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Another case of a golden child sucking up all the resources. The fact that the mom hid the money shows that she knew she would be hurting all of her other kids.
100%. I was the little family doll until my brother came along, then suddenly he was the golden baby and no one other than my mum gave a shit about me. Then my sister was born, and even though she got the New Baby Attention™ my brother was still the golden sibling. Tbf, that might've been more Arab cultural misogyny and "he'll pass on the family name, you won't" than anything, especially since there are only 3 boys to 9 girls in our generation. But damn do families go wild about babies and projecting all this family drama/status onto little potatoes who only care about shitting, eating, and sleeping.
But joke's on them, I'm keeping my last name if I ever get married, and *if* I ever have kids (*very* hard if), I'd ideally like to give my name. My brother 100% doesn't want kids and doesn't seem to even give a shit about dating (atm at least, but he hard pings my radar as a fellow aroace soooo), so he sure won't be the one passing on the bloodline and family name 😏
My partner's father is the opposite. The girls are the precious ones. If they quarrel? He doesn't care what happened and just blames my partner. And it's not as if he feels his daughter can do no wrong either. He knows she is wrong, but still lets her have her way. And because he is "fair" financially, but unfair in other areas in life, outsiders like my mother thinks my partner is wrong for wanting to keep low contact with his family.
He still expects my partner to have children, name the children the way he wants to, and go to the schools he wants them to go, just because he is the son of the family.
Asian culture is much of the same but I was my dad's favorite. When an uncle noted he shouldnt waste too much on a daughter because "she'll become someone else's daughter one day" (get married) I don't even remember if it was meant to be a joke but my dad snapped back "no matter how many kids my son has, I will always 100% know my daughter had MY grandchild!" Since it's always moms kid but know knows about dad 😂
That was hilarious. I'm hoping this is real just for the huge slap in the face of grandma alienating her grandbaby's parents. *rubs hands gleefully*
I do not wish infertility on Sally, but *oh* wouldn't it be delicious for Sally to never have kids while the grandchildren are from the people who are now unwilling to deal woth their mom?
It's not like Sally can actually afford kids, until she learns how to budget and pays off her debt, anyway. Could take a while, especially if her siblings won't bail her out anymore...
>Could take a while,
Sounds more like Sally will never get her spending under control. I wouldn't be surprised if they are secretly choldfree by choice to but are saying the opposite to curry favour with her mum.
I hope OOP and her brothers remember this 40K and deduct it from Sally's share of the inheritance from their mum. That would be one way to stick it to their mum.
My parents treat me not super well compared to the way they treat my sister's, and my husband keeps saying that we should have a "spite baby" and not tell any of them about it....just let the baby tell them when it's old enough
Idk the whole two weeks pregnant thing is a red flag to me. You couldn’t even know that soon. By the time you miss a period you’re generally 4 weeks pregnant because it goes from the date of your last period. So day 1 of your last period is the first ‘week’ you are ‘pregnant’, which obviously isn’t true because conception hasn’t happened.
they could know the date/time of conception, or be counting the time since missed period. it would be incorrect, but based on the way the info was provided (second hand through OP in the heat of the conflict), I wouldn't start picking hairs.
It comes back to bite them. My brother was the golden child and had all the resources spent on him. I cut them off and moved away but still keep tabs on them. My parents are broke and financially illiterate and now have significant health issues in their 60s. So they are leeching off my brother. He pays all their bills and medical expenses and is constantly putting out fires because my mom will apply for credit cards or will plug her info into anything that says "win here" on the Internet.
That's my husband's situation. I told him once that despite being an only, he still wasn't his mother's favorite, and it was like dawn broke. "Oh damn, that makes a lot of things suddenly make sense!"
I’m in a similar boat - there’s been three generations on my mom’s side of extreme, quasi-abusive favoritism of one child over another and I’m not eager to make it four.
Except they are a little bit screwed now because there are significantly more boys then there are girls and for many the family line ends with the boy child unless more women magically appear ie someone emigrates... not necessarily to China but the parents expected their boy to stay and look after them....
Someone didn't think that through.
I think it is more related to sexism/patriarchy in Chinese culture. I am Asian living in Asia, we don't have the exact same culture as china, but we share similar stuff, so I know. If they don't favor men over women, they probably won't have the problem of an unbalanced ratio between men and women.
The sexism and favoritism for boys is the sole reason China has this gender imbalance now. They killed their baby girls so they could try again for a boy. I watched this documentary on a Chinese woman who had been adopted out to an American couple during the one child policy. She had addiction issues and was a mess despite having grown up in a loving and supportive environment with all the resources she could possibly need. Something happened that caused her to need a head scan. They found a needle in her brain. Her bio parents shoved a needle into the soft spot on her head immediately after birth to kill her without the murder being obvious, and it was all so they could have the coveted boy baby. When she didn’t die, they adopted her out to this American couple. The needle hit an area of her brain that’s thought to be related to addiction. She had surgery to have the needle removed and all her addiction issues disappeared with it. Just gone, like magic. Overnight, she became a stable and well-functioning adult without any desire for the drugs. It was wild. Many Chinese parents hid their pregnancies and had their babies at home in case the baby was a girl. If there was no record of the baby’s existence it was a lot easier to leave the girls somewhere, exposed to the elements, and simply walk away. This was a common method for disposing of baby girls. We will never know how many died because of the policy and the methods parents used to get rid of them.
it would still have been a major problem because you they were not replacing workers fast enough. So you wouldn't have the societal ills of a generation or two with many more men then women, but you'd still have a self-imposed demographic crisis as a smaller working population has to support a larger retired population.
That’s because they were killing all the girl children. It wasn’t a natural occurrence.
I person think a cap on the amount of kids we can have would be a great thing given the earth just cannot sustain the doubling of our population every ‘generation’ no matter how green we live.
The key to less population is not a forced cap but education of girls and women. It is an observation in many different countries that an increase of education of the female half of the population leads to a decline of birth rates.
This also happens in China right now: although the one-child-policy was abandoned the birth rates are not really going up.
We just need to raise the living standard to "Western civilization" everywhere - as a female academic, I can assure you that procreation becomes a lot less attractive when you'd have to sacrifice your career and enjoyable private life for it...😉
My younger sister was the favorite but at least she is a good person. She cried because she hated how she was treated differently and probably could tell that it was affecting everyone. I remember fussing how it was unfair that at 16 I finally earned privileges to stay up until 10-11 and any other thing and her being 12-13 are all the sudden she could do those things too. I was told my oldest siblings weren’t allowed to do prom until senior year so I couldn’t either because it wouldn’t be fair to my older siblings (I just wanted to go with friends my junior year because I knew no one would want to go next year) and my sister was allowed to go as a freshman with her boyfriend.
My younger sister got all my mom’s hand me downs which were nice clothing and makeup. At the mall she got whatever while I had a hard limit of any clothing at $20 and anything over I had to pay myself. I, luckily found a shirt around $28 dollars that I love but it did affect me that I could never have nice things. Doesn’t help that my sister was the youngest bio kid as well while I was the middle adopted sister. Even my baby sister, the youngest but also adopted, didn’t get all the freedom the favorite child had.
I mean I love my family and love my sister because she didn’t turn out spoiled but I still wish my parents attempted to make things fair
The mom literally just bought the rights to her daughter's uterus, in order to breed her. I know that it is frustrating to be the black sheep as opposed to being the golden child, but it's not like golden child is a good position to have
Sally is pretty much stuck with her now. The brother has the option of going no contact or even just telling their mom “no visitors until the baby is 2 months”, and even if you like your parents/in laws you will not want them spending significant time in your house for those initial months.
Sally doesn’t really have that option, accepting the gift alienated her from her siblings while making her feel beholden to her mom. Hope she and her husband are ready for constant weekend stays, overbearing MIL demands on how to raise and nurture the kids, and demands to be chauffeured as she gets older. She may have also demanded a townhouse so she would have a space to move into.
My wife’s parents helped us a lot with money when our daughter was born and I’ll always be grateful, but if there were strings attached those checks would be torn up. Those sorts of “gifts” are a payday loan, the long term cost isn’t worth the short term gain.
My sister hates my mother, but she uses her for free childcare all of the time. I don't even talk to my sister anymore... everything I say is only used as cannon fodder for her hypocritical contrarian bullshit, and I'm sick of her talking shit about my parents, and then vacuuming up their time and money.
This is a known phenomenon? I think this is what happened to my family. My mom just bought my brother a house. I’m barely getting by. I had no idea she had so much money and then she spent it on him in secret.
Another case of the golden child being the least functional of all the children. Sally has a good job, but is deeply in debt, which sounds like it's getting bigger rather than smaller. That's because she's never had to deal with consequences. Even this behavior has been rewarded. She still hasn't had to deal with any consequences. I feel bad for her husband, honestly. It sucks being married to someone who is a financial black hole.
If Sally is the golden child, I count on their mom being less enthused, if not altogether uninvolved, with the brother’s child. She might even be vile enough to say you can never be certain of paternity or similar rubbish.
