In many cultures across the world, blood ties run deep.

The title of ‘family’ excuses all sorts of unpalatable behavior, with relatives expected to accept mistreatment from others simply because they share the same ancestry.

In pleasant families this is fine – but what if your family are less than nice to you.

What if, like the man in this story, your family seek to exploit you at every opporunity.

Read on to find out what happened to him.

AITA for not giving half of my fortune to my brother?

I am a 30-year-old man and my brother is 32.

We were never close from the beginning, mainly due to favoritism and me being the unwanted middle child. We also have a younger sister, who is 29.

We have long had farm lands, but the farm was never huge and yield of the farm is comparatively very low – not enough for our family.

So when my mom got an opportunity to send one of her sons to foreign land to work, she decided to send me because she wanted her favorite child (my brother) to be with her.

Let’s see how things are going with this younger brother.

I got married, so leaving for work also meant leaving my wife here in the village, because the pay and working conditions are not good enough. I also have to keep on sending money home.

I left for work and worked for five years with only two home visits per year.

It was a tough time for my wife and kid.

I also had to miss my child’s birth because of this, but I never regretted that because I always believed that the struggle I was going through would make future of my children bright.

And after a while, things started to change for him.

In those five years, I gained a lot of exposure and decided to start something of my own.

To do this, I had to sell half of my share of land. My family (mother, brother and sister) were not so happy about it, as they thought I was doing something very stupid.

They didn’t supported any of this, but I still did it – and it turned out to be the best thing I have done in my life.

My business made me a good chunk of money, so I finally decided to move my wife and kid out of the village and settle in the city where I’d purchased a new house.

But when his success became clear, his family wanted in.

Everything was going well for me until my mom, brother and sister demanded that whatever fortune I made should be divided equally between me and my brother.

Their reasoning for this is that I only got to work outside and get the exposure for my business because my brother took care of my family in the village – if not him, I would never have been able to get out.

Therefore they think that whatever success I got after moving out of the village was not my own, but a shared success with my brother, so he should get half of it.

However, my reasoning is that I never choose to go: I was forced because he wanted to stay and we didn’t have enough for all of us.

And he’s standing firm on this conclusion.

Whatever time I had was spent outside working. I was sending money home regularly, so it’s not like he was taking care of my family for free, he was getting paid for it.

Also, when I was away my brother used to work on my share of land, and whatever money was generated from went directly, not to my wife.

If I had chosen for someone else to work on my land, I would have got a much higher amount than the amount my brother was telling me he was generating from my share of land – but I didn’t, because deep down I also wanted him to be present for my family, even though that means sacrificing some money.

My extended family and my community are supporting my brother’s claims, and everyone except for my family and my wife’s family are against me and calling me names for not giving half of my fortune to my brother.

AITA?

This guy is so right to stand his ground.

He was the one who was sacrificed to make the family money, he was the one who was forced to leave his wife and child to make money abroad.

And now he’s got more than they were expecting and they want to claim it? No chance.

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

This person pointed out the hypocrisy in his family’s message.

While others encouraged him to stop sending his family money.

And this Redditor thought he would be better to cut them off completely.

This favouritism runs deep: instead of celebrating his success and being proud of him, it seems like his family are nothing but jealous and determined to spin it in whatever way they will most profit.

It’s great that his wife and kid now live in the city with him.

At this point, perhaps they’re all his needs.

After all, his family are as toxic as it gets.

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.