The old saying is true: you can’t choose your parents.

That much is absolutely true for the wife of the guy in this story, whose parents failed her immensely growing up.

Nowadays though, the couple in this story have it in their power to help out her siblings, and are keen to do so.

But her terrible relationship with her father is getting in their way.

Read on to find out what happened.

WIBTA for not paying for half-brother’s tuition?

My wife comes from a very poor country in South Asia, and I grew up here in America not exactly struggling but surviving off thrift stores.

Money isn’t tight for us now, but that is mostly because we live simply – our most extravagant expense is eating out once a week for like $100 as a family of three.

When my wife was very young, about one or two years old, her parents divorced.

Her father’s family basically disowned her, and her mother dumped her on grandparents to be raised.

Let’s see how her upbringing was.

Her mother’s sisters all worked and helped support her, but her mother and father never did.

She and her grandfather would gather clams in the rivermouth and sell them to pay to go to school, buy used books and uniforms. When she came to America, my wife sent money back to help her grandparents.

Her mother remarried when she was about four, and had a son with the new husband. They lived in the same village so she saw her mother frequently, while her dad lived about two hours away by motorbike.

And his wife wanted to help her family where she could.

When her mother’s son reached college age, shortly after we were married, my wife paid his tuition and bought him a laptop.

But we couldn’t take on supporting his monthly expenses while he went to college.

Tuition over there is very cheap by our standards, a few thousand per year depending.

Not exactly chump change but compared to the cost of education in America it is cheap.

But things were different when it came to her father’s family.

Her father remarried and had a son and two more daughters. Her father is a real piece of ****.

The few times my wife visited him as a girl he would always just leave and go drinking with his friends, ignoring her. Never helped out one bit. Never interested in her one bit.

Until he found out she was moving to America. Then he came to visit her and tried to get back into her life. As soon as she got here, he would call every month asking when she would start sending money.

She eventually blocked him. She unblocked him to let him know about the birth of our child, and his response was asking for money.

Yikes! But then things started to make her feel conflicted.

Now her other half-brother, the father’s son, is ready to go to college. This kid is disabled, a big truck ran over his leg as a kid and it had to be amputated.

There is no government help for disabled people in that country and so without a college education he will not be able to work, not be able to survive on his own.

The tuition for his college would be $1000 per year, which is within our budget to support, but again we wouldn’t be taking on his monthly expenses.

Her father will have to work extra to pay monthly, but can’t afford to pay monthly and tuition.

And her relationship with her father is leaving his wife in a real bind.

My wife says that as a mother, she wants to help her half-brother because no child should suffer like that.

As a daughter she absolutely does not want to help her father because of the way he treated her.

She is asking for advice on how to resolve this with her heart.

Would it be wrong to refuse on the basis of her father’s treatment of her, or to help the brother knowing it is also helping the father who wronged her?

WIBTA?

Given his wife’s difficult upbringing, it’s really understandable that she’s having a tough time grappling with this situation.

She wants to support her half-brother, just as she did her other half-brother, but given her relationship with her father, this is all-the-more complicated.

But knowing that her half-brother will struggle to survive without their assistance, paying his tuition seems like the best thing to do, with the mind that it’s helping her brother – not helping her father.

Let’s see what folks on Reddit had to say about this.

This person agreed that framing the money as helping the kid, not the dad, was the best way forward.

While others recommended ensuring the money went straight to the institution.

Meanwhile, this Redditor praised the woman and her husband for helping out.

Let’s face it – her brother can’t help who his father is just as much as this guy’s wife can’t.

By donating this money – a small sum in US tuition terms – to help the boy have a better life, this couple can sleep with a clear conscience, knowing that they did their best.

And ensuring that the money goes directly to the university, and none of it ends up in her father’s pocket, is the best way of ensuring financial independence for the boy without compromising on their own principles.

The world needs more people like this.

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.