One second, she was setting a bowl of salad on the long table at their rented beach house. The next, his hand slammed into her shoulder and knocked her sideways.

“Move. Go to the kitchen,” he barked.

“Adopted kids aren’t real family.” Laughter burst around the table.

The words landed harder than the shove, but Clara’s face didn’t crack. She straightened, letting the sting harden into something colder. She had spent years swallowing comments like that.

Not tonight.

At the far end of the table, her uncle chuckled. “Hey, kiddo, don’t take it so hard. Bloodline gets the inheritance. That’s how it works.”

More snickering. No one told him to stop. No one said her name in her defense.

Clara let the silence stretch for one heartbeat, then two. Her pulse steadied. Without a word, she reached into her bag, pulled out a thick white envelope, and dropped it in the middle of the table so it landed between the wine stains and the smug smiles.

The sound it made cut through the noise like a gavel.

“You might want to call your lawyers,” she said calmly. “Mom and Dad left this letter for me. The will meeting is tomorrow.”

The laughter died mid-breath. Faces drained.

In that frozen second, as every eye locked on the envelope, Clara finally felt something she had never felt with them before.

Power.

Before we open that envelope and get to the will reading, I want to know one thing from you: what time is it for you right now? And where in the world are you watching from? Tell me in the comments. I want to see how far this story of family, betrayal, and revenge can travel.

As the envelope sat like a bomb in the middle of the table, Clara’s mind flickered back to the first time she understood she wasn’t like the rest of them.

She had been seven when she overheard the word adopted for the first time. Not from her parents, but from her brother’s careless mouth. Back then, Jared was just a teenager slamming doors and rolling his eyes at everything. But the way he said, she’s not really ours, carved a permanent line through every family photo in her head.

Her parents had tried. They were the ones who showed up for school concerts, who stayed up late helping with science projects, who told her over and over that she was chosen, that love mattered more than blood.

But kids don’t always listen to the words.

They listen to the pauses, the size of the jokes, the way no one corrects. At birthday parties, Clara was always the one holding the camera instead of blowing out the candles. At holidays, she was the one clearing plates while the real kids lounged on the couch and argued about who would inherit the beach house someday, talking over her as if she were part of the furniture.

When their parents got sick, everything changed—and not in the way people like to romanticize.

There was no magical moment of siblings uniting. No sudden surge of loyalty from the ones who shared DNA. One by one, everyone drifted back to their own lives. Work was too busy. Flights were too expensive. Hospitals made them uncomfortable.

Clara was the one who moved back in.

She started setting alarms for 2 a.m. and 4 a.m., learned how to pronounce the names of medications, memorized doctors’ schedules. Some nights, when the house finally went quiet, she would sit on the floor of the laundry room, phone in her hand, recording voice memos she never intended anyone to hear.

Day 18, she would whisper. “Dad’s fever is back. Mom apologized for being a burden again. I told her she saved me, but I don’t think she believes it. Jared hasn’t called in a week. I don’t know if he forgot or if he just doesn’t care.”

Those memos piled up like a second diary, each one proof of who stayed and who didn’t.

Every time Clara checked her phone and saw a missed call from her brother or sister, it was rarely about how their parents were feeling. It was about money, insurance, equity in the house—whether the beach rental would still be available after everything was over.

Watching them now around the dinner table, faces tight with fear they thought they were hiding, she could see the throughline from those first childhood jabs to this exact moment. For years, they had treated her presence as optional and her love as guaranteed.

The only thing they had never considered was what would happen if she stopped playing along.

Have you ever been the one who stayed when everyone else walked away, and then watched them show up later to claim the benefits?

Keep that feeling in mind as you hear what Clara’s parents decided to do about it.

The months before that dinner were not just about exhaustion.

They were about choices that would quietly decide everyone’s future.

While hospital machines beeped and oxygen tanks hissed in the background, Clara learned to read the language of decline—how a slight change in her father’s breathing meant a bad night coming, how the way her mother gripped her hand tighter meant there were things left unsaid.

Her siblings visited, but always on their own terms.

Jared would breeze in wearing the same cologne he’d had since college, toss out a few jokes to make the nurses laugh, then pull Clara aside to ask, “So, what did the lawyer say about the estate? Are we going to have to sell the beach place?”

