it requires being nosy in his father's business. You can't expect another adult, even a family member, to pay for your expenses without helping them out as much as possible. It may be painful to the father's pride, but that's what happens when you're not careful with your money and have to depend on someone else.

The LW's description of how the stepmother's family took advantage of the father could be legitimate, but I'm not convinced by the description of events that anything nefarious necessarily took place.

The fact that the stepson repaid the loan to his mother instead of his stepfather -- well, he paid it back, didn't he? There's no mention that this was done clandestinely, so I can only infer that this was by agreement. Passing title to a vehicle as a part of a divorce settlement is also pretty de rigueur stuff. And I don't know how many down payments the father made on a house (one is usually sufficient -- perhaps the LW is referring to mortgage payments), but either way that's equity, not a loss of life savings. The housing market notwithstanding. If the father is to be left otherwise destitute, probate should order the house sold rather than transferred to the wife's interest. A decent lawyer should see to that.

It sounds like the father married a woman with no money of her own. The loan repayment may have been nothing more than an easy shortcut for the father to put spending money in his wife's hands. The LW sounds frustrated that any potential inheritance is gone -- which may be true, but it doesn't mean it was squandered by the person who earned the money.

And California has pretty strict laws on this. Call a lawyer ASAP (you may even need to convince your father to sign a power of attorney so you can work with him and the attorney). Whatever money is left, you need an attorney to fight on his behalf to make sure he sees at least some of it. I wish your father well, and I hope he's able to recoup some of the lost finances.

If you drag everyone into court - who do you think ultimately pays for that? Not the ex wife, she'll claim she has nothing because he has nothing. Community property is community property otherwise she'd have a case against your dad's estate for hidden assets.

So it's pyrrhic victory at best.

You didn't say but you give the distinct impression that the new wife is much younger than your dad. Is that true? If so, then them's the breaks. She sucked him dry for 8 or 9 years and now that there's nothing left, SURPRISE! the marriage is on the rocks and she kicks him out. Yeah it sounds like a scam. It might be worth it before anything else to hire a forensic accountant to go over anything to first determine if anything is actionable. Then you can decide if it's worth chasing down. It's probably not unless you're talking a LOT of money.

Nicely done, Cary. The second half of your answer, where you suggest a lawyer and some forensic accounting, would be perfectly good and standard advice.

But the first half, where you neatly step beyond the question asked, is genius. You gave more than advice: you gave the letter-writer an opportunity to eventually come to understand and be at peace with something both sad and very human.

Cary, that was an observation of great value. It is an understanding that can provide a good foundation for compassion. The LW's father will be much better able to accept help from a compassionate source than from a judgmental and angry one.

I have friends who are going through something like this, though without the divorce. He was entering his seventies, and had money, property, several sorts of loneliness, and a boyish lack of introspection. She had struggled all her life, had two kids, and was in her early forties. He tried to take care of her the way he thought she wanted. He was generous with her kids, putting one through beauty school, putting the other in one of his houses and helping support him as he struggled to find his way. She would get anxious about the expenses of things periodically, and he would explain how everything was great. But it wasn't great. Over five years he blew everything he had put together. She feels badly that he blew it on her. She liked her old Toyota. She didn't need a Land Rover. She didn't need to eat out six nights of the week, but he liked it that way. He feels badly because he's not going to be able to be the only thing he thought she could care for, the expansive guy with abundant resources. At least, that's how it looks to me. He's seventy-six now, and just started working at Home Depot. With luck, they'll be able to keep one of their houses, but it's going to be a messy piece of work before that's clear. He has a lot of shame about it all. You can say that he was irresponsible and confused, but even so, I have to believe his priorities were correct. Companionship is so, so, important. We die without it. The LW's father is probably less concerned with the loss of his money, than the loss of companionship, the meeting of those needs Cary was talking about. There is no reason I can see, from the letter, to assume a bad motive on the part of the ex-wife. Her disappointments and struggles are not really visible to us. Their marriage lasted longer than many, and the financial complications around the break-up do not sound particularly complicated, as divorces with property go.

Oh, I should also mention that my father is spending my inheritance, at an impressive clip, with his second wife. He is not what I would call happy, but he is at least busy. He is doing his best to meet needs. The potency of shopping is a great consolation to old men who have not spent much time learning the more subtle lessons of the heart. We have much to learn from our fathers.