Involving money and family is usually a bad idea, and it can get messy pretty quickly when family members start making plans around an inheritance that hasn’t actually been inherited yet.

For one couple, a generous offer from the wife’s grandparents seemed like a dream come true. They wanted to help fund the family’s new home, but it seems that accepting the money would also affect the wife’s parents’ retirement plans.

Then came an awkward request: her parents wanted the couple to turn the offer down.

But when the grandparents asked why, the husband decided to be honest.

They were not expecting that.

See what happened below.

AITA For Playing A Role Exposing My In-Laws Terrible Financial Planning?

My wife and I have been planning to build a long-term home for our growing family.

We make a good living but are fairly conservative when it comes to spending capital, and therefore have tried our best to stick to a budget that gets us what we want but also doesn’t leave us house poor and unable to save and enjoy our hobbies.

But not everyone thinks like them.

My wife is very close to one side of her grandparents and has often talked about the plans we’re drawing up with our builder.

Grandfather was a contractor/owned a decent sized commercial construction business, so it made sense to run our plans by them.

Rate hikes and other factors led us to deciding to downgrade a substantial portion of the house in our plans. Which said grandfather noticed when we sent him the final layout we were preparing to commit to.

Then they had a pleasant surprise.

To our surprise (we’ve never asked for any money from any family member in the past) my wife informed me that they wanted to formally pass along some portion of what they believed/planned would be our inheritance.

That is to fund our house and allow us to commit to the full plans, an extremely generous amount of money.

Informing my wife’s parents of the developments, things got strange, rather than seem happy for us, they seemed somewhat distant.

Then, the whole vibe shifted.

The following day my wife received a text from her mom that she urgently needed to talk one on one about our house situation.

My wife’s mother informed her that her and her father had not planned well for their retirement.

Keeping up with the Joneses, going on vacation and other things meant they hadn’t saved much in their 401k and were in a fair amount of debt.

They planned that their inheritance would be the backbone of their retirement and a way to pay off the debts.

This changed their plans and hindered their joy.

They in the past informed them in such discussions that they would redistribute money to their kids (my wife) themselves in the future.

The ask from her mom was that we politely decline the offer and tell her grandparents that we’d just save for the addition sometime down the line, later (my inlaws) would try and help pass something along if they could.

Later that week meeting with her grandparents they were upset when we refused the money.

When my wife walked away with her grandma to look at something in the garage her grandfather pryed me for why we were pushing back, insisting that we would be receiving this money anyway in the future and they would rather see the fruits of it while they were still alive.

He told him everything.

I cracked and at that point basically said that her parents preferred if they managed the money that was received later down the line.

Not long after the visit my wife got an extremely angry call from her mom asking why we had told them they were the reason for us not accepting the money.

My wife broke down (never have heard her parents yell at anyone, let alone her).

I admitted to the limited information I told her grandpa and now for the last couple weeks she’s been extremely distant.

Her parents haven’t spoken to us in the same amount of time.

AITA?

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It’s very understandable why the husband felt cornered when his wife’s grandfather kept pressing him for an explanation.

The grandparents were offering the money because they wanted to see their grandchildren enjoy it, so simply refusing without an explanation was bound to raise questions.

The parents clearly weren’t happy about being exposed, and now everyone is avoiding everyone else.

It’s not fair of them to ask them to lie about it.