I want to tell a story about human greed.
We were friends with the same family for many years. They are very distant relatives of mine. The man left a family with 2 daughters and a normal wife (a foreign language teacher at school). But he found another simple woman that he fell in love with. He did not abandon the family at all, he left them a cooperative apartment, built them a summer house, and bought his eldest daughter an apartment, he also helped with money. He lived with another woman for 35 years. During these years he built a new dacha and exchanged her apartment for a bigger one. At the dacha I kept an apiary, chickens, and made money on it.
We used to visit them at their dacha and it was very hearty. And then, when he was 81 years old, his wife died (suddenly from a covid). Turns out they hadn’t registered their marriage in 35 years. Two days after the funeral, her sister came from the village and kicked him out both from the dacha and from the apartment in which he had lived for 35 years. They were not allowed to take anything of his belongings, not even beehives and bees.
Legally, there was nothing that could be done – it was a civil marriage. He was taken in by his children from his first marriage. But he is very pathetic! For 35 years of life together they only gave the old man clothes and an old cat, with the words: “we have nothing to feed him.
I helped him move. Now I am against civil marriages. Maybe this will serve as an example to someone else.