They say “family helps family”, but is it true?

In today’s story, a man shares how his brother took advantage of his help while not listening to his boundaries, so he decided to stop helping him.

Did he do something wrong? Is this just a glorified sibling spar?

Let’s read the whole story.

AITA for selling the house my brother and his family live in.

A few years ago, my brother needed help. I let him move into one of my rental properties and we did it all legal. Lease agreement and everything.

Because I was renting to him at a breakeven point, we agreed that he was responsible for all the maintenance of the house and yard.

Well, he has four kids. And the hot water tank isn’t enough for his family and he wants a new one. I told him to go ahead.

He then proceeded to take the cost of the hot water tank and installation of that month’s rent.

I reminded him of our agreement.

He said he wasn’t making improvements to my property for free.

They kept disagreeing and not really sitting down to discuss things.

I said that the old hot water tank was fine and he made the decision to replace it.

Big argument and I didn’t want to fight so I said that he was not allowed to make any further changes to the house without my explicit agreement.

So he stopped doing maintenance as a protest.

The house itself is not pretty but it is solid. It is old and the wiring in it was not meant for all the modern electronics we have.

He wanted to add a new breaker box and run more outlets. I said no thanks.

I cannot afford that since I’m not making any money on the house. He started getting touchy about it and the rent started getting paid late.

I tried talking to him but he said that he had to buy some stuff for the house and he was low on cash.

So I sold the house.

People were surprised.

While the house itself isn’t great, it is in an older part of the city and the property itself is a quarter of an acre.

Every time a house sells in the neighborhood, it is snapped up by developers and turned into multi-family units.

Or one guy built a McMansion on his land.

I know a lot of the developers and I didn’t even need to list the house to have it sold in less than a week.

My brother found out when he was served with an eviction notice. He called me to ask “WTH”.

But he didn’t regret his decision.

So I told him that the house was causing me headaches and I had an opportunity to make some money and I took it.

He said I should have offered him a chance to buy it.

I said that he was having trouble making rent. How was he going to qualify for a mortgage?

He said I’m a jerk and that he has the money he was waiting to make me an offer.

I asked him if he had money, why he was late on his rent.

Things escalated.

He started bad-mouthing me to all our family.

A few of them took his side and tried to say I was being a jerk, so I offered all of them a chance to clear his debt to me if they wanted to share their opinion. None of them took me up on the offer.

My parents are on my side and they said I shouldn’t have rented to him in the first place.

I feel bad for my sister-in-law and the kids but I’m not going to spend the rest of my life subsidizing his.

AITA?

The real issue here was miscommunication from both parties.

But let’s see how Reddit reacted to this.

Yup.

Maybe they’re both in the wrong?

Another reader shares their opinion.

Something to consider.

Mixing family and business is usually not a good idea for this reason.

If you liked that story, check out this post about a group of employees who got together and why working from home was a good financial decision.