I trusted my stepmother, but after my father died, she cut me out of his £1.5million estate. Here’s what you must do now to stop it happening to you or your children…

In the 1970s, someone in America invented the term ‘blended family’, sugar-coating the potential trauma of merging two familial units.

I can only assume this person had created a mess of their own domestic situation – probably inciting a divorce – then forced two sets of previously unacquainted children together into one bubble. Granted, the idea of ‘blending’ is quite pleasant. When making a smoothie, I blend (rather than vigorously coerce) the ingredients together to make something healthy and delicious.

So, why not ‘blend’ your family? Nuclear is out, alternative is in. My family became a blended one when I was a teenager, 25 years ago, and my father met another woman while still married to my mother and moved out of our family home in London to a property 15 minutes down the road.

The process had its ups and downs. In the early days, things were difficult; but they settled and eventually, in fact, became rather nice.

Everyone – both my parents, their new partners, me, my older brother, my two would-be step-siblings – adjusted (or at least conceded), got along and learned how to live the new normal.

Then, a couple of years ago, my father – the patriarch of Our Family 2.0 – died. And with his unexpected loss (he was not yet 70) the elements he had so persistently and lovingly melded together fell apart.

For it turned out one of the ingredients in our smoothie was somewhat noxious.

Actually, I always knew it. If my father ever comes to me in dreams (which he does frequently) I can’t help but say ‘I told you so’.

When he died, it took precisely 30 days after the funeral for my stepmother of more than 20 years, Holly, to summon my brother and I to the home she and my father had moved to, so she could offload on to us the items she’d decided we were allowed to have.

Then she sat us down and presented us with his will – a flimsy four-page document we had never before seen – and informed us that everything (save for the boxed-up knick-knacks she had piled by the front door) was now hers.

Still reeling from the shock of losing our father from a sudden fatal stroke, my brother and I weren’t particularly concerned about his assets. But death admin is necessary.

Dad’s wishes were that, should he die first, Holly would inherit his estate, and that on her eventual death everything should be split four ways – between my brother and myself (both at this point in our 30s) and his two step-children (from Holly’s first marriage, a decade older than us).

Fair enough, we thought, only half-paying attention to this rush of information, the unnerving feeling that we would never set foot in our father’s house ever again slowly bleeding through.

As suspected, we have not been back there since. We tried.

Despite the cold, transactional treatment we received during that last ever visit, we checked in with Holly and offered to visit a few times. Perhaps we should have been more insistent, but the ‘no thank yous’ we’d get back were so icy that we took the hint.

‘She’s grieving,’ we’d reason. ‘Perhaps we remind her too much of Dad and it’s too painful.’

When there wasn’t so much as an ‘are you OK?’ on our first Father’s Day without Dad, we decided to contact her again. This was almost a year since we’d lost our parent. The haze had cleared since the business-like encounter we’d had with Holly about his will, and we wanted to know where we stood.

Fair, given we were his two children. Fair, given we were extremely close to him. Fair, given we are adults, and entitled to this information.

Our attempt to catch up casually over a video call (she now lives a couple of hours away) was immediately dismissed, and we received a formal email in response asking us what we wanted. Playing along, we replied that we wanted to see how she was –which was the truth.

We were honest about also wanting to know where we stood in terms of Dad’s wishes. We wanted assurance she would do as he asked and make arrangements to divide their joint estate four ways in her own will. We didn’t want any money now, just clarity on the future. Her reply: ‘Please stop contacting me.’

This blunt, stony response was a wake-up call: this woman, who had played the role of our stepmother for two decades, did not care about us. Dad was dead, and so were we to her.

Again, this woman was causing my family pain, and this time, without my father around as a buffer. By requesting we stay away from her, the situation was suddenly clear: Dad’s estate was now Holly’s and we were cut off from her and presumably all future inheritance.

I’d worked hard to deal with my feelings towards her from 20 years ago, but now a familiar sense of injustice and outrage resurfaced in me. This callous betrayal of Dad’s wishes only compounded the sense of malice and calculation I saw from her back then. All that work – the acceptance, the effort – for this to be the finale?

I’ve always said I’d wished my parents had split up when I was too young to know differently, but this isn’t actually true. I had a wonderful childhood – a close family, a lot of love and a lot of fun. We were very lucky. Then came the sledgehammer: the revelation, one Saturday in my teens, that Mum and Dad were separating, in part because my father had met another woman.

I wasn’t upset – I was furious. I took it terribly. I became a very angry young man. The stimulant was the disillusionment I felt; that, and the sense of betrayal.

I was incensed at the notion that someone from the outside had infiltrated our family unit and blotted it so recklessly.

I hated Holly for it. I could not comprehend how someone could be comfortable entertaining a romance with a man who had been married for nearly 20 years and had two children.

These days, I’m obviously wiser. Time and experience has taught me that we are not living in a Disney movie. Though I’ve never been married, I get it – marriages lag, complacency sets in, and mistakes are made. My father temporarily left my mother, yet returned numerous times, realising he’d made a mistake.

Holly, however, was like a dog with a bone. She would call our house and demand to speak to him. Ultimately, this bullish approach won, and Dad went to live with her for good.

I wouldn’t have anything to do with her. I wanted to make this as hard for her as possible. Dad spent every weekend with us, and I demanded that Holly wasn’t involved. I wanted to take him away from her, like she had taken him from us.