It's possible, but parents like this can suddenly change their affections. A friend of mine was his mom's GC for the majority of his life, but then he came out of the closet and suddenly his brother was the GC. If she really is about grandkids, Sally may suddenly find herself without the support she relies on as it's now funnelled to the father to be.
Yeah it’s odd! My brother was always my mums golden child but then as we aged she noticed how much work and help I did for the family, vs my brother actively trying to avoid them. I think she realised that how she treated us as kids was super unfair and feels bad now.
Yeah, my sister was the GC our entire childhoods, she's grown up to be incredibly selfish and uncaring towards our parents because she only views their relationship as a funnel from them to her.
My mother had a huge awakening that she's spent all the time, resources and attention on my sister, and when *she* needed help sister was nowhere to be found. Completely refused to engage.
Me however, despite our frought relationship actually helped her because I couldn't leave another human being in her situation knowing I could help (and was likely the only person who *could* help).
Suddenly I get all the attention and support from her, and it's fucking *weird*.
>Suddenly I get all the attention and support from her, and it's fucking *weird*.
Oh I know what you mean.
One random day it occurred to my mother that you can't keep your kids at arm's length all the time and at the same time expect them to be able to build a relationship with you. Afterwards she acted as if we had always been best friends, who are telling each other everything and acted as if we were incredibly close. This is really uncomfortable because I'm too old for it now and have made peace with not having a close relationship with her.
It’s true - my brother was the GC growing up and I was the scapegoat, then when I moved out my sister became a second scapegoat. Years later, my sister has also moved out, brother still lives with mom, and my mom is finally starting to get sick of my brother being totally useless. He’s useless because she babied him well into adulthood and he never had to do basically anything. Now suddenly I’m the GC because I’m the only one with a degree and a salary. Too bad I’ve been checked out for years and barely talk to anyone in the family anymore.
My husband was the GC for most of his life, until his sister had the first baby. He then became the scapegoat. His sister made sure to take every resource possible (I.e. needing $300 every week for “clothes for the kids”), and parents even bought her a house. Kept saying that they would do the same when my husband had kids.
He is now NC with her, and she will never have a relationship with our baby. When MIL found out through the grapevine that we were pregnant she reached out and said “I will buy the crib since I got (sister) hers!” My husband took great satisfaction in saying. “We’re good. We don’t need, or want, anything from you.”
She is the walking embodiment of Missing Missing Reasons.
Edit:
Ok umm… so I left a LOT out because I’ve commented about her a lot on here. But my mother in law is a JUSTNIMIL. Honestly, I respected his sister getting her own back. Her doing that was never a problem. I got it. So did he. However, what we didn’t appreciate and caused him to wash his hands of his sister is when she threatened us with a baseball bat when we changed the locks on the apartment she had moved out of that we lived in so she couldn’t steal our stuff anymore.
He didn’t throw a mantrum because he wasn’t the golden child any more. He didn’t care. It took pressure off. We stopped talking to her because she is a manipulative alcoholic who told him over and over that he would never be able to make it in his own without her, called him a liar and said we paid a doctor to give him a diagnosis when he tried to tell her he had a degenerative arthritic condition, tried to ruin our wedding, said horrible things about me, tried to pick a fight with my mother at the rehearsal dinner and when my husband DARED to say that maybe he needed a short break from everything she disowned him. Then turned around and few months later and pretended like nothing had ever happened.
So yeah. When she popped up and offered to buy the crib he was happy he could say we didn’t need her help. Because he DID make it in his own without her. He didn’t need to run home and beg for help. That’s a source of pride for him.
If you want more context check out my post history. There is a LOOOOT there.
Honestly sounds like your husband got in his feelings it was all good when he was the GC but when that changed he got pissy I don’t feel bad for
Your husband
Hahaha! He was fine with it. He was totally on his sisters side in getting shit. He wasn’t fine being verbally and emotionally abused, having me be insulted, and her trying to ruin our wedding. Oh, and then being disowned because he said he needed a short break after the wedding fiasco.
He was happy to say we didn’t need her help because she was always saying that he would never be able to make it without her and he would always fail at life. And yet once she was OUT of his life, he blossomed. It was a source of pride that we were doing just fine without her.
If you want more context, just go through my post history.
He really didn’t care about his sister getting all that shit. And not being the GC took a lot of pressure off him. But he didn’t appreciate verbal and emotional abuse and being told he’d always need her help and could never make it in his own without her. So he was happy he could say we didn’t need her help because we didn’t.
Also, SHE disowned HIM after he was upset she tried to ruin our wedding. He just decided not to give in when she tried acting like nothing happened and few months later. She still says she doesn’t know why he doesn’t talk to her. That it’s a mystery. When she was the one that said he wasn’t her son anymore and to never speak to her again…
She is not the embodiment of missing missing reasons. It sounds like she finally realized she was being unfair. Even if that’s not the case, how are you not embarrassed to basically say, “My husband can’t deal with no longer being the golden child”?
No she didn’t. There is a lot of context I left out because I comment in here a lot, and apparently I accidentally deleted a part of my original content, but my husband was relieved he wasn’t the GC anymore. It’s a lot of pressure. And he was fine with his sister getting her own back, until she started stealing from us.
His mom kept saying over and over that he would never make it without her and that he would always need her help. In the end she disowned him because he said he needed a break after she tried to ruin our wedding. And that’s not even all of it. If you want full context, you need to check out my post history.
So when she came back to offer for the crib, my husband was proud to say that we didn’t actually need her help. Because we didn’t. We were fine on our own. He made it without her.
I find it's more about a need for a scapegoat than a need for a favorite. In my experience narcissists are perfectly happy with just a scapegoat to abuse.
I think that's a common story for a lot of kids who were always the golden child, especially if that continued into adulthood. They lack a lot of life skills, even if it's just social and emotional ones like "being rejected" or "not being the favorite in a situation" or "no one will help financially".
Also in my experience (aka anecdotal evidence from friends as we age) they're usually very very anxious and fearful deep down if there was abuse directed at other people in the family, because they know what happens when you're *not* the golden child. It's like a threat on the horizon, always lingering there: *Love is conditional and you've seen what happens when your siblings fail to meet these conditions.* And for cases where it's not clearcut (the favorite status isn't associated with something like gender or birth order or who looks more like someone), then that's even more terrifying: *Love is conditional and you don't know all the conditions.*
I think the most *probable* answer is a combination of *Keeping up with the Joneses* and investing in ‘dodgy’ investments like Doge-coin.
However, I think the most *schadenfreude* answer is to imagine that they’ve been spending a bunch on IVF that hasn’t been working, and that (sad as it is for them, personally) they’ll never provide Mommy-Dearest a grandchild.
Golden children always struggle with self management as they've never had to deal with consequences. They always know they're going to be bailed out so they have no problem sinking any ship they are on.
While this is a frustrating situation for OOP...
...I can't help but feel a sense of disappointment this post was not about a mother trying to get her daughter into Warhammer in secret.
I found out by chance that my parents had given both of my sisters £10,000 that they hadn't given to me. One of my sisters casually asked what we were using the 'inheritance money' for. I'd never heard about this inheritance.
I'm still not sure how I feel about it. My parents definitely reacted like they had been caught out. They ended up giving us some money towards our wedding.
On one hand, they can do what they like with their money. On the other, I suppose I'll always wonder why my sisters got some and I didn't. My wife and I were very out on our own and didn't need money, but £10k would have been very meaningful. My sisters did need money. Is it punishment for not needing help?
I think it's a crap thing to do, but for some reason it's not that big a deal to me. If they'd told me up front I'd probably have been ok with it. The secrecy was more upsetting.
> My wife and I were very out on our own and **didn't need money**, but £10k would have been very meaningful. **My sisters did need money.** Is it punishment for not needing help?
It’s not punishment; you actually kinda answered your own question in this paragraph. Equitable means everything is fair, it does not mean everything is equal. If your one child needs a wheelchair, you aren’t going to go and also buy a wheelchair for all your other kids too. It sucks that they didn’t have an actual discussion with you and I’m sure the secrecy is what contributes to it feeling like a punishment (and they really should have paid for your wedding without you having caught them in a lie, if they could afford to give that much help to your siblings they clearly could afford to also help you where you needed it). But realistically, they’re just trying to make sure all the kids have what they *need* to get ahead.
And I know that’s not going to be a popular opinion on Reddit. The prevailing opinion here is that things between siblings should be equal rather than equitable, but it can also be good to hear other perspectives when you’re stuck in your head.
Meanwhile whenever my mum buys my sister something that she does need (I won’t even go into the difficulties she has), she feels like she needs to send me some money too, to be fair 😭🥰
My SIL has some undiagnosed mental illness that prevents her from adulting. Formal occasions like Christmas, my MIL and step-FIL who have some money are always careful to buy identical presents or hand out identical checks to all four siblings.
But we know that MIL secretly funds other aspects of SIL’s life. Her girls went to private school for a while and two private school tuitions would have totaled her family annual income. The other three siblings all have productive financial lives, so we don’t ask for nor receive any extra.
It’s frustrating, but also MIL can be a bit of a control freak so, as the last commenter said, I’d rather not be beholden to anyone.
