Allowing a family member to live with you for a while can be a great way to help them get on their feet.

What would you do if the two siblings that were living with you refused to help out around the house or contribute to any of the bills?

That is the situation that the young couple in this story is in, so finally they got tired of it and demanded that they start paying for utilities, which made them very upset.

AITA because me and my husband want to charge his siblings for utility expenses

I (F29) live with my husband (M30) and our little baby daughter in family house which my husband inherited 3 years ago along with a small farm from his father.

I hope this is a big house.

We still live with his mom (late 60s) and his younger brother (29) and sister (25). The brother said that he will find his own apartment soon if we can let him stay that long and sister was planning to go study and asked if she can live here for the duration of going to Uni.

Me and my husband even arranged for the sister to get late fathers’ pension (in our country you can get some percentage of your deceased parents pension if you are still studying or until you are a certain age).

Sometimes it is easier to do things yourself.

At the beginning everything was ok. The younger two helped a bit around the farm. But it all started going slowly downhill when my husband every time had to ask for their help. Soon he became tired of this and didn’t ask them anymore because he saw that the things were done faster and more proper if he just did them by himself.

I couldn’t help him as much because I was pregnant. Nobody asked him by their own will at any point if they can help with something.

There is no excuse for being that lazy.

During that time younger sister stayed at home all the time and did absolutely nothing. Woke up at 10.30 than went to watch TV until lunch and back to watching TV. Her Uni has a program that is done mostly online so she even didn’t go physically there if not specifically needed. The lectures were all in the afternoon.

At the weekends her boyfriend (27) comes and he is the same, just lays with her around the house and does nothing. Of course, we ranted to someone from our family about this and the sister heard back from some third person.

It sounds like her husband is tired of begging family to pitch in.

The brother still helped here and there, but because he also likes to sleep in (nothing bad with this) my husband stopped bothering to ask him, because even if he was asked one day before the job my husband had to wake him up and then wait for him to start with the job, and still watch his grumpy face.

The brother also breaks anything he touches but wouldn’t take responsibility.

This is something they should have been doing from the beginning.

Now the problem is that because all of that my husband asked his sister and brother to contribute a bit of money for some monthly expenses (like water, electricity…).

The brother went livid. He started to list everything he bought; from food (we don’t eat his food and what is bought for mom she repays him) to some machines (like washing machine was bought by him when father was still alive).

They have moved beyond having a productive conversation.

My husband said back to him that he can take all of those things and sell them if he wants.

Also, he told the brother about everything that he broke and my husband had to repay for it and every item that we invested in the house in last three years so everybody has benefit.

Not at all, these people should be contributing if they want to live there. They aren’t children.

So, here I don’t know anymore.

Are me and my husband wrong? Does everybody sucks here? I am still full of pregnancy hormones and can’t think rationally.

AITA?

Helping family can be good, but in cases like this, it just leads to the family members expecting everything to be just handed to them. Its time for the siblings to start contributing in a real and sustained way.

The people in the comments have some good insights here as well, check them out:

Absolutely, they should be helping in some way.

This commenter points out that it is a complicated issue.

I’m not sure this commenter is right. The siblings did inherit something.

Being lazy isn’t healthy for any of the siblings.

I am not sure that this really matters.

Letting people be lazy for too long is not good for them.

Even if they weren’t getting on his nerves, they should be contributing in some way.

If you liked that story, check out this post about an oblivious CEO who tells a web developer to “act his wage”… and it results in 30% of the workforce being laid off.