He never asked how many nights she’d slept in a plastic chair. He never asked about the bruises on her arms from catching their father when he stumbled.

Lily, her sister, texted articles about grief and self-care, but somehow never managed to find time to take a night shift so Clara could rest. When she did appear, it was often with a shopping bag in her hand and a strained, guilty smile.

“I can’t stay long,” she would murmur, already checking the time. “I’ve got this networking thing, but hey—maybe once the house sells and things calm down, we can take a trip. You’ll need a break.”

One afternoon, Clara walked into the garage and found Jared on the phone, pacing next to their father’s old fishing boat.

“Yeah, man. It’s basically just sitting here,” he was saying. “We could let it go cheap just to clear some space. Dad won’t be using it again.”

Clara stood in the doorway until he noticed her. When their eyes met, he hung up, annoyed.

“Relax,” he said. “I’m just exploring options. You’re not the only one thinking about the future.”

She said nothing, but she took a picture of the boat that day. Later, when it vanished from the garage and the money never made it into any shared account, she saved the photo in a folder on her phone labeled Receipts.

Her mother noticed everything.

One night, when the house was dim and the television muttered softly in the background, she asked Clara to sit on the edge of the bed. Her voice was thin, but her eyes were sharp.

“You know, we love all of you,” she said. “But love isn’t the same as effort. You’ve carried more than any of them.”

Clara opened her mouth to protest, but her mother squeezed her hand.

“Your father and I changed the will,” she whispered. “There’s a letter for you for after.”

Clara’s chest tightened.

“I don’t want anything,” she blurted out. “I just want you to get better.”

Her mother smiled sadly—the kind of smile people reserve for impossible wishes.

“Getting better is not the point anymore,” she said. “Doing what’s right is.”

Then, softer: “When the time comes, you’ll understand, and you’ll need to be brave.”

The envelope appeared a week after her father’s funeral, delivered by the family lawyer with a look that said more than his words ever could.

It was sealed with her parents’ initials and a neat, precise script on the front.

For Clara—To be read before the formal will reading.

She didn’t open it right away. Instead, she tucked it into the drawer next to her bed and went back to the exhausting work of closing accounts, canceling appointments, and pretending not to hear her siblings’ increasingly frantic questions about property, pensions, and liquid assets.

Every voicemail they left sounded less like grief and more like panic.

By the time the beach house dinner rolled around, Clara had read the letter enough times to know every line by heart—and to feel the weight of the decision her parents had placed in her hands.

They had not just written a will.

They had written a verdict.

The envelope on the dinner table wasn’t just paper. It was evidence. It was judgment. It was years of her being invisible, compressed into a few legal pages that would finally say out loud what everyone had tried to ignore.

When you think about your own family, who would a letter like that be written for—the ones who showed up, or the ones who only called when there was something to gain?

The funeral that came before all of this should have been about closure. But for Clara, it felt more like a test she already knew most of her family was going to fail.

The family chose the beach because it was symbolic. Her parents had always loved the ocean, the way the waves erased footprints at the end of the day, and someone had said it would be healing to scatter the ashes there.

Standing in a black dress that no longer fit quite right from months of stress and hospital food, Clara watched guests filter in with casseroles, flower arrangements, and carefully practiced sad expressions.

From a distance, the family looked united.

Jared stood near the front, tie perfectly straight, shaking hands with the kind of somber nod you learn from movies. Lily moved through the crowd, hugging relatives tightly, eyes filling with tears at exactly the right moments, a tissue always ready.

To an outsider, they were the grieving children doing everything right.

But if anyone had bothered to look closer—close enough to see the way Jared’s jaw tensed when people mentioned medical bills, or how Lily’s fingers kept dipping into her bag to check her buzzing phone—they would have seen something else.

Calculation under a thin coat of grief.

During the service, Clara sat between them, shoulders tight, listening to stories about her parents’ generosity. People talked about how her mother used to slip grocery money into neighbors’ pockets, how her father always showed up with tools when someone’s sink broke or a fence collapsed.

No one mentioned the endless nights Clara had spent in hard plastic chairs.

No one mentioned the quiet financial decisions made at the kitchen table when her parents realized they might not have as much time—or as many truly present children—as they’d hoped.

No one mentioned the shift that happened when Clara moved back in and the others moved emotionally out.

