agonyaunt | (no subject)

My 13-year-old niece “Lacey” suffers from several learning disabilities and was drowning in the public school system. My brother approached our parents and me for help paying to put Lacey in a private school with smaller classes and more individualized learning. It is expensive as all hell, but Lacey has been thriving these last three years. The problem is that our parents are retiring and can’t afford to keep paying their share while my husband and I are looking to buy a vacation home near his family (they live overseas). This will be Lacey’s last year. Only my brother refuses to tell Lacey anything. Instead he is rallying against my husband and me for being “selfish” and putting a house over the well-being of Lacey. I have offered to pay for private tutoring until Lacey graduates but Lacey is my niece, not my daughter.

We have been extremely generous until now, but we didn’t accept it would be forever. My brother and husband got into it about the tuition, and my husband made several unkind remarks about my brother’s ability as a father. My brother isn’t speaking to either of us now. Honestly, I am worried about Lacey but more tired with the lack of maturity of her father. He refuses to see reason and keeps burying his head in the sand on the subject. What do we do here?

—Three Years Is Enough

Dear Three Years,

The advice I wish I could give is to go back in time and be clear that you were offering to pay for Lacey’s education a year at a time, for as long as you could comfortably afford it in addition to your own needs and wants, not that you were planning to sponsor her until her graduation. Alternatively, I wish I could go back in time and tell you not to be quite so explicit about prioritizing a luxury purchase over your niece’s well-being. I’m not saying you and your husband were wrong for making that choice. It’s your money! It’s totally your choice! The framing just might have been a little bit hard to hear, for people who thought you were all equally invested in supporting this child.

Your husband should apologize for his attack on his brother’s parenting, and even if they aren’t able to repair their relationship, you should make sure the tutoring is paid for. You’re doing it for Lacey, not her dad. Invite her to your vacation home sometime, too!

https://slate.com/human-interest/2023/10/dear-prudence-school-vs-vacation-house.html

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I also agree that they should continue paying (assuming they can afford the double amount merely by not buying a second home), but it's possible that that isn't really an option for LW. Maybe it's an issue in her marriage if her husband's family is far away and a lot of money has been spent on hers.

But it sounds like the decision about the money has been made already and she's trying to ask what else she can do about her relationship with her brother. An adult who throws an emotional tantrum and flings insults at his in-laws because they refused him money is being immature, no question, but is there anything you can do about that? Not really! Clear boundaries about financial transactions are always a good idea, but I doubt they would have quelled his resentment. LW and her brother have a fundamental disagreement about the obligations in their relationship. He thinks she and her husband morally owe as much help as they can afford to his daughter and they disagree. He thinks their position is selfish, and ultimately the answer is, "Yes, it is". They can do whatever they want with their own money, but they can't prevent people from thinking it's selfish if they spend it on themselves. Many people out there would argue that it's his expectations that are out of whack (though this is a cultural issue). If she just wants reassurance on that point, sure, plenty of people would say you're not being a horrible person! But the brother isn't going to care.

My cultural assumptions, now that I try to verbalize them, are that stronger obligations go from parent to child and occasionally vice versa, than from sibling to sibling or aunt/uncle to nibling. (I don't say there is any right or wrong here, just that I was raised on these unspoken assumptions.) So it's less surprising to me that the grandparents ponied up than that the sister did. (My father even helped pay for my brother's stepson to go to parochial school, despite their being barely acquainted, and I was only mildly surprised, but none of us siblings would have thought to offer.)

Yep. I'd be okay with asking my parents for help, but I wouldn't dream of asking my siblings unless it was life-or-death, and my siblings have significantly higher household incomes than I do. (So do my parents, but I figure their income's going for medical stuff, and if Dad dies before Mom then Mom's going to suddenly be a lot poorer.)

Interesting, because I definitely feel more-or-less the same obligation to my siblings as I do to my parents/children. Certainly across my own four siblings, our parents, and the last two decades we've had different people supporting others at different times, very much on the basis of who had surplus and who was in need, and how that's changed over time.

Agreed. Unless you have a particularly bad relationship with your siblings, or weren't really raised as siblings and are cordial but only related in name only, I would assume you have a pretty strong obligation to them.

Unlike your parents, they'll likely be with you for your *entire life*, after all.

Well, in my extended family, there's a lot of pitching in to help out, but it's usually not monetary between adult siblings. Things like my aunts and uncles would pay airfare to fly my parents to visit them after my dad was in an accident because my mom wasn't safe to drive it with narcolepsy, or one of my uncles would drive nine hours to pick them up and drive them there. One of my uncles has a disabled child and has always had lower income and the help they got was in the form of invitations out and free babysitting, hand-me-down furniture, etc, from siblings. I have an aunt who often couldn't afford the travel to family get-togethers and my parents would offer to drive to her house and pick her up on our way (a detour of a few hours out of an eleven-to-thirteen hour drive). These are American families, the one of Polish catholic midwestern farmer background, the other NYC Jewish.

My wife is a Swedish-speaking Finn and one of her sisters in law is a millionaire. When my mil turned 60 she told (not asked) her three children that she wanted to be taken to a posh Japanese spa in Stockholm with the entire family, six adults and six grandchildren, some of whom were toddlers at the time. The trip required two overnight trips on a ferry and three days in a bed and breakfast and the three siblings divided this cost evenly, even though as stated, one brother is married to a millionaire. The other brother's wife was in grad school at the time, and I was unemployed; we were already skimping on our food purchases when she got this bill. They didn't even offer to loan it to us temporarily. (The whole trip was a nightmare because of all the small children, the hideous weather, and the stupid overhyped spa, but that's another rant.) When my wife had a mental health crisis, millionaire sil (a therapist) gave her a reference to a private therapist with the right specialization, but nobody offered to help pay for the therapy so she stopped after social security wouldn't pay any more.

The other brother's wife was in grad school at the time, and I was unemployed; we were already skimping on our food purchases when she got this bill.

Holy shit, that's horrifying.

If someone doesn't have enough money for food, they should be able to say "Sorry, Mum, that expensive holiday that you want is just not possible for us right now."

I guess my wife didn't feel she could say that to whomever it was who needed to hear it, but yeah, my view definitely aligns with yours.

I am not saying people raised this way don't help their siblings/niblings monetarily. I just mean they aren't obliged to consistently do so. E.g., my sibs and I routinely got birthday money from our grandparents, but not from our uncle or aunt, who had big families of their own to see to. They were kind and hospitable and so on, and if any of us had been in a real jam where they could have helped I am sure they would have been happy to, but they weren't the ones stepping up over and over to pay for music lessons or something. They were also not expected to leave us any money, nor were my parents expected to leave anything to their niblings. My parents' childless aunts/uncles often did, but were seen as having the choice whether to be that sort of relative or not.

Yeah, totally. Though I wouldn't be surprised to hear that a rich aunt or uncle was helping out - that's happened multiple times within my acquaintance, or to people they knew - even to my mom on a smaller scale. But grandparents helping is a frequent thing whereas the idea that the uncles and aunts would feel obligated seems a little foreign. I mean, it wouldn't happen in my family, either side, both American but different backgrounds. And it wouldn't happen to either side of my inlaws, both Finland Swedish, either. Helping out, yeah, but it's always at the offering aunt or uncle's instigation; nobody in the family would condone the idea that they were obligated.