My parents have four children, including three sons and a daughter. Due to work, my two brothers and I had to move south to build our careers and are earning just enough to get by. Meanwhile, my sister got married and has stayed in the north, living close to our parents. Her husband passed away over 10 years ago and her children are all grown up.
Back when her husband was just diagnosed with cancer, aside from seeking medication, she also turned to fortune-tellers to perform rituals to save him due to her limited education, having only finished high school. Over time, she became superstitious and started working as a spiritual medium for a year or two.
Because of her obsession with fortune-telling and rituals, she lost a plot of land worth VND800 million (US$30,600) and left her under-construction house abandoned.
She also talked our mother into borrowing money to fund her superstitious practices. As a result, my mother is now hundreds of millions of dong in debt.
Even worse, our mother also became highly superstitious, praying and burning paper offerings daily. She does not even have enough food to eat, yet she never skips a day of ritual. She recently sold a plot of land without telling us just to sustain her habit. On one occasion, she spent VND150 million in a single day to perform a large ritual that she said was for our entire lineage.
She is still holding the title deed to the family house and another plot of land. I am deeply worried that sooner or later, she will pawn them off or waste them on her obsession. Thus, my brothers and I recently came home and demanded that she hand over the documents to those properties. She refused, claiming that our father had told her before his death to only give them to us when she was gone.
We are not trying to take over the property or fight over inheritance. We are just afraid she will sell everything and, should any of us fall on hard times, there will be no home to return to. That is why we felt we had no other choice.
We tried to sweet-talk her and even pressed her at times, but we still could not change her mind. I once had to take a break from work and go back and forth between the south and my hometown for two months, spending VND50 million on travel expenses and risking my job, just to convince her. But in the end, nothing changed.
Out of frustration, I lost my temper and said harsh things to her. She ran away for two months. When I finally reached out, trying to make peace, she accused us of mistreating her, saying we forced an old woman to “wander around homeless, without clothes,” and called us “uneducated and unfilial.”
Afterward, she declared that the house and land would be divided into five parts, one for each member of the family, but only on one condition: “Only the one who takes care of me until I die will get the papers.”
For the past 20 years, my brothers and I have sent her money every month. When our father fell ill, we covered all his medical expenses while our sister contributed nothing because she was in debt and unemployed. She even took money from our mother.
Yet now, our mother says we are the ones who failed her. Financially, we have done our part, but because we live far away, we cannot be there with her every day. She is now over 70, yet still clings tightly to the property documents, and we are truly worried.
Are we being unreasonable or unfilial? How can we obtain the title deeds from our mother while still conforming to both moral and legal standards? And how can we distance our mother from our sister to keep her from falling deeper into superstition?
*The opinions were translated into English with the assistance of AI. Readers’ views are personal and do not necessarily match VnExpress’ viewpoints.