When the pastor finished speaking and the ashes ceremony ended, the crowd drifted toward the food, forming little clusters—old friends in one corner, distant cousins in another, co-workers in a third.

Clara stepped toward the edge of the deck to catch her breath, her hands still trembling from holding the urn moments earlier.

Behind her, voices rose and fell, and grief slowly morphed into something more familiar.

Gossip.

“The house alone must be worth a fortune,” one cousin whispered, just loud enough for her to hear.

“And don’t forget the investments,” another replied. “They were always smart with money. I heard they met with their lawyer last year.”

Clara’s spine stiffened.

She heard Jared’s voice cut through—lowered, but not low enough.

“Yeah, it’s complicated,” he was saying to a small knot of relatives who leaned in eagerly. “We’re talking to the lawyer. We’ll figure out what needs to be sold. The beach place, the main house, maybe the boat. There’s a lot to sort out. Clara’s been handling the paperwork, but we’ll make sure it’s fair.”

That word—fair—tasted poisonous.

Fair would have been someone else taking even one night shift at the hospital.

Fair would have been them missing a meeting or a party to sit beside their father’s bed while he cried from pain he was too proud to rate above a five.

Fair would have been them correcting their uncle years ago when he first joked that she was lucky to be here at all because she was adopted.

Instead, here they were, performing grief for an audience while quietly mapping out the division of property like generals planning a campaign.

During the wake that followed, the mismatch between image and reality became impossible to ignore. Plates of food sat half-eaten as small knots of relatives leaned in close to trade half-formed rumors about trusts and retirement accounts.

A few people approached Clara to ask if she was holding up okay, but their eyes kept sliding past her toward Jared and Lily, as if the real answers were with the biological children.

Some asked vague questions about what comes next, hoping she would accidentally reveal numbers.

She gave polite, short answers and watched their faces fall when she didn’t hand them a script.

From the far side of the room, she saw Jared and Lily huddled with their uncle, heads bent together, voices low but intense. Every now and then, one of them would glance toward her, then quickly look away—the way someone glances at a locked door they fully intend to kick down later.

Their uncle gestured sharply at the ceiling, then at the floor, clearly talking about houses, equity, dividing things up logically.

No one in that little circle looked particularly broken by loss.

They looked worried about being cut out of something they believed they owned by default.

That was the moment Clara truly understood what her parents had done.

When they put that sealed letter in the lawyer’s hands, they had not just updated paperwork. They had written a verdict on years of behavior no one thought would ever matter.

The envelope waiting in Clara’s drawer back home wasn’t just a secret.

It was a scoreboard.

Standing there at the wake, watching her siblings practice their grief for the crowd while calculating their future behind her back, she realized her parents had seen this exact scene coming. They had known their deaths would expose every crack the family tried to plaster over with holiday photos.

They had chosen one person to hold the evidence of what everyone had really done when it counted.

If a stranger had walked into that wake and seen Clara standing alone near the deck while her siblings strategized with the uncle who joked about bloodlines, who would they have believed deserved the inheritance—the ones clinging to their DNA, or the one who had actually wiped her parents’ tears and cleaned their blood off the bathroom tiles at three in the morning?

Back at the beach house dinner, minutes after the envelope hit the center of the table, the performance her family had been perfecting for months finally started to crack.

For a heartbeat, no one moved. The only sounds were the distant crash of waves, the faint sizzle from the grill, and the uneven breathing of people who suddenly realized they weren’t in control of the narrative anymore.

Then everything erupted at once.

“What is that supposed to mean?” Jared demanded, his chair scraping back so hard it nearly toppled. His face flushed a deep, furious red. The practiced funeral composure was completely gone.

“Since when do you get secret letters?” Lily’s voice came out higher and thinner than usual, like it was stretched too tight. “Why would Mom and Dad send something to you and not tell us?”

Her fingers, still manicured from the funeral, twisted the napkin in front of her into a tight knot.

Clara didn’t sit down.

She liked the new vantage point of looking down the table instead of up it.

“They did tell you,” she said, letting her voice stay calm even as heat rose in her chest. “Just not in words you listen to.”

As Jared’s hand shot toward the envelope, she slid it closer to herself with a small, controlled movement.

“Don’t,” she warned quietly. “You don’t get to touch something they trusted me with.”

Her uncle tried to smooth things over with a laugh that didn’t quite land.