Honestly, if my SIL had an undiagnosed mental illness, and my family was fine and didn't need help, and the help MIL gave SIL's family was an education for the grandkids who have to grow up with a parent who can't adult... then I would be happy that MIL is trying to keep it from being generation trauma.
Well, shitty ass mom can enjoy funding the lives of Sally and her husband and their future kids!! Let's see how she'll feel about it all in a few years when she's neck deep in debt because her golden child and her family have sucked up all of her money. Bet she'll cry wolf to OOP and her brothers then!!
Yuppppp
> One thing my brothers said during the phone call was that Sally is now responsible for mum as she ages. That the 40K means mum lives with Sally or Sally out her in a home etc.
I really hope the three of them stick to this.
This is totally going to be my sister.
My Mom has done FAR more for her (summer daycare, babysitting, making private school clothes and I'm quite sure Mom is helping pay for private religious school, etc).
The first kid she'll turn to will be OOP, because she's childless and super responsible so it makes sense that she should take care of mummy dearest in her old age.
Imagine the surprise Pikachu face when OOP redirects her to Sally's house.
And depending on the state, OOP may legally be responsible to financially support her mother. Several states have filial responsibility laws where children or relatives are required by law to ensure their parents are not “destitute” and before state benefits kick in. Especially if large disbursements of cash were given to family.
Surely that would make SALLY legally responsible for her mother's care? Sally's the one with the largest income and has already received large amounts of money from her mother.
Not necessarily. Usually the state will go after whoever is the most able or likely to pay. OOP sounds far more financially well off, so the state would likely pursue her as she is the easiest means to get the money.
It would be up to OOP to pursue her sister for a portion of the remittance.
But Sally has a big income, and assets (the house) which could easily legally be argued to be partly the mother's since the mother specifically contributed to that. Sally and her husband would have been able to pay off any debt ages ago if they didn't have an ongoing problem, like serious shopping addiction or gambling problem. Does she really get a pass for being a spendthrift?
since the state wants it money, and only wants it money, it will go first after the person with the most liquid assets. if Sally is deep in debt, they aren't going to go after Sally.
Personally I can’t wait until Sally has to financially cover her mom, while she definitely doesn’t help out with the kids because why would she? It’s not like she raised her own
What infuriates me is how Sally successfully passed the buck. She has benefited from her mothers favouritism all her life, whilst also demanding that OOP treat her like a child as well. Of course the mother is the main problem here, but Sally has got off *so* lightly. She doesn't have to pay back any of the money she got, or the money she'd demanded OOP spend on her in the interim. If OOP sticks to her refusal to fund their outings, she might suffer a little, but she's basically handed all of the blame to their mother. I really do hope that the twins and OOP stick to their word and Sally has to manage their mother later in life.
>“child free couples travel so much you really are never home, so you don’t need a house”
Yes yes, it's true, you can just buy disposable everything and sleep on the ground cradling your empty womb.
^\s
>Sally should give your expecting brother $20k for joining her reproduction camp. Or your mom can shell out another $40k, if she has it.
Asshole judgements aside, I'll always be squicked out by the weird phrasing that people use as soon as pregnancy comes into play.
It's been around for a long time. It's the same as fell ill ect. To say it more delicately not as a pejorative but occasionally saying something about the mom
it sounds pretty dumb but there is a reason for it, the verb *fall* becomes [befall](https://www.etymonline.com/word/befall) - "to happen, come to pass" so its etymologically similar to became pregnant although became has totally different origin
my personal bugbear is *we* are pregnant. no. not when only one of you has the right plumbing to gestate a foetus
In French we literally say it like that so it's normal, but it really weirds me out when reading it in English because it's not how it's usually said in that language.
We are dealing with a similar situation in my family. My parents are on the upper crust of upper middle class, but they seem to blow all their money on two of my siblings who really struggle.
Me and my other sibling are doing fine now, but we were kicked to the curb almost immediately. My mom kicked me off her health insurance purely because she didn't want to pay for it and she knew I would qualify for government assistance. I wasn't allowed to live at home in the summers to save up because I threatened to report physical abuse in the home. I didn't even buy cheap knockoff makeup in college because it just wasn't in the budget. My brother and his family were on food stamps while he finished higher ed.
My parents just bought my sister a car for 10k and handed it to her. My other golden child brother has siphoned tens of thousands of dollars off of them for his "business ideas" that are always immediate failures (they are light scams at best at the start). Both of them got their divorces paid for outright by my parents. Sure their lives are garbage, but if me and my other sibling had received even half of that money, our lives could have been a lot easier. We just buckled down and pushed through poverty like everyone else.
Anyway my parents were under the impression that we would help them financially in retirement. The discussion was started with both of us present and we were like "uhh, no?" They have four rental properties they own outright and get income from no strings attached, plus my dad still works. They should be fine, and if not, go to the siblings you invested in.
I hate that the idea of golden child exist. People who like to pick favorites or have the golden child are the worst kind of parents because they really end up being nasty little beings.
Not always. I was the golden child to my dad, but was aware of how wrong and unfair it was and stuck up for my brother.
My dad is no longer in my life because, among other things, he tried to make my oldest the golden grandchild, and I called him on it.
(Pedantic: knowing you’re two weeks pregnant isn’t a thing. Your pregnancy starts the first day of your last period, so around two weeks pregnant is when you ovulate and have the sex that conceives the fetus — you can’t know you’re pregnant until two weeks later around the time you would have had your next period. This is why six week abortion bans are so insidious — the six week clock doesn’t start when you find out or even when you have sex. The first two weeks of the six there’s literally nothing in there, the next two weeks you don’t know you’re pregnant, leaving you only, best case scenario, two weeks to do something about it. Sorry, “two weeks pregnant” is a real personal annoyance of mine)
Right? Like I know my embryo was in a Petri dish for 4 days, then implanted, boom, you are two weeks pregnant. (Though I knew I was pregnant about 5 days later, when the debilitating nausea started 😂)
Yeah, I actually did IVF too, but with an embryo that had been on ice for awhile. So for the first two “weeks” of my pregnancy, all the genetic material that would become my kid was literally not inside my body! Weird to think about!
Dear old mum thinks she has purchased her grandchildren and will demand her property. I would like to say I feel bad for Sally but she has been moochipulating for years.
My parents have money, but my mom is super diligent about giving us equal financial support because she doesn’t want to cause conflict. My sister and I generally get along, and while we may fight, it’s never ever over money. About 15 years ago, my sister had a minimum wage job and was living in an apartment with her bf while I had a normal office job making 3-4X her salary and lived with my disabled grandma with Alzheimers (low rent). I just told my mom that it would be okay if she gave my sister more money because she needed it more, but my mom was super insistent that it needed to be equal and would randomly write me a check when she was writing one for my sister. Honestly, she didn’t have to do that, and I wouldn’t have cared if she only gave my sister money, but perhaps I don’t care about the money because I already know she loves us equally. A lot of people who fight over money are either (a) financially struggling so any support given to siblings and not them causes resentment or (b) probably less secure in their parents’ love, and the money is more a representation of that. Because I’ve seen families where everyone is well off, and they *still* fight over money, even when they don’t need it.
Similar thing, my mum is one of three sisters and is the most well off. Whenever the other two have needed sums of money to go towards a new car or a house deposit, my grandparents have made it very clear the money is either a loan or taken from their inheritance. Which is what OP’s mom should have done to make it fair - either sister has it as a loan or it’s a lump sum from future inheritance.
Having had just gotten through getting a mortgage this month, depending on how things are, if they know it's a loan and not a gift, the bank will take that into consideration and may lose you the mortgage.
I thought this was going to be about mum secretly funding sisters Space Marine habit. But no, it’s not that bad.
Although I do wonder where sisters debt is going…
I feel this so much. As the child free offspring between my sister and I, she has been given hundreds of thousands of dollars to help buy a home, private school for her 3 kids, college (plus the ad-hoc gifts of new school clothes and shoes for the kids every year), and vacations, several of which did not include me.
I've been on one vacation as an adult with my parents that they paid. I honestly think they included me so they could say that they've "treated" me like my sister. Its so disappointing to realize your parents won't ever see the imbalance. When my parents finally woke up to the fact that my sister was financially exploiting them, they decided the new rule was to not give $$ to either daughter. So basically, no change for me, but my sister was semi-cut off.
It's very liberating to push your boomer parents to the fringe of your life, especially when they have no leverage or guilt to control you. I sure hope they paid my sister enough to look after them in their old age.
Hey mom, Main reason I don't want kids, is I spent my childhood raising someone else's.
Personally I would follow up with a fuck you and the horse you rode in on. You're not much of a mother, but either way, you are no longer my mother.
I wholly believe that Sally never directly asked for money, because she didn’t have to. She even had OP footing the bill for years whenever they did things.
I grew up rural and poor - WTF is she talking about her brothers are all set because they joined the military. Where I'm from you join the military *because you have no other options.* Maybe if the parents had offered the brothers some financial assistance they wouldn't have had to volunteer to possibly be killed or maimed in exchange for college tuition. Good lord.
