Don’t work with family, the wise often urge.

But it’s always tempting to – after all, who can you trust more to have a vested interest in your business than family?

That notion doesn’t account for when things to wrong though, and the huge ramifications that can have on family life – as the woman in this story found out, when she finally stood up to her adoptive parents, who were also her employers.

Read on to find out about the chaos that ensued as a result.

AITA for not transferring a website after getting fired from the family business?

I met my ‘adopted parents’ when I was nineteen years old,  and they really took me in and helped ‘raise’ me as a young adult.

So when they decided to start a company eight years ago, I helped them build it from the ground up – handling all of the technicalities and business side of things like licensing, insurance, marketing, etc.

I also built a very extensive website for the company on my own time, as by this point I’d started my own small scale freelance marketing company as well.

Let’s see how the situation changed over the years.

In the eight years that followed the business grew a lot. I also got married and had two children, so backed away from freelance work and began working from home solely for the family business.

This involved handling all customer correspondence via phone and email, scheduling appointments and projects, maintaining licenses and insurance, managing on site crews and progress, taking payments, receipts and invoicing, and reviewing all project bids for accuracy as they wanted to keep things old school.

They paid me for three days per week, but the workload was full time due to the growth in the business.

I was often working until 3am, or sometimes even 5am, including on my days ‘off’ – and I was always ‘on call’ (answering phone calls and texts all days and hours).

Eventually, the family business would consume her husband, too.

My husband joined the company six years ago and eventually was working 12+ hour days, 6 days per week as a foreman and project estimator – often he had to do tasks for even while he was home and was also ‘on call’.

He would be scheduled for appointments 2 to 3 days per week, sometimes driving 300 miles in one day, and the other days he would lead as foreman on projects usually at least 50 miles away.

All business expenses were covered individually – meaning only personal vehicles and cell phones were used, gas, business insurance, tools, etc came out of pocket for us (including all office supplies and marketing subscriptions on my end).

On top of that, if any ‘mistake’ was made on-site, resolving it would be on personal time as well, as taken out of our check (even if the mistake was made by a crew member, as the foreman is still considered responsible).

Yikes! And this situation was only about to get more complicated.

Then, six months ago, my ‘adopted parents’ asked me to come in for a meeting which ended up being to discuss my husband’s work performance.

Keep in mind, I was his direct manager and took that role very seriously, and am the only one that’s been legitimately business minded in all of this.

While he did have some issues in the beginning, he got to a point where he was GREAT at his job but severely overworked.

At some point they pointed out that my husband would never find another job that would keep him around and have him making what he does, at which point I mentioned that they didn’t pay as well as they thought they did.

Let’s see how they responded to her standing up for herself.

They were offended beyond belief that I would even suggest that, and let me know that Friday would be my last day and good luck “finding anyone else who will pay you what we do to stay home with your children”.

Subsequently, my husband also would be done working there after 30 days.

I did try to get them to extend the time a week or more to be able to train the people replacing me well enough, but they were adamant that I didn’t actually do all that much and none of it was hard.

I spent the rest of the week putting together informational data sheets to make the transition as seamless as possible, and always helped anytime they needed something in the following weeks even though they and the whole family have now cut us off entirely outside of business questions.

But there was one area that she was really unable to let go of.

The website was something I’d always maintained on my own time and dime as a way to sow into my ‘adopted parents’ and the company, and it was agreed that I’d continue maintaining it even though I wasn’t working there anymore.

They’ve now decided to have their oldest son take over marketing/the website so asked for me to transfer it over to him.

The problem is, this website is SO complex and really just a beautiful representation of my abilities and the only one on my portfolio like it.

After getting let go I turned my focus back to freelance work, and if I transferred this site from my LLC at this point, it would be a MASSIVE hit to my own business.

So she continued to stand up for her own interests.

I explained to the owner that I can leave the website up for their son to copy and paste everything over, but he would just need to re-build it on his end as I can’t duplicate it.

I will also transfer the domain which itself is valued at more than $1000 just to make the transition easier for them.

They are incredibly upset with the idea though because the son doesn’t know how to do all of that.

I understand that, and did offer to come teach them or him how to do everything – but of course they don’t want to do that because they operate the business out of their home and I’m no longer welcome there.

Now, she’s feeling really conflicted.

I’m not sure how else I could possibly handle this without sacrificing my own freelance efforts and having to start from scratch.

I don’t want to make things difficult for them and do feel I’m being more than fair with the options I’ve given,  especially considering how I’ve been treated throughout the whole ordeal.

But I am still questioning if maybe I need to just transfer it over and accept the loss. Am I wrong for not having just gone that route in the first place?

AITA?

It’s not about the website, really.

It’s about the huge amount of unpaid labor that this woman and her husband have done for people that she considered family, only to have them throw her in the dirt the minute she stood up to them.

That’s not how family works.

Let’s see what the Reddit community thought about this.

This person urged her not to buckle to their demands.

While others encouraged her to get legal advice.

Meanwhile, this Redditor thought she should demand payment for the domain.

The way that they’ve treated this woman is beyond unacceptable.

Given her situation, it’s clear that she was vulnerable as a nineteen-year-old when they took her in, and they’ve preyed on her skillset as well as that vulnerability for years.

Now she deserves the compensation and recognition that she’s entitled to – and she should make sure not to give in without it.

They’ve completely taken advantage of her, and it’s not okay.

If you thought that was an interesting story, check out what happened when a family gave their in-laws a free place to stay in exchange for babysitting, but things changed when they don’t hold up their end of the bargain.