Missed opportunities your family had of becoming filthy rich

[markum9]

My wife's grandparents were extremely rich from owning some sort of retail store throughout the midwest. Her grandmother was clinically depressed, but of course at that time nobody really knew how to diagnose or treat it. She ended up committing suicide, and her side of the family blamed the husband and caused a rift between the two sides of the family.

My wife's grandfather then became an alcoholic and blew through a good chunk of the money. Still with a pretty large chunk left, his side of the family coerced him as he was pretty much incapacitated on his death bed to will all of his assets to their side of family, even cutting the children out of the will (they were all 18+ at the time).

I'm not sure the exact figures, but my mother-in-law should have inherited a couple million around 1960, but instead got nothing. They didn't even know enough at the time to take the family to court over it.