Family loyalty has limits, especially when it comes to handing over financial access to someone with a documented history of instability.

One woman found herself fielding ten phone calls in a single night from her mother, all pushing the same request, that she share her brokerage account login with her 36-year-old brother, unemployed for years and living with their parents, supposedly to help boost his self-esteem.

The request came with a troubling backstory, including her brother’s admitted inability to control his anger, a history that includes an incident with a classmate in high school, and a more recent debacle where he locked her out of shared accounts entirely after a heated argument about their father.

With her mother acknowledging he needs therapy but unwilling to push him toward actually getting it, the woman refused outright, unwilling to treat her own finances as a solution to a problem she never created.

You’ll want to keep reading for this one.

AITA for ignoring my brother’s request to manage my brokerage account

My (39F) mother called me 10 times tonight asking for my brokerage account login info.

She wants my brother (36M, let’s call him Jack) to manage my investments because he has free time and low self-esteem. I said no.

She provides some important background information about her younger sibling.

For context, Jack lives with our parents and hasn’t held a job since college, claiming he’s working on a startup.

He has unaddressed anger issues (in high school, he injured a classmate with a tennis racket) and admits he cannot control himself when he “sees red.”

Needless to say, Jack has some issues — even with his own family.

Mental illness runs in our family, but our parents never got him professional help.

Jack hasn’t spoken to our dad in years despite living in the same house. He constantly seeks validation from the rest of us that our dad is the problem.

Jack holds on to grudges for years after the event even occured.

A few months ago, Jack tried to bring up the topic of our family trip (second or third time), mentioning that our dad was verbally abusive to our grandparents.

I maintained that I wasn’t present to observe the exchange (as usual) and said I couldn’t give feedback.

He started yelling and cursing at me, so I hung up.

So Jack was quick to get back at her.

In retaliation, he locked me out of a shared Amazon account containing my credit card info and kicked me off a shared antivirus plan. I was relieved to cut those ties because sharing finances with him felt like a ticking time bomb. We haven’t spoken directly since.

So when the topic of her brokerage account came up, saying no felt like the easiest thing in the world.

Fast forward to tonight, my mother feels for Jack and wants to help Jack with his self esteem issues and brought up Jack’s idea that I should let Jack manage my brokerage account.

She had some tough feedback for her mother too.

I told her absolutely not and that she needs to stop seeing Jack as someone normal that she can cure.

She understands that he needs a therapist, but Jack is resistant to the idea. Every time these verbally charged exchanges with Jack happen, I lose sleep.

So AITA?

This most definitely doesn’t sound like the type of person you’d want handling your money.

What did Reddit have to say?

This woman needs to get serious with setting some boundaries.

Sympathy isn’t a good qualifier.

This user thought this story was headed in a very different direction.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a grandson who is tired of driving 5 hours one way to work on his grandparent’s investment property for free.

The real investment that needs to be made here is regarding her brother’s mental health.

A brother who’s already proven he’ll retaliate financially during a moment of anger isn’t someone anyone should be expected to hand brokerage access to, regardless of how much his mother wants to help his self-esteem.

Her mother’s request wasn’t really even about investment management, it was an attempt to make her responsible for fixing a problem her parents never addressed properly in the first place.

Good intentions don’t erase legitimate concerns.