Sticking together as a family in a whole new country can be crucial to survival.

But what would you do if your older family members who were supposed to take care of you were only out for themselves?

One woman recently sought advice about this exact conundrum. Here are the details.

AITA as a 20f student for standing up to my mom and aunt and refusing to cover bills?

This all started when she left the country for a year to go back home.

My aunt was very nice and had helped me with shelter when I was new to Canada and I was close to her.

I was 18, I spoke English and she didn’t so I translated for her and helped her with documents.

Seems like a mutually beneficial situation.

Because she was leaving, she basically told me to find my own place (which I was doing anyways) and she rented out her home to some other family and not me.

This led to a series of problems I had to fix lasting eight months.

Before I knew it, I was running her entire life in Canada, balancing a full time job, brother coming to Canada, business and soon school.

Sheesh, how does that happen?

The problem started when these “tenants” ended up abandoning her house and she became late on payments.

She was about to be evicted, so I fixed it.

I was fixing her other “urgent” issues and every week getting dozens of spam calls at work (I told her to stop but she didn’t care).

Sounds like this Aunt is pretty codependent.

I made a post on here a while ago about my aunt not getting her housing benefit and asking me to cover her rent.

Back then, I wasn’t living at her house, but I was managing her entire life while she was back home.

This included renting out her place to others I found on marketplace, checking her mailbox, calling her bank/city office, registering her kids etc.

You give some people an inch and they take a mile.

My 17m brother came to Canada a month ago and I asked if we could stay at her empty house instead of my cramped studio.

She required me to physically go by bus to check her mailbox every week or so due to important stuff so I figured this would fix our issues.

On the 28th she apparently didn’t get her housing benefit for the month.

She called me a billion times and I called her back, she was furious.

This woman seems to struggle with basic adulting.

This happened last month and I had no money to give and I said the same thing again.

Apparently she had called my mom and complained about me and my mom said I should leave her house and go to a homeless shelter if things aren’t working (my biggest fear on earth).

My aunt then sends me audios telling me really nasty stuff telling me basically to quit my job if I can’t even give her a couple thousand dollars. And that she has no other resort except for me and I have no choice but to find the money and fix her problems.

And I tell her that I can’t help it and there’s no way I can get $1700+ in a span of three days as a 20 year old.

And she tells me to leave her house by October 1st in retaliation.

This sounds like it requires far more help than online opinions.

She then sends me an audio saying this isn’t working out and to answer a couple more emails for her and fix her problem THEN leave.

I found my mother’s reaction extreme and I blocked her for causing me meaningless stress.

I also didn’t respond to my aunt but I’m not about to fix her issues or answer any emails or do anything for her and I am going to find a new living situation with someone and then tell her to kick rocks.

She feels like she was treated unfairly…because she was!

Initially, I felt indebted to her, but I’ve been doing so much unpaid labor and receiving so much harassment from her and this was not a part of our agreement so I feel like it’s unfair for her to force my poor self to fix her life from a broken place.

I felt like I was treated like an animal without consideration and I felt like no one cared about me as long as I wasn’t inconveniencing them.

AITA for standing up to both of them and refusing to pay them anything?

Yikes, this is some soap opera level family drama. Let’s see how Reddit felt about it.

Many suggested simple no contact.

Though some pointed out much larger issues.

One person provided important reminders.

Another person emphasized the legality of it all.

And all were aghast at the family’s behavior.

Sometimes, blood is NOT thicker than water.

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.