agonyaunt | (no subject)

(no subject)

I’m a financially comfortable but lonely widow in my late 60s. My son and only child, “Christopher,” has been extremely distant ever since he graduated college, and especially since he got married. He didn’t even have a wedding to invite me to, and I’ve never met my 7-year-old granddaughter in person. I always just quietly accepted this because I didn’t want to be one of those parents who complain about their child cutting them off and who everyone assumes are abusive monsters. But when we spoke on the phone this past Christmas, I worked up the courage to ask him why. I was shocked when he told me he and his wife have always felt that I don’t care about them, because I’ve never helped them financially.

Christopher and his wife are both college graduates with decent jobs, and they get by all right, but it’s true that money doesn’t go as far as when I was their age. My granddaughter needed a surgery shortly after birth that they are still paying off, along with both their college loans. They live in a two-bedroom apartment, they’ve never taken a vacation, and they can’t afford even a dog or cat, though Christopher says his daughter wants one badly. She goes to a public school that does not challenge her and where shootings are a constant fear. They want to send her to private school but can barely afford to save for college. They also wanted to have another child but can’t afford to, and given my daughter-in-law’s age, that will soon be moot.

In a way, I can see how this might seem unfair. I had to work for only a few years between college and my marriage, but Christopher’s father left me in an excellent position. I own two homes: the five-bedroom house that Christopher grew up in and a smaller, three-bedroom beach house. I have two precious French bulldogs, who each cost more to keep healthy than a typical child. I buy a new car every other year, go on cruises once or twice a year, and have never had to shop at Walmart—all without touching my principal.

But I’m shocked that Christopher and his wife have chosen to resent me for these things, rather than to simply ask for money. Not that I necessarily would have said yes, but I would have appreciated having a choice! Meanwhile, my daughter-in-law comes from a poor immigrant family, yet they have a very close relationship with her parents, who watch my granddaughter every day after school. Apparently if you can’t afford to give them anything, they won’t expect it!

Now I feel like I have a choice. Would I be rewarding my son and daughter-in-law for being greedy and materialistic if I offered to pay off their debts, maybe send my granddaughter to private school, or even help them buy a house in a better school district, in return for more-frequent calls and the occasional visit? Or should I just write them off and leave my estate to the church?

—Dismayed at a Distance

Dear Dismayed,

It would be a shame to write off your son. Money issues are rarely just about dollars and cents. Money holds symbolic value for all of us, and to your son and his wife, financial support could be tied to emotional support, care, or even love. It’s easy to characterize them as greedy and resentful, but consider another explanation: Maybe, given all their struggles and your relative ease, he feels unimportant and neglected.

Money is a resource, and it seems to be one that’s readily available to you, so I can see why your son is interpreting your lack of financial help as a lack of care. He and his wife might not expect the same from her family because they support them in other ways, using other resources, like time and child care—both of which are immensely valuable.

I’m not saying this assumption is right or wrong, merely that there’s a major lack of communication between the two of you. You obviously care for them and have sympathy for their circumstances, but he doesn’t seem to know that. Also, you mentioned that your son distanced himself from you after college—that’s a long time to go without knowing why things weren’t great between the two of you.

It’s time for both of you to get to the bottom of this estrangement. Before you make any decisions about what to do with your estate, talk to your son without holding judgment or making assumptions. Ask him why he didn’t reach out to ask for financial help. Ask what that help would have represented for him. Ask how you can be a part of his life in the future, beyond helping out with money. You worked up the courage to ask why he doesn’t talk to you anymore, and you were shocked at the response. There’s probably a lot more here to uncover. Figure out what care means to him and what he needs from you to feel it. Chances are, it’s about not just money. Tell your son you care about him, you want to have a relationship with him, and work up the courage to keep digging.

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1. I cannot believe LW did not offer to help pay any part of this surgery or those student loans.

2. I guarantee that DIL's family, while lacking in funds, offered to take the child afterschool for free or cheap. Which, by the way, is financially supporting them.

Two homes, two bulldogs - no wonder they think she doesn't care when she hasn't once suggested she help out in any way, financial or otherwise!

I'm fucking appalled that her son had to take out student loans when she owns a beach house. Yeah, yeah, no one's "entitled" to have their parents pay for their education, but I don't have a very high opinion of parents who could but choose not to.

For all their faults, my in-laws were always happy to help with financial matters, including helping with my daughter's daycare and grade school tuition. My mom helped us pay off a car loan after she sold her house. Sometimes, with my in-laws, we asked for help, but there were times when they just offered to, say, pay for a month of daycare. I'm all for people enjoying their retirement, but I can't believe LW has all that material wealth, and knows her son and DiL struggle financially, and has never offered to help.

Edited (typo) 2025-03-23 12:59 (UTC)

All of this. Why should a young adult have to ask for support? Can she really be so ignorant of how people work? (If she is, then she needs even MORE therapy.) How does she, or did she, not realize that normally parents offer!