“Come on, kiddo. You’re scaring people,” he said, raising his hands in what he must have thought was a calming gesture. “We’re family. Whatever it is, we can sort it out together like we always have.”

Clara turned her head and met his eyes.

“You said bloodline gets the inheritance,” she reminded him, her voice still even. “You sure you want to talk about together now that you think you might be on the wrong side of the paperwork?”

A low murmur rippled around the table. Phones that had been out earlier for sunset photos and food shots were now held closer to laps, quietly recording.

Some cousins leaned forward with eyes wide, sensing something bigger than ordinary family drama. Others suddenly found great interest in their plates, unwilling to be caught obviously taking sides.

“You’re being dramatic,” Jared snapped, seizing the opening. “If this is some guilt trip because you did the boring paperwork and we didn’t, that’s not going to fly. We all lost our parents, Clara. You don’t get a special prize for it.”

There it was—the rewritten history he’d been rehearsing in his head, where everyone’s effort magically balanced out once the estate came into view.

Clara tilted her head slightly, almost as if she were studying a stranger.

“Really?” she asked softly. “You all lost them. Where were you when Dad fell in the shower and I had to drag him out of the tub by myself? Where were you when Mom apologized for breathing too loudly at night because she thought she was keeping me awake? Where were you when you sold his boat behind his back and told your friend to keep it off the books?”

The color drained from Jared’s face so quickly it was almost impressive.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he stammered. “That wasn’t—You’re twisting things. I was just trying to handle—”

“I have the photos,” Clara cut in.

Her voice stayed level, but it was edged with steel.

“I have the dates. I have the texts where you wrote, Clara will handle the emotional stuff. I’ll handle the money, lol. And the ones where you told your friend to just Venmo me. Don’t put it in anything official. Do you want me to read them out loud now? Or should we save that for the lawyer tomorrow?”

A soft gasp went around the table.

Lily looked between them, panic spreading across her face like a stain.

“Okay, everyone. Can we just calm down?” she said, her voice shaking now. “This is getting out of hand. We’re at dinner. People are watching. The neighbors can probably hear.”

“Good,” Clara replied. “They should hear.

“They watched me load Mom into the car at four in the morning. They watched me come home with hospital bracelets still on my wrist. They watched you show up late with coffee and leave early for drinks.

“Maybe it’s time they watched the rest of the story instead of just your highlight reel.”

She reached into her pocket, unlocked her phone, and tapped the screen.

A familiar voice filled the air—thin, tired, but clear enough to cut through every whispered excuse.

Her mother’s voice.

“If you’re hearing this,” the recording began, making the entire table flinch, “it means we weren’t brave enough to say this out loud while everyone was still pretending.

“Clara, you are the one who stayed. Don’t let them make you feel small for that.

“We know what each of you has done.”

The words hung there, impossible to push back into silence.

Jared lunged across the table for the phone, but two cousins—acting on reflex and morbid curiosity—grabbed his arms just enough to slow him down.

No one wanted the recording to stop.

Lily stared at the device like it might catch fire.

“You recorded, Mom?” she whispered. Horror and fascination tangled together.

“She recorded herself,” Clara answered. “I just pressed save—and didn’t delete it when it made you uncomfortable.”

The room suddenly felt smaller, the air heavier.

This wasn’t just about money anymore.

It was about whose version of the past would survive once the legal documents were read.

Jared dragged in a breath, clawing for control.

“You think one letter and a couple of recordings are going to change anything?” he scoffed, but there was a tremor under the bravado. “The will is the will. We all know how this works. You can’t just steal what’s ours because you’re good at paperwork and voice memos.”

Clara’s smile didn’t reach her eyes.

“You keep saying you know how this works,” she replied. “And yet somehow you still don’t understand that Mom and Dad never did anything halfway.

“They didn’t just change the will. They documented why—in writing and in their own voices.

“They made sure there would be no confusion about who carried the weight and who showed up just in time for the reading of the will.”

Around the table, relatives shifted in their seats, the weight of those words pressing on them.

The idea that there was a written and recorded record of everyone’s actions and inactions was more terrifying than any number attached to a bank account. It meant that if things went to court, it wouldn’t just be about legal loopholes.

It would be about who the judge believed when the story of this family was laid bare.

