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Helping family through financial trouble can be generous, but the situation changes when that support may fund someone else’s risky choices.

Consider working since your teens and paying for your own education while your unemployed brother expects your indebted father to sell property for his business. Would you contribute money or refuse unless your parents stopped financing him?

In this story, a woman is caught in that conflict. She draws a firm boundary, only for her brother to stop speaking to her.

See why this family investment plan is causing so much tension.

AITA: for refusing to help my parents because my unemployed brother expects them to sell property to fund his business ?

My brother (25) and I (F26) are both CS graduates.

I’ve been working since I was 18 and paid for my own college, while he relied on my parents.

But since college, her brother has taken a very different financial path than her.

Now my dad is in debt, and my brother is unemployed by choice (he doesn’t wanna work for people), still living with them, and thinks my dad should sell his property to fund his business idea (unrelated to our field), which needs a lot of capital he doesn’t have.

I told my parents I won’t help them financially if my money goes to him, and he stopped speaking to me.

AITA? Is my brother entitled to expect this from my parents?

She refused to help bankroll her brother’s dreams when he’s proven time and time again he’s not trustworthy with other people’s investments.

What did Reddit have to say?

In life, there’s a finite amount of things you can control, one of which being your own actions.

This user thinks she should refuse to be dragged down by her family’s lack of financial responsibility.

This commenter thinks perhaps maybe her parents really were planning something sketchy.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a brother who is concerned about the trouble with splitting funeral costs equally between siblings.

If her brother wants to continue to make poor choices, then he can do it on his own.

This story shows that supporting struggling parents is very different from indirectly financing an adult sibling who refuses to earn his own money.

A realistic business plan, outside investors, or even a regular job could have reduced the risk, but selling property while the father is already in debt sounds dangerously one-sided.

Perhaps the brother genuinely believes in his idea, but expecting everyone else to carry the financial burden makes that confidence much less convincing.

A business funded entirely by other people’s sacrifice is already showing some troubling overhead.