Actually, not realizing is no excuse, because if she cared that much, she would have reached out, if only to communicate, many times, long before, and would have known what they needed and been concerned about the solutions whether or not she could help financially. If she felt unable to reach out, that can only be the result of an estrangement of some kind that would have to have abuse, trauma, or some other kind of disaster behind it, and which would surely have shown up in the letter.

I'm also kind of wondering at that "never met her granddaughter in person" thing. Like, have Son and DiL put her off every time she suggests visiting? Even if she suggests she can stay in a hotel? Maybe, but I kind of feel like she would have mentioned that. I have a feeling that what she means is that they haven't made the effort to visit her. You know, in between her busy cruise schedule.

Yeah, I caught that too. Perhaps they haven't invited her, and she's never brought it up either but puts the whole blame on them.

+1 I imagine it's very likely she doesn't suggest she visits, but expects them to come to her, quite possibly at some distance, and certainly never offering to pay their fares. Also, while the mention of the "poor immigrant family" in those terms is relevant, I wonder if the distance increasing since the son married might also relate to what the LW has said about the wife/relationship, and the chance of those things being racist/classist.

The LW is so awful, it's tempting to believe it's fake (especially given the precise mention of the dog costs), except of cpurse there really are people like this and one meets their children.

+1 I can maybe see how some of this really is he went low-contact, I don't know why, I had no concept of how much he was struggling, I'm not good at this stuff and didn't want to seem pushy

But if the parents are that level of financially secure and he had student loans that he's still paying on his own? Yeah... there were specific choices made to let him sink or swim without support and he's completely valid for resenting them.

She goes to a public school that does not challenge her and where shootings are a constant fear. They want to send her to private school but can barely afford to save for college

So, they're actively worried about their daughter being killed at school, and LW knows this, and still hasn't offered help.

No wonder they think LW doesn't care!

It really sounds like LW ***doesn't*** care!

Hmmm, I notice son and wife are saving for college but he had to take out student loans. Methinks he was dropping a big hint as to what his values are that she blew right past.

Two homes, two expensive bulldogs, and a new car every other year.

This almost reads like it was written by the son or DIL. "Sure they need things, and sure I could easily afford them, but it's their fault for not groveling" is just baffling.

There was speculation in the comments that it was son or DiL who wrote it.

Bet you a dollar that the LW thinks it's rude/uncouth to talk openly about money, never taught her kid financial skills, and didn't tell him he would be responsible for howevermuch of his educational expenses until the last possible second.

I would also not be surprised if she were extremely judgy about her daughter-in-law's "poor immigrant family".

I further note that Christopher doesn't seem to have gotten an inheritance from, presumably, his father; there's no information about when that loss occurred, but they clearly weren't poor when he was a child, if there was a five-bedroom house. This is some interesting estate management.

That last part doesn't sound that strange to me; it's a common arrangement to leave the estate to the surviving spouse during their lifetime. Assuming my parents have any estate to leave, I don't expect to receive my share when the first of them dies; I'll only see it after they're both dead. Same was true with Spouse's family; his dad died nearly twenty years before his mom, and the kids didn't inherit anything until after his mom's death.

That's fair! I have the sense that wealthy families often plan to leave parts of an estate in trust for kids, but the family here may not have hit that level of planned wealth transfer, and the LW's husband may not have known his wife is in fact a Disney villain.

Yeah, everything went to my mother when my father died, and we had a similar “she’s wealthy, I’m struggling financially” dynamic.

That makes sense. I could see doing that if I were in the wealth bracket of "we have so much money and assets that the surviving spouse will not have to sell the marital home to fund the trust".

(But also, if I were in that bracket I would be helping out with grandkid's medical expenses!!)

This is very much going to expose my my upper-middle-class white suburbanite Connecticunt (spelling intentional) background, but there's definitely a difference between being wealthy vs "well-off"/"comfortable" (or at least, there is in my part of the country/state). I was several years into my 30s before I realized I was "the rich friend" in my adult friend group, because my social experience growing up was exposure to a lot of people growing up the same as me - most of us had a father who worked full-time and a mother who either didn't work or worked part-time just to have something to do. There were private music lessons, dance classes, sports, Scouts, heavy involvement with church or community social groups, etc. It was very Little Boxes - we were all made out of ticky-tacky and we all looked just the same.

I had a couple of friends whose parents owned beach houses that they rented out to college students for the 9-10 month academic year so that it was available for friend/family house during the summer. I had other friends who went on big family vacations (roughly two weeks) plus a few smaller trips each year. I would sometimes get annoyed about how many dang kids we had in my family because my friends in 2-child families got to do much more than I did in my 5-child family. My parents did eventually get a Marriott Vacation Club timeshare (starting cost ~$25k/year), but they did that when us older three were 24, 22, and 21 so they didn't really have the same dependent costs anymore.