If there were a camera on your family table right now, recording every joke, every dismissal, every relax, we’re family, would you still be as confident about what you think you deserve later?

Or would the replay tell a very different story when it was finally time to open the envelope?

The next morning, the family lawyer’s conference room felt nothing like the beach house.

Gone were the string lights and the smell of grilled food.

In their place: fluorescent bulbs, a long polished table, and a stack of folders that looked heavier than they should have.

Clara sat at one end, the envelope open in front of her, its contents already burned into her memory.

Jared and Lily sat opposite, their uncle between them like some kind of unofficial spokesperson for the bloodline. A few key relatives had insisted on coming for support, but everyone knew they were really there for the show.

The lawyer cleared his throat.

“Your parents updated their estate plan eighteen months ago,” he began. “They requested that a personal letter to Ms. Clara be delivered prior to this reading, which has already taken place. Today, we’re here to go through the formal will.”

Jared leaned back, trying to look relaxed.

Lily fidgeted with a bracelet, metal clicking softly against wood.

“Your parents’ original will divided the estate equally among their children,” the lawyer continued. “However, after their diagnosis and the subsequent period of care, they decided that arrangement no longer reflected the reality of their family dynamics.”

The word dynamics landed like a stone.

The lawyer opened a folder, adjusted his glasses, and began to read.

“To our children,” he recited, “we love you all, but love does not erase actions, and actions have consequences.

“During the final years of our lives, Clara became our primary caregiver. She put her career, her health, and her future on hold to care for us when no one else would. This sacrifice cannot be measured in dollars, but it will be recognized.”

A murmur went around the room.

Jared shot Clara a look that was half fury, half disbelief.

Lily’s eyes filled, but not with grief.

“Effective immediately,” the lawyer went on, “the family home, all investment accounts, and the majority of liquid assets are to be transferred to Clara. She will be the sole owner of the house and the beach property. Additionally, she will have full authority over how our remaining funds are used to continue our legacy.”

Jared slammed his hand on the table.

“This is insane,” he barked. “They would never cut us out like that. We’re their blood. We have rights.”

The lawyer didn’t flinch.

“They anticipated that reaction,” he said calmly. “There is an addendum.”

He lifted another page.

“To our biological children,” he read, “we are not disinheriting you out of spite. We are holding you accountable. You will each receive a modest trust payable only if you meet the following conditions.

“You must complete a set number of community service hours in caregiving roles over the next three years, and you must sit on the advisory board of the foundation Clara chooses to create in our name under her leadership.

“If you decline, the funds will revert entirely to that foundation.”

Silence.

Then Jared laughed—a harsh, bitter sound.

“So now we have to work for our own inheritance,” he scoffed. “Do they seriously expect me to spend my weekends changing bedpans just to access what should be mine?”

“They seriously did,” Clara said quietly. “They watched me do it for free.”

The lawyer wasn’t finished.

“There is also a note here regarding the sale of certain assets,” he added. “Specifically, the fishing boat.”

Jared’s bravado faltered.

“What note?” he demanded.

The lawyer read.

“We are aware that certain items were sold without our consent or Clara’s knowledge. We have adjusted previous gifts and allocations accordingly. Any informal advances taken against the estate by our biological children are hereby considered final. They will not be balanced out elsewhere.”

In other words, the money Jared had pocketed from the boat was the only money he would ever see if he refused the conditions.

The room buzzed with whispered commentary.

Cousins exchanged looks—some shocked, some grimly satisfied.

The uncle who had joked about bloodlines avoided Clara’s eyes altogether.

“You could challenge this,” he muttered to Jared. “We can argue undue influence. She was alone with them. She could have pushed them into it.”

Clara leaned forward, her voice steady.

“Go ahead,” she said. “Take it to court. Then we get to play the recordings, the voice memos, the messages where you talked about dumping responsibility on me, the texts about selling the boat, the nurse’s testimonies.

“You really want a judge to hear all that?”

For the first time, Jared’s anger cracked into fear.

He looked at the lawyer, at the papers, at his own hands.

“This is blackmail,” he whispered.

“No,” Clara answered. “This is consequences.”

She wasn’t gloating.

Not exactly.

The satisfaction she felt was sharper than joy, closer to justice.

Her parents hadn’t asked her to forgive.

They had asked her to be brave.

And brave in that room meant not backing down when the people who had dismissed her pain finally felt some of their own.

