Couple Has An Agreement That Their Adult Children Need To Pay Rent If They Are Not Full-Time Students, But The Wife Doesn’t Want To Follow Through With This Decision
by Jayne Elliott
Parenting decisions you make before your kids are born or when they are little might change as they get older.
However, it’s important for parents to discuss these decision together so that they are a united front and the kids don’t play one parent against another.
In today’s story, a mom and dad make a parenting decision, but then the mom decides to change it without talking to her husband about it first.
Now the parents are mad at each other.
Let’s see what’s causing all the drama.
AITA for cutting the amount I contribute to our budget after my wife refused to stick to our agreement regarding our kids.
My wife and I agreed before we got married on a lot of the big things.
Where we would live. How we would deal with our families.
How we would raise our kids.
Stuff like that. Deal breakers.
They made a decision about their children’s future.
One of our decisions was that as long as our kids were full time students then they would not have to contribute monetarily to the household budget.
Obviously they would still have chores and such.
If they weren’t full time students then they would get a six month grace period after which they had to pay rent and buy their own food.
Rent would be equal to 1/4 of full time minimum wage work.
We agreed on this in 1998.
Their kids each made wildly different choices.
Our eldest did not want to go to university and used the six months after graduation to work, save money, and plan a trip around the world.
When he got back he started an apprenticeship and is now a welder.
Our middle kid went to university and is now a nurse.
Our youngest did one semester of college and decided it wasn’t for him.
He also decided that he didn’t want to work.
His wife doesn’t want to follow through with the decision.
After six months I told him that he was now responsible for his rent and food budget.
He went crying to his mom saying that he couldn’t afford that.
She said he didn’t have to pay.
She didn’t discuss it with me first.
It was a unilateral decision on her part.
Now he’s changing how the bills are paid.
She pays all our bills.
I give her a set amount every month to pay for everything.
The money she earns she either spends however she wants or it goes into our vacation fund.
So I decided to cut my contribution to our budget by the cost of rent and 1/3 of our grocery bill.
She asked me why I did that and I said that we had an agree that she chose to ignore so I did the same.
Mom is basically paying what the son should have to pay.
She has been paying the difference out of the money that would normally go into our vacation account and she cut back on her personal spending.
But she is mad that I am doing this.
She says I’m a jerk for being financially manipulative.
I think she needs to either accept it or get her poor baby to grow up.
She tried getting our older kids on her side but they agree with me.
AITA?
The parents really should’ve discussed this before making or changing any decisions.
Let’s see how Reddit responded to this story.
She needs to consider the older children’s feelings.
It’s not fair to the older siblings.
The mom’s decision won’t help their son in the long run.
Marriage counseling would be a good idea.
I don’t think the son will change as long as the mom covers his bills.
Mom went rogue, and now she’s paying for it – literally!
Making baby of the family stereotypes come true.
If you liked that post, check out this story about a guy who was forced to sleep on the couch at his wife’s family’s house, so he went to a hotel instead.

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