I’m a 22 year old guy and my grandma passed away about seven years ago. She left me and my brother around $100,000 each in a trust fund. My dad was in charge of it until we turned 25. Apparently my grandma set it up so we couldn’t access the money unless it was for school or medical reasons before that age.
My brother just turned 25 and my dad called us to admit he gambled away both trust funds at casinos over the course of a few years. He also left our family a while back and was living in another state, probably using our inheritance to survive.
I’m devastated. Not just because of the money, but because my own father stole from us and lied to us for years. He has no assets, works under the table, and I honestly don’t know if there’s even a point in suing him because there’s probably nothing left to recover.
Your dad didn’t just “make mistakes.” He robbed his own kids. Call it what it is. He took money that was never his, hid it, lied about it, and fed an addiction with it. That kind of betrayal cuts way deeper than the dollar amount.
And here’s the hard part. You may never see that money again.
But you also need to accept something else. He may still be lying now.
A lot of addicts and dishonest people confess strategically. They admit enough to explain the missing money, but not necessarily the whole truth. Maybe he really did gamble it all away. Maybe some of it is hidden. Maybe some of it went somewhere else. Right now, the only source you have is a man who already proved he’s willing to steal from and lie to his own children.
That’s why you do not just take his word for it and give up.
You still need to talk to an attorney who deals with trusts and estates. Not because you’re guaranteed to recover money, but because you need facts instead of guesses. Your grandmother may have set up protections, there may have been a fiduciary bond, there may be records, there may be legal consequences your dad hasn’t told you about. A consultation is worth it just to understand what actually happened and whether he’s telling the truth.
But emotionally, you need to stop expecting your father to suddenly become a trustworthy man. He’s shown you exactly who he is. Gambling addicts burn through relationships, trust, money, and family while convincing themselves they’ll fix it later. You cannot build your future around hoping he wakes up one day full of remorse and hands everything back.
You’re grieving two losses at once. Your grandma’s gift is gone, and the image of your father probably died too. That’s brutal.
Do not let his choices become the thing that wrecks your twenties. Do not spend the next decade obsessed with revenge fantasies or waiting for repayment that may never come. Get legal advice. Get the truth on paper. Then decide what kind of relationship, if any, this man gets to have with you moving forward.
And if I were in your shoes, trust would be earned from absolute zero from this point on.