That being said, the vast majority of my hometown friends still took out at least partial student loans as a means of learning financial responsibility. There were other friends who were told "We will pay for 4 years of college but that's it" and ended up needing to take out loans if they changed majors, failed a couple classes, etc. My family and our social group may have appeared wealthy to many, but it's definitely not a term we thought applied to ourselves.

(Of course, we also lived in the eastern half of Fairfield County, CT, so there was REAL wealth, excessive wealth, just half an hour away)

A five-bedroom house for a family of three, no less!

Maybe they’d bought the house with an initial assumption of more children, but Christopher was all they got? Or they were in the habit of entertaining a lot of guests?

All the same, it's a very large house for a woman who lives alone and doesn't have her family come visit.

Which, you know, no judgment... except in this case lots of judgment because she could downsize and use that money to pay for a house for her son, or at least a larger apartment in a better school district!

When my father died in July 2020, everything he owned went to my mother. However, when my mother bought a smaller property and sold our childhood home, she invested half the proceeds from the house for herself and the other half was divvied up between the five of us. Seeing as how she was only 58 when my father died and her own mother lived to be 96? Can't blame her for wanting to put the money in the bank, especially because she was finding it harder and harder to work due to recurring back and shoulder problems (she's a nurse, so it was a physically demanding job).

This LW absolutely blows my mind though. She's bragging about living off interest from her investments and all the travel she's able to do while not working - I honestly would not blame her son for saying "well gee, Mom, Cupcake here is seven and we're still paying off medical bills from her first year of life, we can't afford to live in a decent school district, and we're just barely managing to put aside money for her college fund. But sure, tell me all about your new car and your expensive dogs and the 2-week cruise you just took, that's not rubbing things in at ALL."

Edited ((fixed a typo)) 2025-03-24 00:34 (UTC)

I'm all for enjoying one's retirement if one is able to. My dad's retirement income is more than my paycheck, and I don't begrudge his spending it on things he and Mom enjoy. But if my kids or I had a serious medical issue, you can bet he'd send money to help with the bills.

LW, you buy a new car every other year and take an annual cruise, and you're saying that your child struggling with educational and medical debt is the one who's greedy and materialistic? I think you need to take a closer look at your mirror.

And the fact that LW is even considering leaving her estate to the church rather than to her son says volumes about how much she actually cares about her son and grandchild.

THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS.

My mother and stepfather are comfortable, and my sisters and I (and the stepbrothers) don't begrudge them that one bit. But we still get quiet inquiries as to how our finances are going, and sometimes offers of assitance, especially when 'big expenses' come up.

And whoa, that last line about leaving it all the church? I missed that. Big red flag. HUGE.

Christopher and his wife have chosen to resent me for these things, rather than to simply ask for money. Not that I necessarily would have said yes, but I would have appreciated having a choice! I bet this is why LW's son never asked for financial help; I bet he probably grew up with this attitude from both parents.

Yep. She may as well have written,“I may or may not have deigned to reward it, but either way I would have enjoyed watching him beg, and he denied me that.”

+1 She complains about not having a choice, but she had a choice. She didn't meed to be asked, she could have chosen to volunteer the money. But what that would not have given her would be the power it feels like she want, of being asked so she can choose.

I have two precious French bulldogs, who each cost more to keep healthy than a typical child.

Is that an admission that LW spends more on their care than she ever did on Christopher’s?

Probably.

"...He didn’t even have a wedding to invite me to..."

Iiii bet because *finances*.

So yeah, like, this is totally a "money was a Thing between them from way way before the marriage, and his finally saying Words About It just means he said words about The Obvious Elephant In The Room From Way Back" thing.

Also, lady, you are oblivious in really arrogant ways.

I have never understood rich people. The two reasons I would want money would be to be secure abd to make the people I love secure.

Right? I'm lucky enough to be in a place that I can support my friends every so often (if nothing's blowing up financially in my life, basically), and like. That's what money's for??

Right? Like, this is bare minimum parenting - if you have two houses, both of which have more bedrooms than occupants, and your child is in a little apartment in a bad school district, you sell one so your son can move to a better place!

rewarding my son and daughter-in-law for being greedy and materialistic

When they never asked for money, just went low-contact for 7+ years, and she had to ask why they had done that before learning they are short of money? Greedy & materialistic people are usually a little more direct.

I didn't say "holy fuck" out loud until she got to the French bulldogs.

Suggestion: buy a new car only every FOUR years, and kick the money that otherwise would have been spent into a college fund for the daughter. That might warm the relationship up.

/said with no small amount of sarcasm

My mother wrote to an advice column??!

Maybe there's two of them?

Change the gender and it could be my dad. :/

This is absolutely the kind of terrible rich person that would hold every meager scrap of material wealth they send your way against you. I want to go LC with LW and all I've read is one letter.

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