<prompt> Human: My mother won a million on a lottery ticket a few days ago. Shes been living in poverty for most of her life, after working several jobs and raising three kids on her own; recently, shes been taking care of her sick mother. She lives in her mothers house; my grandmother is now in a nursing home. Anyway, my mom has never been very responsible with her money. Im afraid of whats going to happen in the coming months. Ive talked to her a little about seeing a lawyer and a financial adviser. She understands that taxes will be taken from this amount by the IRS--were in a state without an income tax. She seems like shes listening to me, and shes a fairly reasonable person about things, but Im not sure. The individual I call my step-dad theyre not married, on the other hand, has already been blabbing about what needs to be done with the money, giving gifts which would be way above non-taxable, and talking to people he knows who have experience with this sort of money. Obviously, this last part scares me. They havent lived together, in the same house, in years, though he lives on the same property, so I dont know if any common law factors into this.Anyway, sorry for the rambling. Im at a loss on how to help her. I dont want to butt-in and tell her what she should or shouldnt be doing, but I want to give her some sound advice on how to take care of herself. She already offered to pay off my student loan debt and I declined because I dont want there to an expectation that she should give me anything.tl;dr - Mother won million. Step-dad is an idiot. How can I help her?  <response>: Its unfortunate that your mom already broke rule 0: dont tell anyone. So yes, you need to brace yourselves to dangerous idiots like your stepdad who devise plans how to blow 1MM without any financial sense at all.The other big threat is your mothers presumably good heart and financial inexperience. She is likely to share her winnings or invest it badly, and thats even before shes put under emotional duress when the long- lost relatives come out of the woodwork.These two things are likely leave you below poverty after the dust settles! Google a bit and you see that 70 of lottery winners go broke.I have two pieces of advise: first, figure out how much money it is. If you mom won 1MM, the lump sum will be to the tune of 0.5MM, then after taxes maybe 300K. Thats not enough money to live a rich live for even one person! Second, figure a way to lock the money away from good intentions. The easiest would be to take the lotterys annuity, although you can do better with a managed Vanguard Asset Management, or any other sort of trust or annuities. 