I'm not in touch with my parents. There wasn't a set final straw per se, as it's more of their decision than mine, and there wasn't a single specific event that led up to it.

My parents got divorced when I was a little over a year old. My mom took my sister & me to a state a few hundred miles away when so that she could live with the guy she left my dad for. I didn't really get a chance to see my dad that much when I was a kid because he was so far away.

My mom's boyfriend was an abusive jerk. As I got older, I started to fight back against him when he was roughing up my mom, my sister, and me. By the time I was 14 I was able to put up a pretty good fight. He ultimately told my mom that she was going to have to choose between being with him and having me, because he would leave her if she kept me. My mom decided to relinquish custody.

The problem was that in the 12-ish years since the divorce, my dad had re-married and started a new family and moved on, and he and his new wife already had kids, were happy with their life as it was, and didn't really want me to come and be a part of it.

When my mom relinquished custody of me, my dad didn't accept custody. I spent about a month in state care while my parents had their pissing contest while each told the other that they wouldn't take custody. Finally, my dad relented, but in order to placate his wife he decided that he was going to accept custody but send me to a boarding school. That way, even though he was my guardian, I wouldn't be living with him and his wife and new kids. When he came to get me out of state care, he explained the situation and that I would be going to boarding school and that I could not live with them once I finished school.

So I finish school and head out into the world. I tried to keep in touch with my dad on friendly terms for the first few years--Father's Day cards, Christmas Cards, etc.

When I was about 21 he sent me a letter explaining to me that I didn't need to do that. He said that I'm a good guy and I haven't done anything wrong, but I remind him of a bad time in his life that he would rather not be reminded of and he wants to focus on his family with his wife and kids. He said that we're both adults and we can recognize that even though he's biologically my dad, we're never going to have a father-son relationship and there's no reason to pretend it's there.

After that (over ten years ago) I stopped sending him cards and I haven't seen or heard from him since. I haven't seen or heard from my mom since I was 14 and she relinquished custody.

So there was never one "final straw;" I guess it was just me realizing that they didn't want to have a relationship.