My brother managed to end up trustee of our grandparents' trust, (either shortly before or shortly after grandma was diagnosed with dementia) flushed a couple hundred grand down the toilet through repeated self-serving and continual bad decisions, didn't follow the terms of the trust, and I ended up having to spend about $50,000 in legal fees to get what was left.

He won't admit he did anything wrong. Or more likely he truly believes he didn't do anything wrong.

He also was a "free spirit" who only visited me twice as an adult (both times when he needed a place to crash), has two nieces he only met when they were tiny, and a nephew he never met until he was 18 last year at our father's memorial shindig. He also lived off our grandparents for MANY years, got sent to college, has been to Australia, Alaska, Costa Rica, etc. on vacations (skiing, skydiving, etc), and that was before he had power of attorney and the trusteeship.

I'd be happy to have a relationship with him if he'd only admit he was a selfish asshole, but all he sees is I swooped in and took the rest of the cash out from under him. (during mediation as we were presenting our case and research, his lawyer kept looking at him like "This doesn't sound anything like what you told me happened", then pretty much told him he better give me what I was asking for because he didn't have a leg to stand on).

The fucked up thing is that I had family (including our dad) and friends that kept telling me to call a lawyer for a couple years, but my response was always that I trusted him.

On the positive, he did take care of our grandmother for a lot of years, got her to quit drinking heavily, and made it so she didn't spend years in a nursing home. I know I couldn't have done it.

The saddest thing is that my grandfather worked very hard to be financially secure, practically raised my brother from about age 10 after a family feud, and my brother disrespected the shit out of his memory and legacy.