u/Few-Emergency1068

I don’t know if I should even be writing this here, but I lost my mom to this disease in November and Syd continues to show up on my TikTok FYP. I know she is remaining positive, so I try hard not to comment on her posts, but I guess I’m looking for others who have lost a loved one to cholangiocarcinoma who might understand how I feel.

I don’t really like seeing her content, or other creators content, but I can’t look away. The way social media algorithms work, they just keep pushing me more and more of this content, but all it does is make me relive the end of my mom’s life. It makes me so sad, and then I read the comments and there are so many people who have no idea what they’re talking about and it makes me so mad.

I know I’m still in the anger side of grief, but I just can’t stop. My mom basically had me make all of her medical decisions for her after she was diagnosed because she was paralyzed by indecision and I’ve spent months wondering if I made the wrong decisions and if she’d still be here if I’d made different ones.

Anyway, I’m just trauma dumping and not wanting to comment anything negative or speculate on her videos, but her most recent content has just left me in tears.

My mom died in late 2025 after a year long battle with cancer. For the last six months or so of her life, she remained employed but was unable to work and was receiving long term disability payments. When I filed her final tax return for 2025, none of the LTD benefits were taxable.

It has now been six months since her passing and I am working to settle the estate as quickly as possible. I know that a Federal Estate tax return is required if the estate has more than $600 in income, so I was hoping to distribute the funds and stock portfolio before surpassing that threshold, however I just realized that her final LTD payment, totaling three times of her biweekly benefit, was paid in 2026.

My question is, is the final LTD payment considered income for income tax purposes? Do I need to delay distributing the estate until after I file an estate tax return? The rest of the income for the estate outside of this policy is about $230. On the W2 she received for 2025, the payments were marked as Third-Party sick pay in box 13, with the amount listed in box 12, as opposed to box 1.