Dear Queenie,
My parents got divorced when I was little and I stayed with my mother.
After a while my father married the woman he had an affair with that broke up his marriage to my mother, but she had children of her own and I hardly ever even visited them and never got close to her or my stepbrothers and stepsister. None of them ever even bothered to attend my graduations from high school and college or my wedding when I got married.
However, when my father retired they had money trouble and their children have had to help them out, and they expected me to chip in too, but my husband said, “No way.”
Queenie, shouldn’t I feel guilty about not helping them in their old age?—Estranged daughter
Dear Daughter,
If the only thing your father values about you is your money I see no reason for you to feel guilty.
He is the one who should feel guilty for not maintaining contact with you and being a father to you when you were a child and needed him. Now he is literally paying the price for his neglect.
