This is gonna get buried, but might be my time to shine! To keep the preface short, grew up in a crazy house (drug abusing/alcoholic parents) and I would go to my grandmothers house most of my young life. My grandmother was like a mother to me and she passed away in 2008 and left behind money in her will for me (about 30K). My mother was the trustee on the will, so she was technically responsible for getting me my money when it was time. Instead, her brother manipulated her into giving it to her and he would repay her with interest. Skip forward some amount of time and my house burned down, living out of a motel with my mom (on government assistance as well, I was about 15 at the time). We lose assistance, go to live with my Uncle now (my Mom's brother who took my money).
My mother always painted him to be this awful man who took our money blah blah blah. One day I snap and freak out at him over it (I dropped out of school because I was moving constantly, crazy household, I just wanted to live normally). He kicked me out because I was freaking out and he had no idea what I was talking about, he must have thought I was crazy. From that day, my mom pretty much dipped out of there and left my brother and I sitting on his front lawn with a trash bag with some clothes in it.
From there, my brother and I (I was 15 and my brother was 17, no diploma's, no license, just the clothes on our backs and our trash bag) made our way to our dad's house and got jobs, moved out, brother went to jail, I was living place to place and being homeless etc. It took me a few years to get on my feet after this.
Skip to about 5 years after being kicked out of my Uncles house, I'm in therapy for all this stuff from when I was younger and part of it was to call me Uncle and ask for forgiveness for lashing out at him. I decide to meet with him, and it turns out that every single month for the past few years, my mother was getting checks from him to repay my part of the will (which was rightfully mine now). All those nights of being hungry, having nowhere to sleep, working 70 hours a week with convicts in a crazy manufacturing plant at the age of 16, and she was getting thousands of dollars from him saying that I was living in Manhattan going to school and she needed money to pay for my tuition.
The story is way crazier and more in depth than this little excerpt and I never saw a dime of this money. I didn't talk to my mother for a few years after this, and just recently reconnected with her to help settle my mind over it. We're fine now, I'm never going to help her with anything and we'll never have a good relationship, but at least I won't have constant anxiety in fear of running into her anymore.
Life for me is great now, I make a fuck ton of money as a software engineer (self taught, I did get my GED though!), I have a good car, my own house, and I'm living the dream. Took about 8 years of struggling but I definitely was able to get out of the hole that I was thrown down at the beginning of my adult life.
TL;DR My mom took my will money, spent it all on her abusive boyfriends business while I was homeless and told everyone else that I was doing great and in school to cover her shittyness.