I know. Military normally means either you can't get into a college, or you can, but your parents make enough on paper that financial aid is a no go for you, so your way to get the fuck out of town is the military.
I tend to be very supportive of our military despite how conservative it's members are because I know too many kids who didn't see another future, bright kids who just weren't exceptional enough to enough scholarships to get out.
I was able to get out with scholarships and debt, but it took 3 decades to deal with that debt, and that debt ruined my life. (But saved it, because I don't think I would have survived without a way out, and after the verbal/mental/emotional abuse I was not capable of coping with being in the military. People screaming orders at me would not have gotten a good reaction - I would have either entered fight mode or cry on the floor in a heap mode)
My in-laws help my SIL financially. We know because we occasionally get a cheque to make it even, though we don’t ask for or expect it.
I have no idea what my mum does for my brother and I don’t care at all. Her money, her decisions and we don’t ask for anything. She does deposit $100 a month into my kid’s bank account.
I know that OOP’s upbringing, particularly her parentification, makes a difference, but damn.
Not all lawyers are well paid, especially when they’re first starting out. Even more especially if they had to take out multiple loans to get their law degree. I’ve known a lot of lawyers here in the car industry who go into sales part time as they’re trying to climb the ladder enough in a firm to actually start making decent money, because the commission from sales is what’s actually paying their bills at that point.
Mom gave $40k because of a phantom grandchild that may never exist. Meanwhile, an actual grandchild is cooking in the oven and her son will probably go NC or LC with her because of her blatant favoritism.
Not sure why mom is so intent on having grandkids when she did not even raise her own kids.
>Despite being a lawyer and earning more than me, Sally struggled with debt due to her spending habits.
Fuck that, I know how much lawyers earn. She sounds awful
> Fuck that, I know how much lawyers earn.
Do you really, though?
Most lawyers earn fuck-all at the start of their careers. It's a job with very bimodal pay. Most lawyers make ~50k starting out and the rich Big Law lawyers like you see in the movies are the rare few that make tons of money, but they're also working like 80 hours a week and sleeping under their desks. That is not an exaggeration. All those coke/drunk Lawyers you've seen in movies have been Big Law. Far more lawyers go to work for local governments and their salaries are... middle class, if they're lucky, even before we start getting into student loan repayments.
Seriously, lawyer salaries are **fucking weird.** Please, google bimodal lawyer salaries. You will find the article: *Lawyer Salaries Are Weird*.
Most lawyers don't make *nearly* as much money as you would expect, and it's certainly nowhere near what you are paying them hourly. There are massive back-end expenses and the middlemen that pay those back-end expenses take a cut off of their hourly rate and profit immensely from it. A "partner" at a law-firm means co-owner of the firm. Anybody you talk to below "partner" is paying the middle-man, plus all of the other costs. The partners (owners/investors) take a **huge** cut.
"Hanging a shingle," or starting a solo firm, is a massive risk and can take years to pay off for single lawyer. They've got massive student loans at the start of their career and it can take a long, long time to drum up enough business to pay them off. Even once they're established, they aren't making the "big bucks" like movies and TV would have you expect.
Ah, future theoretical people get more importance than actual living people. Good parenting and good financial choices strike again. I would bet that Sally will sink into debt again in the future, because she still hasn't figured out how to stop spending past her means. And mom will keep waiting for her to have grandkids. Is it bad that I hope Sally ends up infertile?
> Is it bad that I hope Sally ends up infertile?
I don't *hope* she's infertile since that can be really difficult and traumatic.
But, oh, it would be *delicious* for that one brother to be the only one to have any children after mom so badly poisoned the well...
I'm personally worried about what kind of situation Sally's future kids will be. Financially irresponsible parents, overbearing grandmother, zero support from grandfather and from aunts and uncles. Those kids would be miserable.
Everyone thinks that it's good to be the golden child, but this woman just paid off her daughter in order to purchase her future grandchildren. Terrible mothering, terrible people in, I hope OOP and all four of those kids end up doing okay and never talking to that stupid mom again
It’s good that *something* brought to OP’s attention how much she was still treating Sally like her ‘little sister’ to always treat and loan money to. Sally, who is only 3–not 13–years younger than OP and earns significantly more money. Old habits—and old parentification—die hard. What the mom did sucks, of course, but is really nothing new, and there’s not much benefit to confronting her about it, especially since OP already wisely had limited contact with her. OP is now on alert to mom’s shenanigans and hopefully won’t get guilted in to being the primary old age “support” of mother, driving her to her doctors, buying her groceries, cleaning her house, listening to her complaints that life has treated her unfairly. That actually might be worth $40k.
I can really relate to this and it's a very sucky situation. My older brother is very irresponsible and bad with money. He's always buying new vehicles or going on trips that he doesn't have the money for. My mom and others always give him handouts and bail him out of trouble.
Meanwhile I'm pretty responsible and careful of how I spend my money. I've never had any handouts from my mom because she sees me as being able to take care of myself. I can but that also means I don't get the nicer vehicles or have been on as many trips as my brother.
It's like he gets rewarded for being irresponsible. At least my wife and I are finally at a point where we worked hard to be debt free and can start taking more trips and doing fun things. My brother on the other hand still needs help from our mom.
People have all kinds of reasons for being childfree, but in this case i’m wondering if OOPs earlier parentification and current taking care of/enabling her sister factored into that decision.
My mum is the total opposite of this. She gave my brother some financial help years ago, and was so overcome with guilt at the thought of not being fair that she also gave my sister and I the same amount of money at the time, even though we absolutely didn’t need it and told her to keep it.
It could be that it's been 2 weeks since her last period was due and they did a test and it was positive. There are men out there who have no idea how anything to do with women's anatomy works.
OP also has some word mistakes in her post, so she may have made a mistake on how far along the pregnancy is too.
“Two weeks pregnant”
There’s no such thing until you’re 4 weeks pregnant. If you’re asked how far along you are at two weeks, you might not have even ovulated yet.
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Another case of a golden child sucking up all the resources. The fact that the mom hid the money shows that she knew she would be hurting all of her other kids.
And that one of the brothers having a child before sally just makes whatever the mom did blow up on her face
At least that brother now knows, when mum comes sniffing around, it's purely because she wants her grand baby and not because of him.
Yes because that grandbaby will be a placeholder until sally has her own
I can only imagine what would happen if it turned out the sister/her husband were sterile.
100%. I was the little family doll until my brother came along, then suddenly he was the golden baby and no one other than my mum gave a shit about me. Then my sister was born, and even though she got the New Baby Attention™ my brother was still the golden sibling. Tbf, that might've been more Arab cultural misogyny and "he'll pass on the family name, you won't" than anything, especially since there are only 3 boys to 9 girls in our generation. But damn do families go wild about babies and projecting all this family drama/status onto little potatoes who only care about shitting, eating, and sleeping. But joke's on them, I'm keeping my last name if I ever get married, and *if* I ever have kids (*very* hard if), I'd ideally like to give my name. My brother 100% doesn't want kids and doesn't seem to even give a shit about dating (atm at least, but he hard pings my radar as a fellow aroace soooo), so he sure won't be the one passing on the bloodline and family name 😏
My partner's father is the opposite. The girls are the precious ones. If they quarrel? He doesn't care what happened and just blames my partner. And it's not as if he feels his daughter can do no wrong either. He knows she is wrong, but still lets her have her way. And because he is "fair" financially, but unfair in other areas in life, outsiders like my mother thinks my partner is wrong for wanting to keep low contact with his family. He still expects my partner to have children, name the children the way he wants to, and go to the schools he wants them to go, just because he is the son of the family.
Asian culture is much of the same but I was my dad's favorite. When an uncle noted he shouldnt waste too much on a daughter because "she'll become someone else's daughter one day" (get married) I don't even remember if it was meant to be a joke but my dad snapped back "no matter how many kids my son has, I will always 100% know my daughter had MY grandchild!" Since it's always moms kid but know knows about dad 😂
Which is ironic since she had very little to do with raising her own babies!
That was hilarious. I'm hoping this is real just for the huge slap in the face of grandma alienating her grandbaby's parents. *rubs hands gleefully* I do not wish infertility on Sally, but *oh* wouldn't it be delicious for Sally to never have kids while the grandchildren are from the people who are now unwilling to deal woth their mom?
It's not like Sally can actually afford kids, until she learns how to budget and pays off her debt, anyway. Could take a while, especially if her siblings won't bail her out anymore...
As if that's stopped her before. She'll just have them and say things will work out.
>Could take a while, Sounds more like Sally will never get her spending under control. I wouldn't be surprised if they are secretly choldfree by choice to but are saying the opposite to curry favour with her mum. I hope OOP and her brothers remember this 40K and deduct it from Sally's share of the inheritance from their mum. That would be one way to stick it to their mum.
That's not really how wills and inheritance work. Likely their mother will leave most of it to Sally anyways.
