I (34f) just cut off my brother (40m) who struggles with alcohol and drug addiction after our mom died two months ago. He's living in her home with no job, and I'm bracing myself for impact. What do I do now?

My mom lost her 6-year battle with cancer in October. During her chemo treatments, she lived with me and my family (husband and 10 y/o daughter), and I was her primary caregiver. Once the treatments stopped working, she moved back home which is 4.5 hours from me. At that time, my brother was living in Chicago (several states away) and was homeless. He had been calling asking my mom for money regularly which she gave to him because she was too sick to fight with him about it and she was worried about him. He's struggled with alcohol and drug addiction (mainly weed, but every now and then goes on meth binges) for years which got worse after my dad died in 2010. About two months before our mom died, he decided to come home and stay with her. He was staying with her rent free though and continued regularly asking her for money. She would give him a little bit here or there, but not a ton.

Fast forward to the last week of her life, and I decided to go stay with her too because we knew it was getting bad. She was in hospice care and too weak to get out of bed - mainly just slept all the time and didn't know what was going on. My brother had her debit card and would go on spending binges with it (like $300 at Wal-Mart on random shit and tons of alcohol). He would regularly use her car and would drive it when he was drunk. She required two people to help her get to the bathroom, but if it was at night, he would usually be passed out from drinking so much and I'd have to yell at him to get him up to help me. It was the worst week or so of my life, and we got into huge arguments.

Since her death, he's been staying in her home. We haven't talked about the fight we had, and he's been playing nice. He agreed to have me be the administrator of her estate, but we have to keep the estate open for four months and we're really not supposed to take any money out for ourselves yet until we see what's left over. Despite that, I agreed (foolishly) to give him some. Basically, it's gotten to the point where he's taken well over his share of what his "half" is expected to be after we pay all of her bills and he's spent the majority of it on alcohol. Oh yeah, and a laptop...So, two days ago, he was begging me for $20. I told him I'd send him $20, but that he wasn't getting any more after that from the estate. Now he's pissed and won't speak to me. He also knows that I'm only paying the bills (from the estate) through this month, then everything is getting cut off.

He's the only surviving member of my immediate family, and I feel like I'm getting ready to be in an all out war with him. What makes it worse is that, on her death bed, my mom told me to take care of him. I have no idea what I'm getting myself into and am scared of what might happen since my parents never held any real boundaries with him. Has anyone been through anything similar? Can you give me advice on how to follow through or what I should do now? I feel so fucking guilty since our mom just died...am I a terrible sister?

TL;DR My brother keeps trying to get money out of me now that my mom died, has no job, is staying in her home, and struggles with addiction. I cut him off and shit's about to hit the fan.

Submitted January 01, 2020 at 06:36PM by jessm85 https://ift.tt/2Fg5Fgg