Living with family can save money, but it can also create some serious headaches.

The fact is that most people expect disagreements over chores, bills, or personal space. But what they don’t expect is a roommate to stop paying rent and create even bigger problems in the process.

That’s what happened after this family moved into a house together with the expectation that everyone would contribute.

At first, the arrangement seemed to be working well enough.

But then the brother stopped paying his share and started making decisions that affected everyone else in the house.

Before long, a disagreement over rent turned into a much bigger mess.

Read on to see what they’ve been dealing with.

AITAH for leaving unpaid rent in my brothers name?

My mother, my brother, and I had all gotten a three-bed, 2.5-bath for $1,700. Yes, it’s pricey. But split amongst all three of us, it is roughly $600 a month.

We all have reliable jobs, and combined we’d make the rent plus some.

Just a few weeks ago, we had to pay our rent, and his final portion was $402. I had to put a little extra in this time due to him having some problems at work.

After doing some math, his brother decided he already paid too much.

When my mom and I had gotten off work, we texted him and asked if he’d sent us the rest of his portion of the rent.

And he texted back, no, he wasn’t paying. He claimed he had already paid for the month, which he had not. He started to pull random numbers out and said he had paid almost three grand in just two months.

He had not. He hadn’t even made that much.

The lease is in his name since he wanted to boost his credit, my mom being a co-signer. We had planned to just pay for the rest of the month, then move to something cheaper. But he decided to shut off our water.

His brother was mad he had to pay his phone bill.

Why, you may ask?

Because he had to pay his phone bill and refused to send the money to pay that.

I usually pay the phone bill and didn’t find it fair that I needed to pay his $50 portion. He didn’t like that and called the water company and told them we had moved. We had not. He had the water shut off, and we could not get it back on for another 3 days.

And that wasn’t all.

Now, they have other problems.

All because of $50, he had also gotten our car repossessed. By us not paying the rest of our rent and leaving the lease early, it ruins his credit and his reliability if and when he tries to get another apartment.

My brother usually paid his portion, and we didn’t know why he suddenly decided not to. He claims we “basically made him homeless” when he found a place to live within 2 hours.

We had not kicked him out. We gave him an ultimatum: pay the portion or leave.

He chose to leave. We respected his decision, but that left us with unpaid rent and scraping by.

AITA?

Yikes! It sounds like these people have some pretty bad luck.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a woman who volunteered to help promote a church event for free, then was surprised to find she had to still pay admission to get in.

Let’s see what the readers over at Reddit think about it.

This reader explains how it’ll probably affect his mother too.

According to this comment, the brother is wrong.

This person suggests small claims court if needed.

Yet another reader who thinks it’ll hurt the mom.

The brother only has himself to blame.

He stopped paying his share of the rent and made life harder for the very people who were trying to work with him. Then he acted surprised when they decided they couldn’t keep living that way.

At some point, actions have consequences. If he wanted the benefits of having his name on the lease, he also needed to take responsibility for the obligations that came with it.

The family didn’t ruin his credit. He made a series of choices that put him in that position all by himself.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about an employee who rejects a low contract offer and leaves the company instead.