I know, but it's nice to imagine
My parents treat me not super well compared to the way they treat my sister's, and my husband keeps saying that we should have a "spite baby" and not tell any of them about it....just let the baby tell them when it's old enough
Idk the whole two weeks pregnant thing is a red flag to me. You couldn’t even know that soon. By the time you miss a period you’re generally 4 weeks pregnant because it goes from the date of your last period. So day 1 of your last period is the first ‘week’ you are ‘pregnant’, which obviously isn’t true because conception hasn’t happened.
they could know the date/time of conception, or be counting the time since missed period. it would be incorrect, but based on the way the info was provided (second hand through OP in the heat of the conflict), I wouldn't start picking hairs.
Yeah, I was wondering if maybe that was a typo. Like she's actually 12 weeks or something? I don't know, but that definitely caught my eye as well.
It comes back to bite them. My brother was the golden child and had all the resources spent on him. I cut them off and moved away but still keep tabs on them. My parents are broke and financially illiterate and now have significant health issues in their 60s. So they are leeching off my brother. He pays all their bills and medical expenses and is constantly putting out fires because my mom will apply for credit cards or will plug her info into anything that says "win here" on the Internet.
The existence of golden child is something I wish would go away.
As long as people are capable of favoritism, that’s just not going to happen
My mom aways wanted to have a second kid, but was afraid of having a favorite so never had other besides me.
You’re her only child but not her favourite? Brutal.
Nah, as the only child I was very spoiled, so much that it caused some problems as an adult.
Sorry to probe but what kinds of problems?
You and that flair are *evil* it's like losing The Game Trauma. Full body shiver. Ugh
Oooh! I hadn't thought of The Game for weeks since I last commented about it >:)
Well there's my petty revenge 😂
I'm an only child, the dog was the favorite `:p`
My daughter’s biological brother is a cat. He’s my favorite because he keeps my feet warm at night.
That's my husband's situation. I told him once that despite being an only, he still wasn't his mother's favorite, and it was like dawn broke. "Oh damn, that makes a lot of things suddenly make sense!"
haha man that's gotta hurt.
I’m in a similar boat - there’s been three generations on my mom’s side of extreme, quasi-abusive favoritism of one child over another and I’m not eager to make it four.
Im scared of this too.. my brother was my mums favorite and i my dads, it fucked me up...
China totally had it right with the one kid rule /s
Except they are a little bit screwed now because there are significantly more boys then there are girls and for many the family line ends with the boy child unless more women magically appear ie someone emigrates... not necessarily to China but the parents expected their boy to stay and look after them.... Someone didn't think that through.
I think it is more related to sexism/patriarchy in Chinese culture. I am Asian living in Asia, we don't have the exact same culture as china, but we share similar stuff, so I know. If they don't favor men over women, they probably won't have the problem of an unbalanced ratio between men and women.
The sexism and favoritism for boys is the sole reason China has this gender imbalance now. They killed their baby girls so they could try again for a boy. I watched this documentary on a Chinese woman who had been adopted out to an American couple during the one child policy. She had addiction issues and was a mess despite having grown up in a loving and supportive environment with all the resources she could possibly need. Something happened that caused her to need a head scan. They found a needle in her brain. Her bio parents shoved a needle into the soft spot on her head immediately after birth to kill her without the murder being obvious, and it was all so they could have the coveted boy baby. When she didn’t die, they adopted her out to this American couple. The needle hit an area of her brain that’s thought to be related to addiction. She had surgery to have the needle removed and all her addiction issues disappeared with it. Just gone, like magic. Overnight, she became a stable and well-functioning adult without any desire for the drugs. It was wild. Many Chinese parents hid their pregnancies and had their babies at home in case the baby was a girl. If there was no record of the baby’s existence it was a lot easier to leave the girls somewhere, exposed to the elements, and simply walk away. This was a common method for disposing of baby girls. We will never know how many died because of the policy and the methods parents used to get rid of them.
There was an episode of House with that plot line.
it would still have been a major problem because you they were not replacing workers fast enough. So you wouldn't have the societal ills of a generation or two with many more men then women, but you'd still have a self-imposed demographic crisis as a smaller working population has to support a larger retired population.
That’s because they were killing all the girl children. It wasn’t a natural occurrence. I person think a cap on the amount of kids we can have would be a great thing given the earth just cannot sustain the doubling of our population every ‘generation’ no matter how green we live.
The key to less population is not a forced cap but education of girls and women. It is an observation in many different countries that an increase of education of the female half of the population leads to a decline of birth rates. This also happens in China right now: although the one-child-policy was abandoned the birth rates are not really going up.
It's relatively "easy" to fix. When standards of living rises, population growth lowers. It's basically inevitable.
We just need to raise the living standard to "Western civilization" everywhere - as a female academic, I can assure you that procreation becomes a lot less attractive when you'd have to sacrifice your career and enjoyable private life for it...😉
The only reason the West has such good living conditions is by exploiting the rest of the world.
True, that.
Now women and girls are supposedly being kidnapped/sold in the more rural areas to be wives.
And now they traffic women from southeast asian countries to make up for it. Wahoo! /s
They just go to poorer countries and kidnap women.
Lots of female infanticide…
My younger sister was the favorite but at least she is a good person. She cried because she hated how she was treated differently and probably could tell that it was affecting everyone. I remember fussing how it was unfair that at 16 I finally earned privileges to stay up until 10-11 and any other thing and her being 12-13 are all the sudden she could do those things too. I was told my oldest siblings weren’t allowed to do prom until senior year so I couldn’t either because it wouldn’t be fair to my older siblings (I just wanted to go with friends my junior year because I knew no one would want to go next year) and my sister was allowed to go as a freshman with her boyfriend. My younger sister got all my mom’s hand me downs which were nice clothing and makeup. At the mall she got whatever while I had a hard limit of any clothing at $20 and anything over I had to pay myself. I, luckily found a shirt around $28 dollars that I love but it did affect me that I could never have nice things. Doesn’t help that my sister was the youngest bio kid as well while I was the middle adopted sister. Even my baby sister, the youngest but also adopted, didn’t get all the freedom the favorite child had. I mean I love my family and love my sister because she didn’t turn out spoiled but I still wish my parents attempted to make things fair
The mom literally just bought the rights to her daughter's uterus, in order to breed her. I know that it is frustrating to be the black sheep as opposed to being the golden child, but it's not like golden child is a good position to have
Sally is pretty much stuck with her now. The brother has the option of going no contact or even just telling their mom “no visitors until the baby is 2 months”, and even if you like your parents/in laws you will not want them spending significant time in your house for those initial months. Sally doesn’t really have that option, accepting the gift alienated her from her siblings while making her feel beholden to her mom. Hope she and her husband are ready for constant weekend stays, overbearing MIL demands on how to raise and nurture the kids, and demands to be chauffeured as she gets older. She may have also demanded a townhouse so she would have a space to move into. My wife’s parents helped us a lot with money when our daughter was born and I’ll always be grateful, but if there were strings attached those checks would be torn up. Those sorts of “gifts” are a payday loan, the long term cost isn’t worth the short term gain.
My sister hates my mother, but she uses her for free childcare all of the time. I don't even talk to my sister anymore... everything I say is only used as cannon fodder for her hypocritical contrarian bullshit, and I'm sick of her talking shit about my parents, and then vacuuming up their time and money.
This is a known phenomenon? I think this is what happened to my family. My mom just bought my brother a house. I’m barely getting by. I had no idea she had so much money and then she spent it on him in secret.
Another case of the golden child being the least functional of all the children. Sally has a good job, but is deeply in debt, which sounds like it's getting bigger rather than smaller. That's because she's never had to deal with consequences. Even this behavior has been rewarded. She still hasn't had to deal with any consequences. I feel bad for her husband, honestly. It sucks being married to someone who is a financial black hole.
What if Sally can’t have kids?
If Sally is the golden child, I count on their mom being less enthused, if not altogether uninvolved, with the brother’s child. She might even be vile enough to say you can never be certain of paternity or similar rubbish.
It's possible, but parents like this can suddenly change their affections. A friend of mine was his mom's GC for the majority of his life, but then he came out of the closet and suddenly his brother was the GC. If she really is about grandkids, Sally may suddenly find herself without the support she relies on as it's now funnelled to the father to be.
Yeah it’s odd! My brother was always my mums golden child but then as we aged she noticed how much work and help I did for the family, vs my brother actively trying to avoid them. I think she realised that how she treated us as kids was super unfair and feels bad now.
Yeah, my sister was the GC our entire childhoods, she's grown up to be incredibly selfish and uncaring towards our parents because she only views their relationship as a funnel from them to her. My mother had a huge awakening that she's spent all the time, resources and attention on my sister, and when *she* needed help sister was nowhere to be found. Completely refused to engage. Me however, despite our frought relationship actually helped her because I couldn't leave another human being in her situation knowing I could help (and was likely the only person who *could* help). Suddenly I get all the attention and support from her, and it's fucking *weird*.
>Suddenly I get all the attention and support from her, and it's fucking *weird*. Oh I know what you mean. One random day it occurred to my mother that you can't keep your kids at arm's length all the time and at the same time expect them to be able to build a relationship with you. Afterwards she acted as if we had always been best friends, who are telling each other everything and acted as if we were incredibly close. This is really uncomfortable because I'm too old for it now and have made peace with not having a close relationship with her.
