Imagine living some place with a high cost of living, and your mom moves in with her aunt just so she can be close to you, leaving her own home behind. If she couldn’t afford to buy her own home, would you ever consider building a small home onto your home for her?

In this story, one man is in this exact situation, and he is considering building a granny flat for his mom as an addition on his house. The problem is that his wife isn’t loving this idea. Now, he’s wondering if he messed up by mentioning the idea to his mom.

Keep reading for all the details.

AITA: I want to build my mom a Granny Flat, but my wife says no

My mother moved from New Hampshire to California in March of 2021 to be closer to her grandkids (and presumably, me, her son, and her daughter who also lives here…)

Real estate is crazy now, and buying a home is proving financially difficult.

Mom will be retiring this year and going through income adjustments. She’s living with her aunt now, about 20 miles from me.

On the short, this is fine but she is struggling with a lost sense of autonomy and is keen to find her own space as soon as possible.

He had an idea.

One evening, I pitched my wife the Granny Flat idea.

I’m handy, and figured with some jobs subbed out, I could build a nice 700 square foot apartment above our garage.

San Diego has relaxed zoning laws making this a viable option.

I would build it completely independent from the house and my mother could finance the venture with funds she was planning to put towards a mortgage down payment. I figured about $100K, which would leave her financially more stable than if she sunk twice that into a condo and saddled herself with a mortgage.

But first, he needed to get his wife on board.

My wife was hesitant about the idea, citing all the recent construction projects we had undertaken since our own recent move back to the states from overseas.

On top of construction projects, our marriage has been struggling badly for several years and we’ve been seeing a counselor to work on our issues together.

She told me that a construction project right now was not in the cards as it would be, “detrimental to her mental health while we struggled to fix the foundation of our marriage.”

I pushed back by mentioning some of the pros: free childcare, cooking, my mother’s well being, etc.

They put the idea on hold.

Her final response in the moment was to say the idea wasn’t totally out, but it was definitely not happening now.

I agreed. Maybe springtime would be a better time to build.

Plus, we would need to talk to my mom about it. I wasn’t sure she would want to live that close to us anyway.

He mentioned the idea to his mom.

Later that evening, Mom joined us for dinner, and I brought the idea up.

My wife didn’t outright say no at the time, but kept her actual opinion pretty neutral.

My mother loved the idea, and said she would finance the venture if we decided it was something we wanted to undertake.

No commitments were made and the conversation ended with me feeling like it had been a fairly benign exchange of ideas that would need a lot of thinking and planning to actually check feasibility.

His wife didn’t see it that way at all.

Later that night, after my mother had left, my wife was furious with me, accusing me of throwing her under the bus with my mother concerning the apartment.

In my opinion, I initiated a conversation between three adults with the sole intent of testing an idea’s viability. Presenting a maybe…

My wife’s take is I should have more thoroughly fleshed out the idea with her alone before presenting it to my mother because my wife thinks my mother will think poorly of her now if we decide not to build.

So… AITA?

He should’ve checked with his wife about mentioning it to his mom before mentioning it to her. I can see how she doesn’t want to be painted as the bad guy if they don’t move forward.

Let’s see how Reddit responded to this story.

There are a lot of reasons the husband messed up.

It really is easy to see why they are having problems with their marriage.

Another person points out that it’s wrong to expect his mom to be free childcare.

Everyone thinks he messed up.

They need to talk this out in marriage counseling.

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.