When you have a sibling with a disability, it is great when the whole family can come together to help them out.

What would you do if you decided to give your sister a small financial gift each month to help her out, but when your Mom found out, she got angry?

That is what happened to the family in this story, and now they are trying to figure out if they did something wrong.

AITA for giving my sister an allowance without telling my mom?

My (late 20s) little sister (mid 20s) “Ellie” has an intellectual disability.

She’s independent for the most part, but needs assistance for things like finances.

She works, but has a maximum she can earn due to her benefits situation that I won’t be getting into here.

This is a very difficult situation.

Because of that, she has extremely little leftover money each month. And by extremely little I mean none.

If she does have an extra $10, she uses it to buy things for her cat.

Ellie is incredibly thoughtful and kind as a human being.

My husband (also late 20s) and I have a little extra money each month, and we decided we would give some of that to Ellie so she can have a little fun. We give the money to her in the form of a gift card, usually to her grocery store, a coffee shop, or something else she likes to go to and do, like the movies.

Unfortunately we don’t live close to each other so we can’t take her to do these things in person.

Why wouldn’t you want the parents to know?

We chose to do this without telling our parents because we’re all adults and, we confirmed, it wouldn’t impact her benefits situation.

This has been going on for about 8 months now.

My mom (my parents are divorced) found out about it somehow, however, and went ballistic.

She called to say she was extremely insulted we would go behind her back to “parent” Ellie. She said we were implying she was a bad mom, and that we had no right to involve ourselves in Ellie’s financial life.

It sounds like Mom is insecure as a parent.

We were shocked to say the least, and tried to explain it was just a little money ($50-$100 a month at most) because we love Ellie, not because we were trying to undermine her.

For the record, my mom is not very heavily involved in Ellie’s life. She does help with some logistical needs around her benefits, but my dad does most of the work, and my mom doesn’t support her financially at all.

She obviously loves Ellie, but since they also live far apart she’s a bit less involved than my dad.

So, are we wrong for this? Should I have spoken to my mom or dad first, before giving Ellie money?

AITA?

I can see why they kept it from their mom now. They are just being kind and generous, so Mom should be happy about that. They definitely did nothing wrong.

Let’s see what the people in the comments on Reddit have to say about the situation.

They are being very kind.

It really isn’t Mom’s business.

Here is a commenter who works in a group home.

I’ve never heard this term, but it fits.

This commenter thinks Mom is feeling guilty.

Mom should put her daughter’s interests first.

If you thought that was an interesting story, check out what happened when a family gave their in-laws a free place to stay in exchange for babysitting, but things changed when they don’t hold up their end of the bargain.