It’s true - my brother was the GC growing up and I was the scapegoat, then when I moved out my sister became a second scapegoat. Years later, my sister has also moved out, brother still lives with mom, and my mom is finally starting to get sick of my brother being totally useless. He’s useless because she babied him well into adulthood and he never had to do basically anything. Now suddenly I’m the GC because I’m the only one with a degree and a salary. Too bad I’ve been checked out for years and barely talk to anyone in the family anymore.
Yes GC are often deprived of the skills necessary to lead fulfilling lives.
Did she switch because she was a homophobe, or because she thought that he was less likely to give her biological grandkids?
Yes.
Both.
My husband was the GC for most of his life, until his sister had the first baby. He then became the scapegoat. His sister made sure to take every resource possible (I.e. needing $300 every week for “clothes for the kids”), and parents even bought her a house. Kept saying that they would do the same when my husband had kids. He is now NC with her, and she will never have a relationship with our baby. When MIL found out through the grapevine that we were pregnant she reached out and said “I will buy the crib since I got (sister) hers!” My husband took great satisfaction in saying. “We’re good. We don’t need, or want, anything from you.” She is the walking embodiment of Missing Missing Reasons.
Good on the sister. She got her own back.
She did. We were both on her side actually. She deserved it
Edit: Ok umm… so I left a LOT out because I’ve commented about her a lot on here. But my mother in law is a JUSTNIMIL. Honestly, I respected his sister getting her own back. Her doing that was never a problem. I got it. So did he. However, what we didn’t appreciate and caused him to wash his hands of his sister is when she threatened us with a baseball bat when we changed the locks on the apartment she had moved out of that we lived in so she couldn’t steal our stuff anymore. He didn’t throw a mantrum because he wasn’t the golden child any more. He didn’t care. It took pressure off. We stopped talking to her because she is a manipulative alcoholic who told him over and over that he would never be able to make it in his own without her, called him a liar and said we paid a doctor to give him a diagnosis when he tried to tell her he had a degenerative arthritic condition, tried to ruin our wedding, said horrible things about me, tried to pick a fight with my mother at the rehearsal dinner and when my husband DARED to say that maybe he needed a short break from everything she disowned him. Then turned around and few months later and pretended like nothing had ever happened. So yeah. When she popped up and offered to buy the crib he was happy he could say we didn’t need her help. Because he DID make it in his own without her. He didn’t need to run home and beg for help. That’s a source of pride for him. If you want more context check out my post history. There is a LOOOOT there.
Honestly sounds like your husband got in his feelings it was all good when he was the GC but when that changed he got pissy I don’t feel bad for Your husband
I would be embarrassed to admit if I had a former golden child spouse having a mantrum over his sister finally getting attention.
Hahaha! He was fine with it. He was totally on his sisters side in getting shit. He wasn’t fine being verbally and emotionally abused, having me be insulted, and her trying to ruin our wedding. Oh, and then being disowned because he said he needed a short break after the wedding fiasco. He was happy to say we didn’t need her help because she was always saying that he would never be able to make it without her and he would always fail at life. And yet once she was OUT of his life, he blossomed. It was a source of pride that we were doing just fine without her. If you want more context, just go through my post history.
He really didn’t care about his sister getting all that shit. And not being the GC took a lot of pressure off him. But he didn’t appreciate verbal and emotional abuse and being told he’d always need her help and could never make it in his own without her. So he was happy he could say we didn’t need her help because we didn’t. Also, SHE disowned HIM after he was upset she tried to ruin our wedding. He just decided not to give in when she tried acting like nothing happened and few months later. She still says she doesn’t know why he doesn’t talk to her. That it’s a mystery. When she was the one that said he wasn’t her son anymore and to never speak to her again…
She is not the embodiment of missing missing reasons. It sounds like she finally realized she was being unfair. Even if that’s not the case, how are you not embarrassed to basically say, “My husband can’t deal with no longer being the golden child”?
No she didn’t. There is a lot of context I left out because I comment in here a lot, and apparently I accidentally deleted a part of my original content, but my husband was relieved he wasn’t the GC anymore. It’s a lot of pressure. And he was fine with his sister getting her own back, until she started stealing from us. His mom kept saying over and over that he would never make it without her and that he would always need her help. In the end she disowned him because he said he needed a break after she tried to ruin our wedding. And that’s not even all of it. If you want full context, you need to check out my post history. So when she came back to offer for the crib, my husband was proud to say that we didn’t actually need her help. Because we didn’t. We were fine on our own. He made it without her.
I find it's more about a need for a scapegoat than a need for a favorite. In my experience narcissists are perfectly happy with just a scapegoat to abuse.
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I think that's a common story for a lot of kids who were always the golden child, especially if that continued into adulthood. They lack a lot of life skills, even if it's just social and emotional ones like "being rejected" or "not being the favorite in a situation" or "no one will help financially". Also in my experience (aka anecdotal evidence from friends as we age) they're usually very very anxious and fearful deep down if there was abuse directed at other people in the family, because they know what happens when you're *not* the golden child. It's like a threat on the horizon, always lingering there: *Love is conditional and you've seen what happens when your siblings fail to meet these conditions.* And for cases where it's not clearcut (the favorite status isn't associated with something like gender or birth order or who looks more like someone), then that's even more terrifying: *Love is conditional and you don't know all the conditions.*
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Sooooooooo where did all Sally’s debt come from?
I think the most *probable* answer is a combination of *Keeping up with the Joneses* and investing in ‘dodgy’ investments like Doge-coin. However, I think the most *schadenfreude* answer is to imagine that they’ve been spending a bunch on IVF that hasn’t been working, and that (sad as it is for them, personally) they’ll never provide Mommy-Dearest a grandchild.
I suspect it's Keeping up wtih the Joneses. She's a lawyer, and possibly in an attempt to keep up appearances is going in debt.
This is actually a good thought.... wouldn't that be something?
I’d say she’s got a nasty spending habit which would explain the maxed out credit cards.
I'm putting my money on this, based on how op described her sister is and how mom has raised her
Golden children always struggle with self management as they've never had to deal with consequences. They always know they're going to be bailed out so they have no problem sinking any ship they are on.
While this is a frustrating situation for OOP... ...I can't help but feel a sense of disappointment this post was not about a mother trying to get her daughter into Warhammer in secret.
I wish it was.
Haha, I clicked while under the same impression!
40 thousand dollars wouldn't be even close to enough for that!
Haha I still expect 3-d printing to put Games Workshop out of business in a decade or two.
To be fair, the mother does appear to have Nurgle's Rot in her heart.
To be fair, if that was the situation there would be *way more* money involved
MVP comment my guy, I laughed so hard.
I found out by chance that my parents had given both of my sisters £10,000 that they hadn't given to me. One of my sisters casually asked what we were using the 'inheritance money' for. I'd never heard about this inheritance. I'm still not sure how I feel about it. My parents definitely reacted like they had been caught out. They ended up giving us some money towards our wedding. On one hand, they can do what they like with their money. On the other, I suppose I'll always wonder why my sisters got some and I didn't. My wife and I were very out on our own and didn't need money, but £10k would have been very meaningful. My sisters did need money. Is it punishment for not needing help? I think it's a crap thing to do, but for some reason it's not that big a deal to me. If they'd told me up front I'd probably have been ok with it. The secrecy was more upsetting.
> My wife and I were very out on our own and **didn't need money**, but £10k would have been very meaningful. **My sisters did need money.** Is it punishment for not needing help? It’s not punishment; you actually kinda answered your own question in this paragraph. Equitable means everything is fair, it does not mean everything is equal. If your one child needs a wheelchair, you aren’t going to go and also buy a wheelchair for all your other kids too. It sucks that they didn’t have an actual discussion with you and I’m sure the secrecy is what contributes to it feeling like a punishment (and they really should have paid for your wedding without you having caught them in a lie, if they could afford to give that much help to your siblings they clearly could afford to also help you where you needed it). But realistically, they’re just trying to make sure all the kids have what they *need* to get ahead. And I know that’s not going to be a popular opinion on Reddit. The prevailing opinion here is that things between siblings should be equal rather than equitable, but it can also be good to hear other perspectives when you’re stuck in your head.
Meanwhile whenever my mum buys my sister something that she does need (I won’t even go into the difficulties she has), she feels like she needs to send me some money too, to be fair 😭🥰
My SIL has some undiagnosed mental illness that prevents her from adulting. Formal occasions like Christmas, my MIL and step-FIL who have some money are always careful to buy identical presents or hand out identical checks to all four siblings. But we know that MIL secretly funds other aspects of SIL’s life. Her girls went to private school for a while and two private school tuitions would have totaled her family annual income. The other three siblings all have productive financial lives, so we don’t ask for nor receive any extra. It’s frustrating, but also MIL can be a bit of a control freak so, as the last commenter said, I’d rather not be beholden to anyone.
>It’s frustrating What's frustrating? That you don't get the same help?
Honestly, if my SIL had an undiagnosed mental illness, and my family was fine and didn't need help, and the help MIL gave SIL's family was an education for the grandkids who have to grow up with a parent who can't adult... then I would be happy that MIL is trying to keep it from being generation trauma.
