Imagine living in a house that is owned by your parents making them your landlords. If you paid them rent, would you think of the house as your house or your parents’ house?

In this story, one couple is in this situation. The house they live in is owned by the wife’s parents, and they pay rent every month.

In a typical rental situation, when something needs to be repaired you call the landlord, and the landlord is responsible for the repairs. That’s not exactly (or at all) what happened in this story.

Instead, the wife’s mom is being so confusing in what she says that it’s hard to know if she thinks of herself as a landlord or not. She seems to think of the house as her daughter’s house, yet her daughter is paying her rent. It’s very confusing and annoying.

But, it’s actually not all that confusing at all. The floor needs to be repaired. The landlord should repair it, but that’s not what’s happening. Let’s read all the details.

AITAH for expecting my landlord (who is also my mom) to pay for repair supplies after she offered, then getting upset when she flipped it on us?

I 34(F) live in a house with my husband 39(M) and my child PT . Our landlord is my parents. We’ve always paid rent on time and never treated the place like we own it.

Back in December, I literally fell through a weak spot in the floor. My daughter (their granddaughter) had almost fallen through right before me.

When we told them, she laughed it off and nothing was done for about 4 months.

But eventually her mom wanted the floor fixed.

The only reason it finally got addressed is because she started talking about selling and moving, and suddenly the floor became an issue.

My mom then started pushing my husband to fix it.

We told her multiple times we didn’t have the money to take on a project like that right now.

She then offered to buy the saw and supplies needed, and said my husband could do the labor.

They discovered another problem.

My husband never asked to be paid—he just thought maybe we could get some help with supplies or possibly a small break on rent since he’d be saving them thousands in labor.

She bought the wrong saw and only a small amount of materials, even though we told her exactly what was needed. She also made comments about how much money she was saving by having my husband do the work.

When my husband started the job, we found a lot of mold under the floor, which affected our breathing and even triggered his asthma. He had to stop and take a day to recover.

We told her we’d finish the following week, which clearly frustrated her.

Whose house is it?

The next week, we went and bought more supplies ourselves to keep the project going.

When I asked if she could send money for the additional materials (since she originally said she’d cover supplies), she got upset and said it’s “our house” and we’re responsible.

This completely confused us because we’ve always paid rent and we were never told this wasn’t a rent-to-own situation.

I’m getting confused by the mom’s rant.

Then it turned into her saying we “take take take,” bringing up everything she’s ever done for us, and comparing it to unrelated things like cleaning a pool. also made comments about we see it as a little “sweat equity” and acted like we were ungrateful.

They said we look at this like you own the place but they have never corrected is when we send the money as rent.

They throw this word rent around to loosely for us to not be paying rent.

This is what they had to deal with.

We feel like we were put in a position where:

• We reported a safety issue and it was ignored

• Then suddenly forced to fix it when it became convenient for her

• She offered to pay for supplies

• Then flipped it on us and made us feel like we’re the problem

Now I’m honestly stuck in my head wondering if I’m wrong for expecting her to follow through on what she said, or if we somehow misunderstood everything.

AITA?

If the mom owns the house and they’re renting, they shouldn’t fix anything themselves.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a woman who restored a vintage camera with her own money and doesn’t want to hand it over to family.

Let’s see how Reddit responded to this story.

This is the real question.

Another person clarifies a landlord’s responsibilities.

This is a good suggestion.

Here’s some more advice.

It doesn’t sound like they own the home. Her parents own the home and they pay rent. They should not be repairing the floor themselves or paying for the supplies needed to repair the floor.

The first mistake they made was when the husband agreed to fix the floor for free. He shouldn’t be fixing the floor at all, but if he does fix it, he should be paid fairly for his time.

The best solution here would probably be to move out. It doesn’t sound like this parent/landlord situation is really working out very well. The house doesn’t sound like it’s a safe place to live. And, if the parents plan to sell the house anyway, they’ll have to move eventually. It’s probably better to move now.

This story proves that it’s not always a good idea to rent your home to or from family. It can be too complicated.