It’s interesting seeing people talk about helping family members or not, some based off of their individual situations and how they handle their money, etc.
I had a family member ask me a few years to co-sign a car loan for them. The reason they needed a new car? Their car was repossessed due to them not paying for it. I said no. If they would have asked differently I may have loaned them some money towards a down payment, or helped out in another way… But I did not want to be stuck with either bad credit, or stuck paying a loan on this 40k vehicle if they were to default on it again.
They must have found someone to help them, because they did wind up getting a new vehicle, and it has since been paid off (by them, presumably). I do not know if they fell into arrears during the loan or not, but I do know they mentioned having paid it off. I’m glad it worked out.
I think it is not just about choosing to offer for many families. It is also about the legal and familial mess that would come from suing for custody or trying to prove the adult is unfit. I also think that short of physical/emotional abuse and extreme emotional neglect, there is a lot of debate around whether children really are better off being taken away from a parent.
My parents both supported their siblings. One lived way above their means and had a string of failed marriages. The other was married to a man who lost his job in middle life because he refused to relocate, and then refused to get a job that he considered was “beneath him” so he stayed unemployed until he died.
Personally I think they were enabling crappy decision making. (All their kids were adults by then so no issue with kids still being in the home).
This does not sound like it is about money, but perhaps some cognitive issues. Has this relative’s health changed recently? How does one think it is do-able to live without a working stove?
As mentioned in another thread, we provide financial help to 2 very irresponsible BILs. They would likely both be homeless without our assistance. This is a significant point of contention between me and my wife. My wife is one of 5 siblings, all of which hate their parents and don’t associate with the parents now, so you can easily surmise that it wasn’t always a pleasant childhood for any of them. My wife excuses the behavior of her 2 brothers because of their unpleasant childhood.
Both could work real jobs but bounce from meaningless retails jobs and/or impossible full-commission sales roles. One brother has an MBA from a really good university and is a doppelganger for Mark Harmon. He is charismatic and bounces from one lonely woman to another that he meets on dating sites. They soon find out he is full of BS and cut him off. The other brother is a very angry white supremacist who has two daughters from an illegal alien from Mexico he knocked up. It would be funny if it wasn’t such a mess. Neither has consistently worked a real job (benefits, reliable paycheck) in a long time. That might require waking up before 9am once in a while.
My wife is a smart, rational woman who is otherwise very responsible with money. She has drawn a line in the sand on this and won’t back down. I either get a divorce or ride this out. Rational 3rd parties can’t sway her. She has no interest in discussing this with a therapist. I worked every day (except for Saturday) of this holiday weekend and it kills me that some of this money is going to her two loser brothers.
I’m hoping your wife also has a job…and that her income is what is contributing to her brothers…at least in a big part.
We have loaned money to a family relative who my MIL said never to loan money to. We actually have done this several times. And we have been repaid as promised each time. We would loan this relative money again. (And my MIL should know we are old enough to make our own decisions).
Omg. That is a really mind boggling line in the sand. I’m sorry. I couldn’t cope well with that. I’d be feeling a lot of emotions. (And feel them for you!)
I have a distant relative who hits for some big sum, could you swing $50K, $100K will be better… but I can try to get by with $50. Every couple of years.
I think this is a great idea, but, this happened to my cousin:
Uncle Cletus had 4 daughters. They are my cousins.
Victoria, Alice, Marianne and Martha.
They all have adult children.
Martha is the most financially irresponsible of the group. She has 4 adult children (2 fem/2 males) who are always in need of financial help.
Marianne (her sister, my cousin) had 2 properties and wanted to help her nephew Daniel (Martha’s son). She fixed up her rental unit and let him live in it until he became stable at work. Marianne often received noise complaints from her former neighbors about the rental unit. She never had had previous complaints.
She went to the house and discovered her rental trashed. Pool had broken concrete! Daniel is a “recovering” addict. She threw him out and he begged to return. She had had enough. She finally had to demo the inside of the house and rebuild the interior. He eventually pulled himself together and ended up being rescued by a very tough woman who wouldn’t put up with the drugs and drinking. He wanted to marry this woman, but she didn’t want to marry knowing his history. He ended up getting a good drug counselor who still monitors him.
Fast forward 10 years and meet Martha’s daughter: Melanie.
Melanie lost her housing when her grandmother died (she was my aunt and the mother of the 4 cousins listed above). Melanie had a horrible history of drug use and the only person who took her in was my aunt. When our aunt died (Melanie’s GM), the house was remodeled and sold. Melanie was offered some help from the cousins but she was abusive and didn’t contribute anything other than doing drugs. Didn’t want to see a drug counselor. She ended up homeless.
She had our emails/texts and was begging us all to bring her some food because she and her druggie boyfriend were “starving”. I guess, I was the only one who responded with “you are a few blocks away from the homeless shelter that serves 3 full meals a day. Go there and they will feed you.”
Her response: "I don’t want their ‘SH***Y’ food!! I want me some BBQ take-out!’ "
My response: "Then you are not really ‘starving’.
I blocked her immediately, but I got responses from my other cousins (her aunts) saying “Don’t give her anything. She will try to sell the food.”
That is the last time I heard anything about her.
Neither Melanie nor Daniel had any buy-in. We were enabling both of them. Daniel got out of it because he wanted to be with his now wife who was a no-nonsense woman. She had lived with a drug addict before and did not want the problems. He cleaned up because of her. No idea if Melanie is still under that bridge or if she’s dead. No one knows.
One of the biggest arguments H and I ever had was about him “lending” money to his younger brother without discussing it with me, likely because he knew I’d object. BiL did not repay the “loan” which was no surprise, and H refused to ask him to honor his promise (again, no surprise.)
BiL came up with a story about needing yet another loan and H wanted to give it to him, on the condition that he make monthly payments even if only $50/mo. BiL got the money then ghosted H for about two years.
I still remember a story from back in the 70s, when I was pretty young. Someone co-signed a loan for a corvette or some other fancy car for a friend. Something bad happened - the friend may have actually died, but I’m not sure. The person who co-signed had to make payments on that fancy car for a long time, while they were raising 2 toddlers.
We’ve had no inappropriate requests for money from family. But in general I would more on board sharing inherited funds (a bit of bonus money) than our own funds.
H has a firm no lending money to anyone rule, though I’m sure it would be different for our children. Hopefully we won’t have to find out.
Our neighbor once asked him for $5000. Back then we weren’t doing much better than living paycheck to paycheck. We certainly didn’t have $5000 to spare. Said neighbor later robbed a bank - though a couple of years after they literally left in the middle of the night to escape people they owed money to. Sad though. They had great kids and were great neighbors.