My father recently died. His daughter from his first marriage (which ended several years before his marriage to my mother) has made efforts to stay in touch with me since his death. I have never had a direct relationship with my half sister. She has had a difficult life, missing out on many of the advantages my sister and I enjoyed. I want to be sympathetic to her struggles, but though I’ve tried, I’ve never felt an attachment to her. She has been an intermittent presence and not always a pleasant one. Is it ethical to decide not to carry on this relationship? Or does someone else’s desire for connection, which perhaps comes out of a strong wish to be part of a family, outweigh my personal preference? J.G., NEW JERSEY

The mere fact that you’re asking this question reflects positively on your value system. It appears that you are hypothetically open to including a half sister in your life and empathetic to her specific hardships. But you are in no way ethically obligated to have a relationship with someone you don’t like simply because you happen to share fragments of your father’s DNA.

In the same way that it would be crazy to consciously distance yourself from a beloved sibling because you discovered they were adopted, it makes no sense to amplify a relationship with a comparative outsider because of biology. This person is not a child you chose to bring into the world. She is an acquaintance who (at most) happens to resemble you physically. The responsibility you feel seems entirely based on a marriage that failed before you were even born. Let’s say you were to suddenly find out that you weren’t technically related to this person; let’s pretend that this woman’s mother cheated on your father and she was the product of that affair. Would you then feel less guilty about not sharing your life with her? She’d still be the same unhappy person who desires familial connection. Regardless of genealogy, people need to be judged on the merits of their personalities. You can’t love someone out of guilt.

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You are obligated to be civil to this woman and to recognize that she’s a legal extension of your father’s family. But you are not obligated to be emotionally close with her.