Old family wounds often resurface when money enters the picture, especially unpaid debts.

After a lifetime without child support or contact, one woman was shocked to receive a massive gift from the grandparents she never knew, just days before her wedding.

You’ll want to read on for this one.

AITA for “forcing” my father to pay child support

My father is a jerk. When he got my mother pregnant, he wanted her to quit her job and just stay home to “be a good little wife and mother.”

He is very well off due to a trust fund, and he doesn’t really need to work.

So when it became clear the two weren’t compatible, they went their separate ways.

My mother refused and divorced him. Because of a prenup, she got very little and he moved back to Europe.

His parents never knew about me, and my mother had a good profession and I never really wanted for anything. My grandmother and grandfather — her mom and dad — were awesome, and I got to spend my summers exploring the wilds of Western Canada with them.

But since then, her estranged father somehow managed to dodge any semblance of financial responsibility.

My father never paid the child support he should have. Like I said, it didn’t really matter. My mom makes good money and she gave me a great life as a child.

Regardless, she moved on and she’s about to embark on a big life change.

So, the point of this post. I’m (F28) getting married. I met the love of my life (M31) at university, and we have been together for eight years. He is a wonderful person and he really is my lobster.

Soon, her father’s parents reached out to her for the first time.

His family is from the same city as my father, and they are a huge, rambunctious bunch. Because of a lot of intermingled business and personal relationships, my parental grandparents found out about my impending wedding — and me, I suppose.

They have been in contact and want to come to Canada to meet me and my fiancé, who I guess is a grandson of an acquaintance of theirs. Small world.

When she told them the story of her father’s abandonment, they were irate.

When they found out that my father had basically abandoned me to fend for myself in this world — this is honestly how they see it — they were ticked, to say the least. It is very funny because we are decidedly upper middle class here.

They managed to make it up to her in a really unexpected way.

So, long story short, they had their lawyer calculate the amount of child support my father should have paid, with interest, and the cost of my post-secondary education. They then gave me this as a gift.

What I didn’t know was that it came out of my father’s yearly draw on his trust fund.

Obviously, her father isn’t a fan of this idea.

He is furious because it is obviously a sizeable amount and it will very much affect his finances for at least the next two years. He may need to — GASP — get a job.

He has been contacting me and telling me that his current wife and children will be negatively affected if I don’t give him back this money.

She knows exactly what she wants to do with this newfound money.

I don’t really need it. And I guess I am entitled to it, and I am getting a trust fund now as well.

But I really want to pay off any debt my mother may have and make sure that when she retires, she can do whatever suits her fancy.

I’m not giving it back.

AITA?

Sounds like everything worked out the way it was supposed to in the end!

What did Reddit think?

She should have no qualms about accepting money that’s rightfully hers.

This situation was a big wake-up call for this absent father.

If it was this commenter, this is what they’d do next.

She may not have needed the money, but she knew exactly who did.

After everything her mother had sacrificed, it was finally time to return the favor.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a daughter who invited herself to her parents’ 40th anniversary vacation for all the wrong reasons.