‘Wills and inheritances can drive families apart. Often one person is in charge of the estate and the power goes to their head’ – family estrangement psychotherapist

Psychotherapist Karl Melvin specialises in the area of family conflict and estrangement and says it’s more common than people may think

Karl Melvin, author of 'Navigating Family Estrangement: Helping Adults Understand and Manage the Challenges of Family Estrangement'

Karl Melvin

There is still such stigma surrounding family estrangement but there is nothing fundamentally wrong with people who are estranged. In my work as a family estrangement psychotherapist, I run support calls every few weeks to get estranged people together. People from all over the world join these calls and they are all professional, well-educated, communicative and reflective.

For want of a better word, they are all ‘normal’: they are you, they are me. They are not pariahs. They are not problem-makers. They are people who are asking themselves tough questions such as ‘What did I do to cause this issue?’