Much as it would be wonderful if everybody got the chance to grow up in a supportive and stable family, we all know that this is often far from the truth. Everybody has their struggles when it comes to their relatives and those who took care of them when they were growing up, and some people have had far worse luck than others.

Experiencing the passing of a parent is already a seismic event in an individual’s life, but when that happens to somebody as a kid, that is a whole other level of difficulty. Processing a loss while simultaneously being unsure of who takes custody of the child can be a deeply traumatic experience to go through. If there were instabilities in the family unit beforehand, these kinds of complications only make them far worse. It is a situation that can get so messy it seems like there is no viable way to resolve it.