“Your great grandmother, Josephine Sinclair, established individual trust funds for each of her great grandchildren,” Winona explained while opening a thick file. She told me the funds were seeded equally to ensure our financial independence.
She slid a folder toward me and stated that the current value of my trust was approximately 2.8 million dollars. I felt a strange blankness as my brain tried to line up that number with the reality of my coffee shop shifts.
I had taken out student loans and turned down unpaid internships because I needed to pay my rent. All the while, nearly three million dollars had been sitting in an account with my name on it.
“I don’t understand why I was never told about this,” I said while staring at the neat ink on the page. Winona looked at me with a professional delicacy that felt like a hidden form of sympathy.
“The documents specified that your parents were responsible for informing you and facilitating access to educational distributions at eighteen,” she replied. My chest went cold as I realized they had received annual statements for twenty five years.