Anouk (38): “When my father passed away, I was incredibly surprised: it turned out I was the only one disinherited"

The phone call that changed everything

Last month my father passed away. Heart failure, they said. It happened quickly, unexpectedly, and yet... maybe not. My father had been struggling with mental health issues for years. Depressions, anxieties, periods of silence when no one knew what he was thinking or feeling.

Yet his passing felt as if the ground momentarily slipped away beneath me. No matter how broken someone is, he remains your father. And in my case, he was that in every sense of the word — difficult, but also close.

The days following his passing were eerily quiet. No more panicked phone calls in the middle of the night. No messages with unreadable sentences, no worries about his medication or about the neighbor who supposedly gossiped about him. The house felt more peaceful, but my mind did not. I couldn't stop thinking about everything that had happened. About how often I tried to pull him out of those dark places. About how I thought love could fill a void that could never be closed.

I felt sadness, but also something I found hard to articulate: a kind of weary compassion. As if I could finally exhale, but wasn't sure if that was allowed.

More worries than a child

My father was not the man he wanted to be. He had a gentle heart, but life had hardened him. After my mother passed away, when I was 19, he progressively deteriorated. He suffered from panic attacks and could not sleep for days on end.

Sometimes he would call in the middle of the night: “I can't take it anymore, Anouk.”

And then I would come.

Always.

I sat next to him on the couch, listening to his stories that became the same over time. About the past, about how it all went wrong, about guilt and regret. I listened, poured coffee, and persevered.

My brothers came less often. They said, “You can't save him.” But I couldn't help it. I felt responsible, as if his life was in my hands. There were evenings when I came home and cried in the bathroom, quietly so my children wouldn't hear.

I felt like I was living between two worlds: that of a daughter and that of a caregiver. I carried his sorrow as if it were my own. Somewhere I hoped he saw that. That he knew I was his anchor, the only one who stayed when everyone else left. But he never said it.
Never a thank you, never recognition.

Only silence.

In recent years

Over the past few years, we had less contact. Not because I didn't want to see him, but because I was getting tired myself. I had a family, work, and a body that was crying out for rest.

He would still call from time to time, but the conversations often went in circles. About medication, about the neighbors, about the past. Sometimes I would hang up with a knot in my stomach. I felt guilty, but also relieved. Because no matter how much love you have, there comes a time when you can no longer bear it.

When I heard that he had passed away, I didn't know how to react. I didn't cry immediately. I just kept staring at the ceiling for a long time that evening. His voice echoed in my head, his sentences that were never completed, his breathing on the phone. I thought about the times I held his hand during a panic attack, how his hand trembled, and I pretended to be stronger than I felt.

I wondered if he still thought of me on that last day. If he knew that I forgave him, even though I had never said it out loud.

Maybe he felt it.

Perhaps that was enough.

And yet there remained that poignant realization: he is gone, and I didn't say goodbye the way I wanted to. As if an invisible thread snapped without me having touched it.

“There is a will,” said my brother

A week after the cremation, my brother called. His voice sounded businesslike, distant.

“Anouk, I have something to tell you,” he said.

There was a will.

“Did you know that?” he asked.

I knew nothing.

My father had never said anything about that. I thought everything would be divided fairly automatically, like in most families. But that was not the case.

My brother said, “You have been disinherited.”

I literally felt my heart constrict. My first reaction was disbelief. I asked three times if he was joking, but he remained silent.

“It's in the will,” he said simply.

The silence that followed felt heavier than all the words I had ever exchanged with my father. I thought about all the times I visited him, sat by his hospital bed, reassured him as he lost himself. And now, after everything, this was his final message to me.

No letter, no word of thanks. Only exclusion.

I couldn't say anything, just cry — those deep, silent tears that seem to come from your soul.

A kick when you're down

I barely slept that night. In my head, the images of all those years I spent with him, organizing his papers, getting his medication, flashed by. The times I pulled him out of bed because he thought he was going to die. The letters I wrote to agencies, the conversations with his psychiatrist. And now this.

A signature under a document in which I no longer even existed. My husband said, “Maybe he didn't know what he was doing.” But my father wasn't demented. He knew exactly what the relationships were. And that's what makes it so painful.

I've been racking my brain over the question of why.

Was he angry?

Did he feel betrayed because I had distanced myself?

Or was it his way of maintaining control, even after his death?

I will never know. The idea that someone you loved so much could deliberately erase you is unbearable. I thought death was the end of suffering, not the beginning of a new kind of pain. This felt like a blow after years of caring. A silent rejection, wrapped in legal paper. And that does something to a child, no matter your age.

Perhaps rest, but no peace

Somewhere I try to believe that he didn't do it out of malice. That he was just confused, or influenced by someone. Maybe he thought I didn't need it. That I would manage, as always. After all, that's what I always did - care, carry, survive. But deep down it feels like a fracture that will never heal.

I went to the notary's office to see it in black and white. There it was. My name, crossed out, literally. My heart skipped a beat. I felt a mix of anger and sadness. I wanted to scream, but no sound came out. The notary looked at me kindly, as if this were routine. But for me, it was anything but that.

I thought: how can a parent do this? Reject your child with the stroke of a pen. I drove home in silence the entire car ride. Once home, I sat on the couch and stared at a picture of him for hours. He was smiling in that picture, as if he wasn't the one who had erased me. Maybe he has finally found peace, but I am far from it.

What I feel now

There is no anger left, only emptiness. I gave everything I could. Maybe too much. I tried to ease his life, but I couldn't save him from himself. And that's the harsh truth I must now face. I think I never really reached him, because his pain was too great.

Yet sometimes I still talk to him. At night, when the house is quiet, I whisper that I forgive him. Not because he deserves it, but because I need to move on. I don't want to become bitter. For a long time, I thought that love had to be reciprocated. But now I know that sometimes it's just about giving, without ever receiving anything in return. Perhaps that's the purest form of love.

Yet there remains a tension. When I see my brothers, I feel a distance. Not because I'm jealous, but because there's now something between us that will never go away. A choice that didn't come from us, but from him. Sometimes I think that families break in ways that no one sees. Not through arguments, but through silence. Because of what was never said.

Fact Sheet – Disinherited by your parent: what does that mean?

• In the Netherlands, a parent may disinherit a child, but the child always retains the right to a so-called legitimate portion – which is half of what they would normally inherit.
  → National Government – Disinheritance of a child (2025)
• The legitimate portion must be claimed within five years of the death at the notary or the heirs.
  → Notaris.nl – What to do in case of disinheritance (2025)
• In 2024, more than 3,200 inheritance cases were filed in Dutch courts, many of which were about disinheritance and family conflicts.
  → Judiciary Annual Report 2024

What I tell myself

Sometimes I think that maybe my father has found peace. And that I should too. I can't change his choice, but I can choose how I deal with it. I don't want his last act to color my life.

I choose to maintain gentleness, despite the harsh edge of this story. Because I know one thing for sure: I never abandoned him. Not even when he let go of me. Yet one thought often haunts my mind:

Should I claim my legitimate share?

Not out of spite, but on principle.

Because I believe that justice should remain just, even if love was not. But every time I pick up the phone to call a notary, I put it down again. What do I get for that money, if it feels like blood money? Perhaps letting go is my only inheritance. And that, as painful as it may be, is perhaps the only peace I will ever get from him.

ANOUK (38), mother of 2 kids