When you’re a teen, you can’t wait to have a car for all the freedom it will afford you.

Then suddenly you’re a fully-fledged adult, and you have to pay for a car yourself – then you realise just how annoyingly expensive these vehicles that we rely so much on truly are.

When the woman in this story was undergoing financial struggles, her in-laws kindly lent her a car to aid her in making ends meet.

So when the car suddenly needed a lot of expensive work doing to keep it roadworthy, she had little choice but to give it back.

Read on to find out how her relationship with her in-laws was ruined as a result.

AITA for giving my in laws their car back?

Recently, my husband and I were in a financial pinch.

My mother-in-law offered to let us use a car she had previously gotten for my husbands grandmother (but it was in my mother-in-law’s name).

The car is a 2008 Volvo with 150,000 miles on it, and they bought it for around $10,000.

Let’s see how the car fared over time.

My husband’s grandmother barely drove it, and my husband put less than 1,000 miles on it before it ended up having major problems.

Like unable to even drive it problems, while my husband’s job was still rocky.

We were going to have to pay to have it towed and taken to the shop, which we just couldn’t afford.

Plus, one of us was stranded at home with the baby when the other one was at work (the Volvo was supposed to be the “work car”).

Read on to find out how they reacted to this car’s clear issues.

I was tired of not having a car. So we said sorry, but told my mother-in-law that she could have her car back, and we got a newer Toyota that’s obviously reliable.

My mother-in-law was insisting we pay to have it towed, then tack the negative equity onto our new car loan.

This would’ve been hefty since there’s something wrong with it and she stills owes at least $5,000 – and with the car being in her name, it doesn’t even make sense how we could do that.

Then my father-in-law was livid because he wants us to just tow the car to the shop and have it fixed.

But this daughter-in-law didn’t feel like she should have to do anything of the sort.

It’s a bad situation, I realize that. But at the end of the day it is her car – we were just borrowing it until we were able to find something better, and they knew that.

We barely drove it, and I would never in a million years spend $10k on a car that old with so many miles – I never made that poor financial decision.

We’ve apologized to them over and over again, and we truly do feel bad about giving it back in poor condition. But they will hardly speak to us now, they are livid, and we don’t know what else to do to make it right.

AITA?

It’s really nice that they were lent the car in the first place; if they damaged the car, or it experienced significant wear and tear in their possession, it’s their job to make it right.

But if the car was already in poor condition – or, given it already had a lot of miles on the clock, it already had significant degraded parts – it’s just bad luck that it happened while they had the car, so sure they should have it towed, but they shouldn’t have to pay to have it completely fixed up.

Read on to see how the folks on Reddit felt about this.

This person agreed that their payment should only be proportionate to the damage caused under their custody of the old car.

While this person encouraged the daughter-in-law to be more forthcoming and to make amends.

And some Redditors explained just why the car was so expensive in the first place.

Cars are expensive – to buy, to run, to fix – and owning them can for some people be a necessity.

So it’s understandable that the in-laws are shocked and a little disheartened by the return of a non-operational car and a hefty bill to fix it back up.

But it can’t all be pinned on their son and daughter-in-law, who have barely used the old car they let them borrow. Though it is reasonable for them to contribute to the repairs.

It’s not their fault after all – it’s just bad luck.

If you liked that story, check out this post about an oblivious CEO who tells a web developer to “act his wage”… and it results in 30% of the workforce being laid off.