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- For Love & Money is a column from Business Insider answering your relationship and money questions.
- This week, a reader’s brother lied to her for years about what happened to their mother’s diamond ring.
- Our columnist feels that financial retribution is unlikely, but suggests forgiveness, for her own sake.
Dear For Love & Money,
My mother died in 1975, and I was given her diamond ring with six diamonds of unknown value. In 1980, my brother and his wife were given my father’s house after he moved in with his second wife. When my husband and I moved to Florida, I left two boxes of personal items with my brother.
Soon after our move, however, my husband and I divorced. He was traveling to New York, and I asked him to pick up my two boxes. When he returned, both boxes were unsealed, and the ring was gone. Both my sister-in-law and brother said my husband must have stolen it. I was devastated. During the divorce, my ex-husband denied taking it, and the judge said I had no proof.
After that, I only saw my brother twice in 45 years and spoke to my sister-in-law about 10 times during that time. Out of the blue, my brother called me on my 67th birthday and told me his 45-year marriage was miserable. Then, he mentioned that my sister-in-law had even pawned the rings he had given her, including my mother’s ring.
I was in shock and repeated, “She had mom’s ring?” He responded, “Yes, but can you believe she sold the rings I gave her?” I said, “She is a thief, and you told me that my ex stole it.” He responded, “Yeah, she kept it on the police scanner’s antenna and never wore it.”
I haven’t spoken to either one of them and feel betrayed. Should I try contacting an attorney or let karma take its course?
Sincerely,
Betrayed By My Brother and Sister-in-law
Dear Betrayed,
As I read your letter, my heart broke for you. I can tell that your mother’s ring held immense value to you that superseded any dollar amount. To lose something this precious to someone who misled you about what happened to it and left it hanging on an antenna until they pawned it off for fast cash is truly gut-wrenching.
Wanting to extract a pound of flesh from the perpetrators is the most natural thing in the world, and yet, it’s been 45 years. Fortunately or unfortunately, there’s no longer any financial vengeance to be had. You’re long past the statute of limitations for theft, and that doesn’t even touch the evidence you would have to provide — evidence that is as long gone as your mother’s ring.
While I wouldn’t bother hiring a lawyer, if it’s financial restitution you’re after, you could try asking him for a ballpark figure. However, based on how you described your conversation with your brother, I have my doubts about how receptive he’ll be to this suggestion. Even as you openly panicked over a ring, he remained resolutely focused on how poorly he’d been treated — so focused, in fact, that he didn’t seem to recognize he owed you an apology, let alone repayment.
While financial recompense and an apology may help you move on, neither of those will get your mother’s ring back, and it’s important to remember that’s what you really want. In the absence of that, as you think about next steps, consider what you need to move forward from this, and if further contact with your brother needs to be part of that plan.
I find it telling that you’ve only seen your brother twice in the last 45 years. That’s a long time to go without speaking to someone. However, if you are interested in rekindling the sibling bond you presumably once shared with your brother, it’s telling that he remembered your birthday, called you after all this time, and shared his emotional hardships with you.
What you do with this overture is up to you. Perhaps you can put his betrayals behind you and reconnect with the family you have left. Ask yourself what you would need in order to reinvest in this relationship. An honest apology from him? An explanation for why he lied to you for all of those years? If so, having a frank and open conversation with him may be one path forward.
Or maybe you’re the karma you’re hoping will take its course, and you decide not to re-engage with someone who betrayed you so deeply, and leave him to find someone else to burden with his troubles. That would also be understandable and well within your rights.
Whatever you decide to do with your brother, I hope you forgive him — for your own sake. This isn’t to say you should invite him to Thanksgiving and laugh together about the time his ex stole and pawned the precious keepsake your mother gave to you. You can forgive your brother and still choose to never speak to him again.
In recent years, the conversation around forgiveness has shifted from an unquestioned moral virtue to a dicey offshoot of toxic positivity. After all, when people do awful things, where’s the justice in letting them off the hook to be “good” ourselves?
I always go back to the quote: “Holding onto anger is like taking poison and expecting the other person to die.” But I’d expand on that; holding on to anger is like being poisoned, and rather than rushing to the ER to have your stomach pumped, you stay home alone, waiting for the poison in your stomach to kill your poisoner.
Forgiveness is about healing the wound another has given you because you refuse to let their transgression destroy you. It’s not hard because it’s a magnanimous gesture; it’s hard for the same reason that extracting a nail from your foot is hard. What emotions will pour out without your anger there to block them? And yet, as long as the nail remains in your foot, so will the pain.
You didn’t deserve your brother’s betrayal, and you don’t deserve to let that betrayal devour your joy for the rest of your life. So, decide what — if anything — you need from him and from your relationship, and let karma take its course. You have a life to live.
Rooting for you,
For Love & Money
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