Dear Therapist: My Mother Is Rewarding My Brother’s Bad Behavior

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Dear Therapist,

I am the older sibling; I have a younger brother.

My brother is incarcerated. When he is released, he will be in his late 50s and will have no assets. As a felon and a sex offender, he will probably have difficulty finding a good job. He will move in with my mother, assuming she is still living. My mother has chosen to leave her mortgage-free home and its contents to him, and to divide the rest of her assets equally between us. There are no conditions in place, such as leaving the property in a trust, to deal with his possible recidivism, marriage, or financial irresponsibility (he has a history of foreclosures).

The rest of her assets are not much, because she has spent so much on his legal