When you become an adult, there are plenty of things you can do that are not legal when you’re younger.

One of these, in particular, is signing up for a loan.

Children and young people aren’t allowed to sign up for a loan for a couple of good reasons: they are not usually financially independent, and their brains and decision-making centers aren’t fully developed yet.

Knowing this, the young man in this story didn’t take out a car loan when he was sixteen.

Unfortunately for him, his mom did – and now she expects him to pay it off in full.

Read on to find out what happened.

AITA for sticking my freshly single mom with $20,000 of debt?

I am male and nineteen years old, and I have been paying off a car loan from my mom (40, female) since I turned sixteen.

She “gifted” me a new 2022, current year, Nissan Sentra for my birthday.

I foolishly never asked how much she signed for, because I had assumed that her financially knowledgeable boyfriend at the time would know what he was doing at the dealership.

He did not.

Let’s see how they got ripped off.

The original MSRP for my car capped at around $20,000, out the door they walked away with a $40,000 car loan.

They put nothing down and had a 10% interest rate, becuase my mom’s credit was bad and she had no job.

But even accounting that, the math never made sense to me.

The payments every month were $510.

Read on to find out how he felt about this.

I didn’t care, because the original deal was that me and my mom’s boyfriend would split the monthly note.

That lasted for all of three months, until I was stuck paying the entire thing – and have been since that day.

About a year ago I went to the bank with my mom to try to transfer the loan from her name to mine.

However, since the interest would be recalculated and it would add about $10,000 to the loan, we both agreed to not do it.

And now, circumstances have changed for him.

I moved out at eighteen, and now live with a roommate – but recently, bills have been tighter.

My girlfriend’s mom suggested that I look for a new car that’s more in budget, and I found a used 2025 Carola with 10k miles for $18k: a better car for cheaper than what I would be paying off of my current car.

I told my mom that I was planning to get a new car and asked if she wanted to sell my current car as it would be her decision.

She absolutely lost it.

Read on to find out why his mom was so mad.

She was saying how it’s my responsibility, that it was a “gift” for me and how she “saved” me $10,000 by not transferring the loan.

The biggest elephant is that she’s freshly divorced and is looking for a job to support her two younger girls.

I told her she can sell the car for about $14-$15k but she refuses and is demanding that I drain my savings to pay for a car that I never agreed to pay for, and ultimately was their terrible financial decision.

On one hand I don’t feel like I owe her anything and never truly got along with my mom so it is what it is. On the other hand I feel guilty for kicking her while she’s down.

AITA?

This man is not in the wrong here – not in the slightest.

He never agreed to the loan to begin with, and yet he has been stuck with the payments.

The car is in his mom’s name, so it’s her responsibility. If that’s a problem, she should’ve thought of that when she bought the car.

Let’s see what the Reddit community made of this.

This person was quite clear on whose problem the car is.

While others were suspicious about how the loan ended up so high.

Meanwhile, this Redditor encouraged him to claim his complete financial independence.

There’s a reason you can’t take out loans at sixteen.

He didn’t agree to pay off this $40,000, so he shouldn’t be made to – it’s as simple as that.

It’s her problem.

Imagine screwing your own kid over like that.

If you liked that story, read this one about grandparents who set up a college fund for their grandkid because his parents won’t, but then his parents want to use the money to cover sibling’s medical expenses.