If you were in a good financial situation, would you be willing to help out family members who made bad financial decisions in the past?

In this story, one man is in that exact situation. After the way his aunt and uncle treated his dad and how they chose to spend their money, he really doesn’t want to help them. Should he do it anyway?

Let’s read the whole story to decide.

AITA for refusing to help my cousin financially for his house?

My grandparents had a big house. A few years before they died, they donated it to their 3 children.

The donation was purposefully unbalanced to the benefit of Marie, who lived all her life in that house and had been taking care of her parents for years.

My father, Thomas, accepted the principle of an unbalanced donation, but he refused to renounce his reserved portion of his parents’ inheritance (in French law).

He warned profusely that their part of the family basically couldn’t afford the house over the long term: it’s big and quite poorly maintained.

Now his family thinks his dad is the bad guy.

In practice, it meant that Marie paid my father approximately 100K for a house that was worth 700 or 800K.

The third brother, Alain, didn’t ask payment from his sister, even though the payment was due by law.

From that moment on, my father became some kind of monster in his siblings’ eyes, even more so because he was the richest of all three siblings.

His dad wasn’t perfect.

He had his faults: he got further away from his aging parents. Though it was difficult to go to that house and get dissed constantly by Marie, Alain, Marie’s son Arnold and both my grandparents.

His siblings then held him responsible for his parents’ decline and death (though they were over 90).

One year ago, my father was diagnosed with lung cancer. He never had a chance. He lived for 6 months. He told his siblings what he had.

I’m glad OP called them.

Before they came to see him, it took a phone call from me to tell them he had weeks left at best, which proved true.

They all came once or twice. They came to the funeral.

My uncle left early: he had a long drive, so he said.

Now, his uncle is asking for help.

Now, 6 months later, I’m getting an email from my uncle Alain. He asks if I can loan money to my cousin Arnold, who needs to fix the roof of the house and cannot afford it.

My cousin is a GP and will earn a good living from now on, but he has nothing in the bank.

His mother Marie still owns the house, but she absolutely cannot afford the cost and the upkeep.

I’m kind of shocked by this demand.

He doesn’t want to help.

Am I supposed to contribute financially to the upkeep of a house that led to this situation in which his siblings basically let my father die without checking on him? Their late-time visits don’t count, in my eyes.

A loan won’t protect me: what if he doesn’t repay me? The same toxic dynamic all over again.

I’m strongly considering refusing that call for help.

It’s not that he’s unwilling to help everyone, just those who he thinks made bad choices.

I may consider helping out my cousin, which I kind of life despite the fact that he also hated my dad and barely visited, in case he wants to start his own medical practice. I’m in a comfortable financial situation and he’s not.

But I must add that if that branch of the family has no money, it’s because of their poor choices (keeping a house they can’t afford) and also poor management of their own money and the grandparents’ money.

My aunt built her own apartment inside the house with her parents’ money – but didn’t bother fixing the roof, apparently.

For all those reasons I refuse to give or even lend money for that house. Am I a jerk?

That’s a tough situation to be in, but he doesn’t have to help if he doesn’t want to. They can ask, and it’s okay for his answer to be “no.”

Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story.

This is good advice.

They’re not his responsibility.

Here’s a suggestion on what to say.

Nobody thinks he should give them the money.

If he loans them money, he’ll never get it back.

If you thought that was an interesting story, check this one out about a man who created a points system for his inheritance, and a family friend ends up getting almost all of it.