Helping adult children with their financial needs is a tricky situation to navigate.
How much is too much? How long is too long?
A woman is struggling with this question with her husband and stepdaughter. So she turned to the “Am I The A**hole” (AITA) subReddit for feedback.
ResourceOk9109 asked:
“AITA that I told my husband to stop supporting his adult daughter?”
The original poster (OP) explained:
“I (47, female) am very frustrated about this and thinking long and hard and want to know if my feelings are valid. My husband (54, male) keeps supporting his daughter (27, female) who’s a single mom.”
“Currently, the daughter lives with her mom and is asking him for help nonstop.”
“I stopped working for a while due to a very bad accident and am living off my pension. My husband earns enough to support us, but not to the extreme where he’ll have too much disposable income.”
“Just 6 months ago, the daughter asked for money for dental implants. I happily told my husband to be as generous as he can be since it’s not always the case and she rarely asks for money.”
“We are very close—I treated her as my own. In our 12 years of marriage, we never fail to fly her and now our grandchild here to see us every year.”
“She never saw me as someone who ruined things for her. I met her dad 3 years after her parents’ divorce, so there was never animosity amongst us. Her mom remarried first before my husband and she has 2 half siblings from her mother and an 8-year-old half-brother from us.”
“We all got along really well.”
“After that first time, she kept asking for more. One time it was groceries, next it’s daycare bills, then phone bills. Just a week ago she asked him to pay some of her bills because she doesn’t have a job now.”
“It’s becoming a habit and I think she’s too old to be asking him for support and this needs to stop. I told my husband how frustrated I am and he was even more upset and disappointed because I’m being unreasonable, he said.”
“He’s giving her $700 weekly and I just found out yesterday that we are behind on rent. I told him how I see him as a really good father, but I don’t think it’s right especially when we can barely pay housing and he just shut me off.”
“I would still be OK with it if our bills are being taken care of. If i didn’t see the notice that we are behind on rent, I probably would never confront him.”
“Its been 3 days since we stopped talking. I have some personal savings that I will use to pay for our rent for now but that will run out.”
“We paid for daycare, but she only tried to work for a week and stopped because she said she can’t bare not to be with her kid 24/7. The following week, she still asked us for help for the daycare bill and that’s when I first told my husband no.”
“If she wants to be with the kid 24/7 so she can’t work, why leave her at a daycare? Then my husband asked would it be OK if we continue helping until she gets back on her own. I was OK with it because my understanding was $700 a month.”
“I dont want us to fight over his kids and money, so when I learned it’s a weekly thing I didn’t mind as long as our bills are paid and I thought it’s going to be temporary and maybe she’s trying.”
“6 months and an accident later, its still the same.”
“AITA??”
“I still pay half of our bills from my savings as of today. I lost a leg, that’s why I’m jobless now and still in therapy.”
“But I’m still looking for remote jobs every day. It’s not like I want all of my husband’s money when for 12 years, I was the one paying for most of our bills.”
The OP summed up their situation.
“I think I might be the a**hole for asking him to stop supporting his kid, but we’re talking about an adult here so I’m in between.”
Redditors weighed in by declaring:
- NTA – Not The A**hole
- YTA – You’re The A**hole
- NAH – No A**holes Here
- ESH – Everyone Sucks Here
Redditors unanimously decided the OP was not the a**hole (NTA).
“So he’s basically giving $700 PER WEEK—basically a whole salary—to a grown adult that is already living at someone else’s expense while not caring for his very own actual minor child’s in house expenses?”
“Well no wonder she’s allowing herself to prefer not to work. It’s not sustainable for your marriage, and it’s not sustainable for her, as it screams that something is happening with this money.”
“Like what is his plan—waiting for his son to be 27 to start paying for him too? Because it’s now your house that needs help.”
“Helping people that already receive help while putting your family in precarity IS NOT OK. He would be putting more in to your household if you were divorced and he was paying child support and this is highly unacceptable.”
“He has to get in check with himself, we’re talking about $700 A WEEK, while your rent is not paid. You’re way too patient, NTA.” ~ whatimidoingherewtf
“NTA. I think you should calmly express your love for his giving heart and let him know that you also care about his daughter and grandchild. But she is a grown woman so his son and wife need to take precedent.”
“Explain that your family’s new financial situation would be strained by supporting her. But you’d be happy to help her find a new job, maybe y’all can job hunt together?” ~ BlissaCow
“While living with my mother and being a single mom, I maybe needed $600 in help a month. Not a week.”
“She’s abusing her father’s kindness and he needs to put a hold on that. I think we can all agree that OP is NTA.”
“The daughter definitely has some skeletons in her closet if she’s shelling out almost $2,800 monthly with no need to pay for rent or utilities or childcare.” ~ FrogVolence
The OP provided an update.Â
“Hello everyone! I’ve shown this to my husband to open up his mind a little and he apologized. He said he needed time to think for days and came up with a solution.”
“He’s cutting his daughter off. She just called to remind him about the weekly allowance and when he said we can’t afford it right now, she just started crying hysterically and told us how selfish we are.”
“When my husband told her about our situation and how we couldn’t afford the $700 weekly as we were behind on rent, all she ever asked was how many days will it be delayed this time.”
“And right there and then he told her there won’t be any help from our side anymore. She just hysterically cried.”
“I feel sorry for her and we still love her, but if my husband won’t stop, it will just get worse. All the help we gave her, we weren’t expecting anything back.”
“I just felt sorry for my husband who did all that and not even a single thank you but rather screw you for not wiring me money anymore.”
“All this while knowing how we are now behind on rent. She sent me demeaning messages soon after and it’s fine because she made it easier for us to cut ties.”
“She became completely dependent and didn’t try working again because she’s getting a full salary worth and it’s a mistake from our end.”
“To those asking, yes she knows about the accident. She still blames us as to why she won’t be getting support anymore.”
“My husband used to say I have the patience of a saint and I just cracked now because it’s too much. We need to care for our own son too.”
“BUT since he’s still being supportive and everything is being taken care of in regards to our kid I didn’t feel the need to include him in the equation. He’s a good dad and that will never change.”
“I messaged his ex-wife to know how much she’s charging her daughter for rent so we could try to do half and she’s quite shocked as well. She said she takes care of our grandkid full time.”
“My stepdaughter kept on purchasing expensive stuff and she was wondering where the money was coming from, but her daughter kept saying those were gifts. She didn’t even know we were supporting her.”
“She was surprised because she’s not charging her anything and is frustrated because all she does is party every weekend.”
“Apparently it’s not dental implants we paid for, it’s veneers and just cosmetic. My husband thinks he was gullible, but he was just being a good dad.”
“He took money out of our retirement fund just to keep supporting her. My husband and I are going to go to counseling, but he apologized and that’s a big step.”
“My stepdaughter was never the problematic kind or so we thought; that’s why we trusted her the first time until it became a habit of just asking and no self-help happening. In a span of 6 months she only tried to work for 1 week.”
“I could go on and on but we certainly did find out the truth.”
It sounds like the original issue was resolved.
Hopefully it was in time to save OP and her husband from losing their home.