My parents got divorced under the table. Knowing how outraged I was by the whole fiasco, they just got on with it privately, only telling me and my brother when the deed was done. They both still loved each other and were still friends, and I have always been thankful for that.

Slowly, I accepted that we were living in a new era, at which point I realised the issue was me and the way I so persistently pushed Holly away.

I decided, therefore, to bite the bullet and meet her. She made a great effort and I was difficult. It took some time, but I gradually thawed and before long our family had indeed become a blended one.

Although my brother and I continued to live with our mother in the family home, we saw Dad regularly through the week. Mum remarried a wonderful man – a kind and gentle soul, the opposite of my opinionated and brash stepmother. Life was good, though by no means and kittens for the next 20 years.

Dad and Holly married too. It was a nice wedding. I drank my way through it and, aside from the distress the ceremony itself caused me, we had an OK day.

And for the most part, after that, Holly proved herself to be a supportive stepmother. I often found myself talking to her more than anyone else about my career aspirations and my plans for the future. She seemed genuinely invested; quite a skill, seeing as it now transpires she was playing a long game, with none of us, least of all my father, in on the act.

Often I’d see flashes of Holly that reminded me she had once preyed upon my dad and eventually fooled him along with the rest of us. I thought I might need to move in with them for a while during a period in my 20s when I was between jobs – something she vetoed immediately, despite them having plenty of room in their house.

After the death of my grandmother, I was instructed to doctor my eulogy to include Holly in it more. Incidents would crop up like this every so often.

Finances were a particular flashpoint and my brother and I learned to be diplomatic. While both of us have successful careers (I’m a travel PR and my brother works in marketing) and have always been largely independent, life throws curve balls. Who can you go to if not your parents?

But even £50 here and there never sat well with Holly. There was always a remark – something to make Dad feel guilty for treating us like spoiled brats. In the latter years, we would only ever discuss material matters during time we’d spend alone with him. She bullied him – and I can only assume this is how we’ve ended up in this situation with his will.

A few years before his death, it had started to creep on to my radar that I should probably begin talking to Dad about the inevitable. But never did I imagine I’d lose him at such a young age.

Yet two things began to nudge at me: his health and the state of his assets. Tragically, I left it too late to broach either subject.

My father ran his own engineering business, which gave us a comfortable life. We grew up in a nice house in London that would today be worth at least £1 million. I was not privy to his finances, but I believe his estate, with his home and business, might be worth £1.5 million today.

But this was never about any desire to get my hands on his cash. In fact, with the second wife and the two stepchildren kicking around, I always presumed there would be very little to inherit when he died.

Equally, I’d be a liar if I claimed that the prospect of eventual parental inheritance wasn’t somewhat of a glimmer of intrigue in the far-off future. I’d much rather my parents live for ever, but I am a geriatric millennial after all. A friend of mine, while also dealing with a death in the family and similar issues, reminded me we are of the ‘inheritance generation’. The cost of living is a worry, nobody makes enough money and no one can afford to squirrel away a hefty lump of savings – especially if you’re single, as I currently am.

For whatever reason, my father’s will was horrendously executed. The four-pager my brother and I were handed after his death was flimsy and basic. It was watertight, but in the simplest of ways, and only to the benefit of Holly. If I could ask my dad what on earth he was thinking, I would. Sadly, I believe I know the answer: blind trust.

My dad was a kind, loving, beautiful man. He was intelligent, but emotional; and his desire not to upset anyone was perhaps the last mistake he ever made.

In having a simple will that handed the reins to Holly and entrusted her with the aftermath, he was reckless. My brother and I have researched the matter. Contesting the will would be costly and fruitless. We have looked into a deed Of variation, which is a way of guaranteeing Dad’s wishes to split his estate four ways on Holly’s death.

But our stepmother would have to agree to it. The last email we sent her, when we broached this, was met with silence. I am told that there is even a term these days for scenarios such as mine – ‘sideways disinheritance’ – when beneficiaries miss out on their share of a parent’s estate because generational inheritance steps sideways thanks to remarriage. Of this, I am a victim.

What would I have done with the money?

Truthfully, that’s not what this is about. Above all, this is about how my father has been betrayed.

He was a man who did everything in his power to treat his loved ones fairly. If he is somewhere now, aware of all this, it rips me apart to imagine how he would be feeling.

I am not angry with him – I find it physically impossible to be. I love and miss him too much. I am frustrated, though. I wish I had talked to him about this – and anyone reading this should sit their parents down, whether they are together or not, and iron out these matters.

It may be unpleasant but it’s a necessity. Had I received a chunk of inheritance from my father, would I have used it to better my own life somehow? Sure. Investment or a house, perhaps.

But this is about integrity. Had my father had £4 to his name, he would have wanted that split between my brother, my step-siblings and myself, £1 each, after Holly’s death. And, although I cannot say this definitively, given the behaviour of my stepmother, I can’t see that happening down the line, despite Dad’s wishes. She has ghosted us.

I write this article to help others and as an act of catharsis. There are no support groups for the sacrificial lambs of the blended-sideways-disinherited. Perhaps I’ll start one.

Trust me, though, you don’t want to be a member. Act now, or risk being the collateral damage of Your Family 2.0.

• Adam Marlow is a pseudonym. Names and identifying details have been changed.