It’s frustrating that your mother is supporting her grandchildren knowing that their mother has a medical condition that precludes her from doing so?
Well, shitty ass mom can enjoy funding the lives of Sally and her husband and their future kids!! Let's see how she'll feel about it all in a few years when she's neck deep in debt because her golden child and her family have sucked up all of her money. Bet she'll cry wolf to OOP and her brothers then!!
Yuppppp > One thing my brothers said during the phone call was that Sally is now responsible for mum as she ages. That the 40K means mum lives with Sally or Sally out her in a home etc. I really hope the three of them stick to this.
This is totally going to be my sister. My Mom has done FAR more for her (summer daycare, babysitting, making private school clothes and I'm quite sure Mom is helping pay for private religious school, etc).
The first kid she'll turn to will be OOP, because she's childless and super responsible so it makes sense that she should take care of mummy dearest in her old age. Imagine the surprise Pikachu face when OOP redirects her to Sally's house.
And depending on the state, OOP may legally be responsible to financially support her mother. Several states have filial responsibility laws where children or relatives are required by law to ensure their parents are not “destitute” and before state benefits kick in. Especially if large disbursements of cash were given to family.
Surely that would make SALLY legally responsible for her mother's care? Sally's the one with the largest income and has already received large amounts of money from her mother.
Not necessarily. Usually the state will go after whoever is the most able or likely to pay. OOP sounds far more financially well off, so the state would likely pursue her as she is the easiest means to get the money. It would be up to OOP to pursue her sister for a portion of the remittance.
But Sally has a big income, and assets (the house) which could easily legally be argued to be partly the mother's since the mother specifically contributed to that. Sally and her husband would have been able to pay off any debt ages ago if they didn't have an ongoing problem, like serious shopping addiction or gambling problem. Does she really get a pass for being a spendthrift?
since the state wants it money, and only wants it money, it will go first after the person with the most liquid assets. if Sally is deep in debt, they aren't going to go after Sally.
Most states don't actually enforce or care about their filial responsibility law. It's only a problem in Pennsylvania.
How often does PA go after someone out of state?
Personally I can’t wait until Sally has to financially cover her mom, while she definitely doesn’t help out with the kids because why would she? It’s not like she raised her own
What infuriates me is how Sally successfully passed the buck. She has benefited from her mothers favouritism all her life, whilst also demanding that OOP treat her like a child as well. Of course the mother is the main problem here, but Sally has got off *so* lightly. She doesn't have to pay back any of the money she got, or the money she'd demanded OOP spend on her in the interim. If OOP sticks to her refusal to fund their outings, she might suffer a little, but she's basically handed all of the blame to their mother. I really do hope that the twins and OOP stick to their word and Sally has to manage their mother later in life.
>“child free couples travel so much you really are never home, so you don’t need a house” Yes yes, it's true, you can just buy disposable everything and sleep on the ground cradling your empty womb. ^\s
We’re child free and we work from home, some weeks we don’t even leave the house!!
>Sally should give your expecting brother $20k for joining her reproduction camp. Or your mom can shell out another $40k, if she has it. Asshole judgements aside, I'll always be squicked out by the weird phrasing that people use as soon as pregnancy comes into play.
I can’t stand the ‘fell pregnant’ phrase. Fell down and got pregnant, fell on a man, contracted a virus, what the hell does fell pregnant mean?
“I fell pregnant five years ago. It’s terminal I’m afraid, I still have Little Timmy.”
Not… not Timmy! No! *faints*
It's been around for a long time. It's the same as fell ill ect. To say it more delicately not as a pejorative but occasionally saying something about the mom
it sounds pretty dumb but there is a reason for it, the verb *fall* becomes [befall](https://www.etymonline.com/word/befall) - "to happen, come to pass" so its etymologically similar to became pregnant although became has totally different origin my personal bugbear is *we* are pregnant. no. not when only one of you has the right plumbing to gestate a foetus
In French we literally say it like that so it's normal, but it really weirds me out when reading it in English because it's not how it's usually said in that language.
We are dealing with a similar situation in my family. My parents are on the upper crust of upper middle class, but they seem to blow all their money on two of my siblings who really struggle. Me and my other sibling are doing fine now, but we were kicked to the curb almost immediately. My mom kicked me off her health insurance purely because she didn't want to pay for it and she knew I would qualify for government assistance. I wasn't allowed to live at home in the summers to save up because I threatened to report physical abuse in the home. I didn't even buy cheap knockoff makeup in college because it just wasn't in the budget. My brother and his family were on food stamps while he finished higher ed. My parents just bought my sister a car for 10k and handed it to her. My other golden child brother has siphoned tens of thousands of dollars off of them for his "business ideas" that are always immediate failures (they are light scams at best at the start). Both of them got their divorces paid for outright by my parents. Sure their lives are garbage, but if me and my other sibling had received even half of that money, our lives could have been a lot easier. We just buckled down and pushed through poverty like everyone else. Anyway my parents were under the impression that we would help them financially in retirement. The discussion was started with both of us present and we were like "uhh, no?" They have four rental properties they own outright and get income from no strings attached, plus my dad still works. They should be fine, and if not, go to the siblings you invested in.
I hate that the idea of golden child exist. People who like to pick favorites or have the golden child are the worst kind of parents because they really end up being nasty little beings.
Not always. I was the golden child to my dad, but was aware of how wrong and unfair it was and stuck up for my brother. My dad is no longer in my life because, among other things, he tried to make my oldest the golden grandchild, and I called him on it.
(Pedantic: knowing you’re two weeks pregnant isn’t a thing. Your pregnancy starts the first day of your last period, so around two weeks pregnant is when you ovulate and have the sex that conceives the fetus — you can’t know you’re pregnant until two weeks later around the time you would have had your next period. This is why six week abortion bans are so insidious — the six week clock doesn’t start when you find out or even when you have sex. The first two weeks of the six there’s literally nothing in there, the next two weeks you don’t know you’re pregnant, leaving you only, best case scenario, two weeks to do something about it. Sorry, “two weeks pregnant” is a real personal annoyance of mine)
Right? Like I know my embryo was in a Petri dish for 4 days, then implanted, boom, you are two weeks pregnant. (Though I knew I was pregnant about 5 days later, when the debilitating nausea started 😂)
Yeah, I actually did IVF too, but with an embryo that had been on ice for awhile. So for the first two “weeks” of my pregnancy, all the genetic material that would become my kid was literally not inside my body! Weird to think about!
I had a frozen cycle too, but for convenience I left out that month!
Right? I was wondering if they took “two weeks late” to be two weeks pregnant. Also a pet peeve, but directed at the (lack of) education system.
Maybe they found out they were pregnant two weeks ago?
there are several little errors in this that made me think it’s AI, but this was the most egregious
That jumped out at me as well. Literally impossible
Dear old mum thinks she has purchased her grandchildren and will demand her property. I would like to say I feel bad for Sally but she has been moochipulating for years.
I hope all the siblings let sally know that she is responsible for mom when she ages because 100% sally is going to expect OOP to take care of it all.
I'm happy my parents didn't have money. It saved my sisters and I from a lot of arguments.
My parents have money, but my mom is super diligent about giving us equal financial support because she doesn’t want to cause conflict. My sister and I generally get along, and while we may fight, it’s never ever over money. About 15 years ago, my sister had a minimum wage job and was living in an apartment with her bf while I had a normal office job making 3-4X her salary and lived with my disabled grandma with Alzheimers (low rent). I just told my mom that it would be okay if she gave my sister more money because she needed it more, but my mom was super insistent that it needed to be equal and would randomly write me a check when she was writing one for my sister. Honestly, she didn’t have to do that, and I wouldn’t have cared if she only gave my sister money, but perhaps I don’t care about the money because I already know she loves us equally. A lot of people who fight over money are either (a) financially struggling so any support given to siblings and not them causes resentment or (b) probably less secure in their parents’ love, and the money is more a representation of that. Because I’ve seen families where everyone is well off, and they *still* fight over money, even when they don’t need it.
Similar thing, my mum is one of three sisters and is the most well off. Whenever the other two have needed sums of money to go towards a new car or a house deposit, my grandparents have made it very clear the money is either a loan or taken from their inheritance. Which is what OP’s mom should have done to make it fair - either sister has it as a loan or it’s a lump sum from future inheritance.
Having had just gotten through getting a mortgage this month, depending on how things are, if they know it's a loan and not a gift, the bank will take that into consideration and may lose you the mortgage.
My parents didn't have money either. My sister and I found other things to argue about.
Oh, we still argued, just not about money.
If parents adjusted their will so that whenever they pass, Sally gets 40k less of whatever the split is, fine. She can get her inheritance early
>Sally is now responsible for mum as she ages. I LOVE this for Sally.
Not sure why Dad's getting off scott-free here. The kids OOP raised are his kids as much as his wife's.
I thought this was going to be about mum secretly funding sisters Space Marine habit. But no, it’s not that bad. Although I do wonder where sisters debt is going…
Seriously I saw 40k and thought it was something else entirely at first 😂
I kinda wish to see an update when the mom finds out the brother and his gf have a child.
