House Politics

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I'm in an unusual position.

I have extended family who are wealthy, with the base of their fortune coming from oil money and rolling through other investments. I should have inherited some measure of it, but my father's father married a non-Catholic and so they were cut out of part of the will... but not all of it.

Some time ago he was presented with documentation offering him a small annual stipend from an oil company pumping oil out of our land. He signed it because he is a fool, but the company has not been paying through the law firm that they contacted us through, and so I have confirmed two things:

1. I still have a claim to the oil and the oil money.
2. They are in breach of contract, discarding the foolish agreement that my father made. It was probably unconscionable to begin with, but now they are in breach.

I am at a juncture. I can do what it takes to go and get that money, and probably shake down my distant cousins in a civil settlement, but I make some serious enemies if I do this. How would you go about this?