‘Lawyer up, sweet pea, get that money back’: Daughter finds out her dad has stolen her inheritance and blown it on a failing business

Money can often bring out the worst in people. One girl was robbed of her inheritance and possibly her future after her impulsive dad decided to invest the money left to her by her grandad in a restaurant.

The moment the 17-year-old confronts the older man about the money has been making the rounds online via a TikTok account that reshares people’s viral videos, under the handle @happiestofficial. Though We Got This Covered has not been able to trace the original video or find out the identities of the father and daughter, the clip has gathered 1.2 million views and received strong reactions from users of the short-form content app.

In it, the dad confesses to investing his daughter’s inheritance into a friend’s restaurant called The Dog and Duck Bistro, except it was more like a bailout than anything else. “The reason it was a failing is because it needed more money,” the man tries to justify as he grasps at straws. Well, that makes it clear as rain why the granddad decided to skip a generation when choosing a new home for his assets.

The younger woman is understandably perplexed, especially because every time she attempts to explain why the dad is out of line, he keeps correcting her by saying the money isn’t hers, but theirs and that she is too young to understand the situation (we have all heard that at least once in our lifetimes). “I know more about, and are more worldly wise than what you are,” he attempts to argue.

As a final blow that is more like an admission of guilt, the dad exclaims in the heat of the argument, “He [the grandad] had no right giving it [the money] to you, he should have given it to me.” Everyone watching can tell the man had been holding on to that grudge for a long time.

“There it was. Right at the end,” one viewer commented. “That’s the real reason he did it,” another added. “That’s the real reason he did it,” a third agreed. Everyone else was telling the unidentified girl to lawyer up and wondered about the legal implications of the video. How did this happen? How could he have gotten access to the money? Some speculated that maybe he was the trustee in charge of his daughter’s trust fund.

According to The Gazette, a beneficiary can accuse a trustee of breach of trust if they mismanage the trust assets, transfer them to a beneficiary that should not have received them, or engage in self-dealing — a term for when the trustee takes advantage of their position to act in his or her own interests instead of those of the beneficiary.

Of course, we don’t know the specifics of this particular situation, but it sounds like the girl might have legal legs to stand on if she decides to get her money back. At the very least, as one TikToker suggested, she “better tell Dave to put [her] name on that restaurant deed because it sounds like [she] now [owns] a restaurant.”

We would love to see how this story plays out, but alas, we still do not know the real social media accounts of the people in the video. Still, we wish this girl the best of luck, it sounds like she needs it.