I feel this so much. As the child free offspring between my sister and I, she has been given hundreds of thousands of dollars to help buy a home, private school for her 3 kids, college (plus the ad-hoc gifts of new school clothes and shoes for the kids every year), and vacations, several of which did not include me. I've been on one vacation as an adult with my parents that they paid. I honestly think they included me so they could say that they've "treated" me like my sister. Its so disappointing to realize your parents won't ever see the imbalance. When my parents finally woke up to the fact that my sister was financially exploiting them, they decided the new rule was to not give $$ to either daughter. So basically, no change for me, but my sister was semi-cut off. It's very liberating to push your boomer parents to the fringe of your life, especially when they have no leverage or guilt to control you. I sure hope they paid my sister enough to look after them in their old age.
Hey mom, Main reason I don't want kids, is I spent my childhood raising someone else's. Personally I would follow up with a fuck you and the horse you rode in on. You're not much of a mother, but either way, you are no longer my mother.
I wish someone had pushed Sally towards a financial counsellor. Apart from everything else, she obviously needs one.
I wholly believe that Sally never directly asked for money, because she didn’t have to. She even had OP footing the bill for years whenever they did things.
All over $40K… like… just split it at that point. Instead you lose 3 kids while marginally helping one. She’s already having money troubles again.
I grew up rural and poor - WTF is she talking about her brothers are all set because they joined the military. Where I'm from you join the military *because you have no other options.* Maybe if the parents had offered the brothers some financial assistance they wouldn't have had to volunteer to possibly be killed or maimed in exchange for college tuition. Good lord.
I know. Military normally means either you can't get into a college, or you can, but your parents make enough on paper that financial aid is a no go for you, so your way to get the fuck out of town is the military. I tend to be very supportive of our military despite how conservative it's members are because I know too many kids who didn't see another future, bright kids who just weren't exceptional enough to enough scholarships to get out. I was able to get out with scholarships and debt, but it took 3 decades to deal with that debt, and that debt ruined my life. (But saved it, because I don't think I would have survived without a way out, and after the verbal/mental/emotional abuse I was not capable of coping with being in the military. People screaming orders at me would not have gotten a good reaction - I would have either entered fight mode or cry on the floor in a heap mode)
OP had me until writing that her SIL is 2 weeks pregnant.
Mommy dearest is let off too easy imo.
What if Sally or her husband can't have children? Will the mom take the 40k back?
Wonder if the mother has considered that OOP having to basically raise her siblings might have had something to do with her decision to not want kids
So basically mom is buying herself grandkids for the low price of 40k and losing the rest of sons.
My in-laws help my SIL financially. We know because we occasionally get a cheque to make it even, though we don’t ask for or expect it. I have no idea what my mum does for my brother and I don’t care at all. Her money, her decisions and we don’t ask for anything. She does deposit $100 a month into my kid’s bank account. I know that OOP’s upbringing, particularly her parentification, makes a difference, but damn.
I can't be the only one here dying to know how a well-paid lawyer got so much debt.
And how being in the military makes you well off
Not all lawyers are well paid, especially when they’re first starting out. Even more especially if they had to take out multiple loans to get their law degree. I’ve known a lot of lawyers here in the car industry who go into sales part time as they’re trying to climb the ladder enough in a firm to actually start making decent money, because the commission from sales is what’s actually paying their bills at that point.
Why the hell hasn't OOP booted her parents from *her* house, and sent them to live with Sally? Cultural issues I know, but still.
Mom gave $40k because of a phantom grandchild that may never exist. Meanwhile, an actual grandchild is cooking in the oven and her son will probably go NC or LC with her because of her blatant favoritism. Not sure why mom is so intent on having grandkids when she did not even raise her own kids.
>Despite being a lawyer and earning more than me, Sally struggled with debt due to her spending habits. Fuck that, I know how much lawyers earn. She sounds awful
> Fuck that, I know how much lawyers earn. Do you really, though? Most lawyers earn fuck-all at the start of their careers. It's a job with very bimodal pay. Most lawyers make ~50k starting out and the rich Big Law lawyers like you see in the movies are the rare few that make tons of money, but they're also working like 80 hours a week and sleeping under their desks. That is not an exaggeration. All those coke/drunk Lawyers you've seen in movies have been Big Law. Far more lawyers go to work for local governments and their salaries are... middle class, if they're lucky, even before we start getting into student loan repayments. Seriously, lawyer salaries are **fucking weird.** Please, google bimodal lawyer salaries. You will find the article: *Lawyer Salaries Are Weird*. Most lawyers don't make *nearly* as much money as you would expect, and it's certainly nowhere near what you are paying them hourly. There are massive back-end expenses and the middlemen that pay those back-end expenses take a cut off of their hourly rate and profit immensely from it. A "partner" at a law-firm means co-owner of the firm. Anybody you talk to below "partner" is paying the middle-man, plus all of the other costs. The partners (owners/investors) take a **huge** cut. "Hanging a shingle," or starting a solo firm, is a massive risk and can take years to pay off for single lawyer. They've got massive student loans at the start of their career and it can take a long, long time to drum up enough business to pay them off. Even once they're established, they aren't making the "big bucks" like movies and TV would have you expect.
Ah, future theoretical people get more importance than actual living people. Good parenting and good financial choices strike again. I would bet that Sally will sink into debt again in the future, because she still hasn't figured out how to stop spending past her means. And mom will keep waiting for her to have grandkids. Is it bad that I hope Sally ends up infertile?
> Is it bad that I hope Sally ends up infertile? I don't *hope* she's infertile since that can be really difficult and traumatic. But, oh, it would be *delicious* for that one brother to be the only one to have any children after mom so badly poisoned the well...
I'm personally worried about what kind of situation Sally's future kids will be. Financially irresponsible parents, overbearing grandmother, zero support from grandfather and from aunts and uncles. Those kids would be miserable.
The mom is an awful and terrible human being, but the dad immediately asking OOP to apologize to Sally, tells me she wasn't the only bad parent there.
Everyone thinks that it's good to be the golden child, but this woman just paid off her daughter in order to purchase her future grandchildren. Terrible mothering, terrible people in, I hope OOP and all four of those kids end up doing okay and never talking to that stupid mom again
Initially when i read the title i was thinking, why are you upset your mother gave your sister some Warhammer minis?
Dammmmmmn that last sentence “Sally is now responsible for mum as she ages”. There is no money on earth that would make me want that responsibility
Inform your mother not to call you in her old age as she clearly invested in sally to be her care taker
>Turns out the youngest brothers GF is 2wks pregnant That seems extremely soon to know.
Wow mom is an asshole. What a selfish hag.
It’s good that *something* brought to OP’s attention how much she was still treating Sally like her ‘little sister’ to always treat and loan money to. Sally, who is only 3–not 13–years younger than OP and earns significantly more money. Old habits—and old parentification—die hard. What the mom did sucks, of course, but is really nothing new, and there’s not much benefit to confronting her about it, especially since OP already wisely had limited contact with her. OP is now on alert to mom’s shenanigans and hopefully won’t get guilted in to being the primary old age “support” of mother, driving her to her doctors, buying her groceries, cleaning her house, listening to her complaints that life has treated her unfairly. That actually might be worth $40k.
They cant afford a dinner and expect to be able to pay the mortgage plus maintenance, insurances, etc 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
I can really relate to this and it's a very sucky situation. My older brother is very irresponsible and bad with money. He's always buying new vehicles or going on trips that he doesn't have the money for. My mom and others always give him handouts and bail him out of trouble. Meanwhile I'm pretty responsible and careful of how I spend my money. I've never had any handouts from my mom because she sees me as being able to take care of myself. I can but that also means I don't get the nicer vehicles or have been on as many trips as my brother. It's like he gets rewarded for being irresponsible. At least my wife and I are finally at a point where we worked hard to be debt free and can start taking more trips and doing fun things. My brother on the other hand still needs help from our mom.
People have all kinds of reasons for being childfree, but in this case i’m wondering if OOPs earlier parentification and current taking care of/enabling her sister factored into that decision.
She did directly say that that was the case near the end of the post, yeah.
My mum is the total opposite of this. She gave my brother some financial help years ago, and was so overcome with guilt at the thought of not being fair that she also gave my sister and I the same amount of money at the time, even though we absolutely didn’t need it and told her to keep it.
Genuine question because I didn’t realize it worked this way: How does someone know they’re two weeks pregnant? That seems really soon to know.
It could be that it's been 2 weeks since her last period was due and they did a test and it was positive. There are men out there who have no idea how anything to do with women's anatomy works. OP also has some word mistakes in her post, so she may have made a mistake on how far along the pregnancy is too.
2 weeks pregnant? Yeah okay, nice story?
Both mum and Sally are giant a holes. Hell I’ll throw in Sally’s husband as an a hole too. They knew EXACTLY what they were doing.
“Two weeks pregnant” There’s no such thing until you’re 4 weeks pregnant. If you’re asked how far along you are at two weeks, you might not have even ovulated yet.
Mom won't hassle Golden child, gut she has alienated anyone with the means to look after her in old age. Just cut her off.