"У меня..." - usage

I am very confused on it's usage. Really confused on when to use "У меня" vs "У меня есть".

Yeah, it seems to be rather difficult to choose.
Suppose you have a brother, and when you start to talk about him you should say "У меня есть брат". But when someone says "you have a sister, don't you?" and you say "No, I have a brother", you should say у меня брат (but you may even say just брат, as well as in English a brother, I suppose). Another example: you bought a new car, and now you tell about this to someone: "У меня новая машина". But in case your friend suggests going on a picnic in your cars and then remebmers that you have sold your car, you may reply "У меня есть новая машина, with the stress on "новая".
If you mention an object for the fisrt time, you use an indefinite article, and it's most likely that there will be есть in Russian translation. "У меня есть хомяк, который ..." "I have a hamster that ..."

I can't think of anything better than the above. Maybe you would provide some examples that confuse you, and we will talk them over?

"У меня" = "У меня есть".
ZekeComa, приведите примеры, которые вызывают у Вас затруднения!

"У меня есть" is used as STATEMENT of possession, belonging, or when referring to kinship. The word STATEMENT is important here.

Examples:
1. I have a car - У меня есть машина.
2. I have an iPOD - У меня есть iPOD.
3. I have a brother - У меня есть брат.

In colloquial speech, for the sake of fluency, есть is sometimes omitted. This happens in dialogues and this makes your answers more emotional.

Examples:
1. Ты один в семье? - Нет, у меня брат. = Are you the only child? No, I have a brother.
2. Ты на работу на метро ездишь? - Нет, у меня машина. = Do you get to work by subway? - No, I have a car.

There is also a case when you have to say something like: I came here by car, I can give you a ride.
In this case you wouldn't want to say "У меня есть машина" (this would be the statement that you possess a car and the relevant fact here is that at the moment you came by car, not that you have it as a belonging), but rather "У меня машина. Я могу вас подбросить."

In brief, есть in most cases indicates that the fact of possession is important, which is not relevant information in many cases.

У меня есть -> concrete, real existence of the predicate.

У меня -> nonexistence, or abstractions.

Thank you guys. That is really helpful. :)

Перестаньте морочить голову не русским :hlop:. В старо-русском языке, "есть" было таким же обязательным словом как и в нынешнем английском. Например: "Аз есмь царь" - "Я есть царь". Но со временем слово "есть" стало необязательным в разговоре. Теперь и мы русскоязычные, и они нерусскоязычные запинаемся с этим словом, - построение предложений разное. Предлагаю объеденить усилия настоящего форума и ликвидировать пережиток прошлого - "IS" и "ARE".:) Голосуйте кто "ЗА".