If your parents had left a will that rewarded effort instead of blood, would that help your family—or blow it apart the way this one was unraveling right now?

In the months after the will reading, the story didn’t end.

It changed shape.

The beach house, once the backdrop for family vacations and passive-aggressive comments, became quiet under Clara’s control.

She walked through it room by room, deciding what to keep, what to donate, what to sell. Every decision felt like a line drawn between the life she’d been forced into and the one she was finally allowed to build.

With the lawyer’s help, she set up the foundation her parents had envisioned.

It focused on support for family caregivers—people who, like her, had put their own lives on hold to take care of someone else.

Grants paid for respite care, therapy, and legal advice.

The board met once a month in the very dining room where her brother had shoved her away from the table.

At the head of that table now sat Clara.

The seats at the sides were technically reserved for Jared and Lily, should they choose to fulfill the conditions tied to their trusts.

For a while, they stayed empty.

Word had spread about the will, and not in the way Jared had hoped.

Friends who had once laughed at his jokes about milking the inheritance now avoided eye contact.

A few reached out to Clara privately, apologizing for the times they’d gone along with the bloodline jokes.

Others simply faded from the family group chat, unwilling to pick sides out loud, but quietly adjusting their loyalties.

Jared tried to fight back at first.

There were angry emails, then colder, more carefully worded ones—clearly written with a potential judge in mind.

But each time he spoke to an attorney, the answer came back the same.

The will was solid.

The evidence, if dragged into court, would not make him look like a victim.

Eventually, the emails stopped.

Months later, he showed up at a foundation meeting, dressed in a suit that didn’t quite fit the way it used to.

He arrived early for once and hovered in the doorway until Clara looked up from her notes.

“Is the seat still open?” he asked, nodding toward an empty chair at the side of the table.

Clara studied him.

There was still arrogance in the tilt of his chin.

But there was something else, too.

Tiredness, maybe, or the creeping realization that the world no longer revolved around what he thought he deserved.

“The conditions haven’t changed,” she said. “Board meetings, service hours, no shortcuts.”

“I know,” he muttered. “The money’s tight. And my lawyer says this is the only way.”

It wasn’t the apology she’d once fantasized about hearing, but it was more honest than his jokes about blood had ever been.

“Then sit,” she replied. “Listen before you talk.”

Lily arrived a few meetings later.

Her fall had been quieter—lost opportunities, strained friendships, a creeping awareness that the invitations she used to take for granted were no longer arriving.

She didn’t argue when Clara handed her the volunteer schedule for the caregiving center the foundation partnered with.

The first time Lily helped an exhausted stranger fill out forms for hospice care, she came home and cried.

Not the pretty, camera-ready tears she’d been so good at displaying at the funeral.

Raw, messy sobs that had nowhere to go.

Clara didn’t rush to comfort her.

She didn’t twist the knife, either.

She let the work do what it was supposed to do—confront them with the reality they had refused to see when it was their own parents lying in the hospital beds.

Revenge, Clara realized, didn’t always have to look like someone losing everything and walking away alone.

Sometimes it looked like forcing people to sit with the consequences of their choices over and over until the story they told themselves no longer matched the truth.

The trusts would only pay out if Jared and Lily completed the full term of service and board work.

Whether they would make it all the way through remained to be seen.

Clara knew now that their struggle was no longer her responsibility.

Her duty had been to her parents: to honor what they had written, and why.

One evening, after a long board meeting, she stood alone on the deck of the beach house—the same spot where she had once stood with a plate in her hands and a knot in her stomach.

The ocean looked the same.

But she didn’t.

The girl who used to brace for impact every time someone made an adopted joke had been replaced by a woman who understood exactly how much her presence had mattered.

She thought about other people watching this story play out on a screen somewhere—people who had been shoved aside at their own family tables, told in a hundred different ways they were less than.

You don’t have to wait for someone else to write your worth into a will.

You can start acting like it’s already true.

If you were in Clara’s place, would you have done what she did?

Let the will stand, make them work for every dollar, and build something that outlived all the petty cruelty?

Or would you have taken the easy way out, split everything equally, and pretended the years of disrespect never happened?

Tell me in the comments which ending you believe is real justice in a family like this, and whether bloodline alone should ever be enough to decide who gets the inheritance.