It sounds like your partner had a plan for all of you. He didn’t carry it out with much clarity, but he did manage to split his assets among the people in his life.

The 401K is going to his older children (or one of them, at least), and you and your child get the life insurance money (I’m assuming the death benefit is payout from the life insurance, and that there aren’t two policies). Hopefully, that money can help you maintain a happy and healthy life.

A reminder: this isn’t a financial advice column – this is Love Letters. That means the real issue here, for our purposes, is the grief and next steps. You ask whether you should sue one of the first kids for the money related to the house. All I’ll say is that it might cost money to do that, and that the stress of that process could prevent you from adjusting to this new phase of life. It would be a distraction, I guess, but not a happy one. It seems like you’d rather remove conflict than create it, right?

You could put your extra energy toward a bereavement support group. Sure, all of this happened in 2021, but it’s still new. There’s a lot to learn from group therapy – sometimes people talk about how to manage family conflict after a loss. You could volunteer for a cause your husband cared about. You could take a class – something that creates a new ritual. There are many feel-good ways to sit with grief – even to keep busy as you figure out how you feel. This is a good moment to show your teenager that you can take care of yourself and find meaning during a difficult time. Sadness is part of the process. So is staying connected to the world in whatever way feels worthwhile.

Talk to the money people, of course. I assume there’s a lawyer in the mix. But my advice is to make space for the grief instead of letting unnecessary conflict get in the way.

– Meredith

Readers? Thoughts on how to focus energy here?