Money is never free. It sounds like this money might come with strings attached. I’m guessing the mom might hold it over their heads. (“I give you $30k and you never call!”, “Spend Christmas with me or you can forget about next year’s $30k”, etc) Joan may think the hassles that come with the money aren’t worth it.
I share your skepticism about personal moral codes everyone is free to make up, and change at will for themselves. However traditional moral codes wouldn’t necessarily have a consistent answer to a question like this. For example Confucianism tends to favor piety to parents above most if not all other things, so help dad. Except here it’s mom’s money she might not want used to help dad. Original Christianity is very much in favor of charity, but not specifically toward family (one reason Confucians sometimes persecuted Christians: they thought Christianity was immoral on account of Gospel examples/admonitions of Jesus’ followers leaving family behind to follow Him).
My take would be that an obligation parents take on like funding a child’s education is not a debt of the child unless presented that way to begin with. The fact that the dad incurred debt to fulfill the previously accepted obligation isn’t that relevant, the other details of the divorce (wife cheating etc) less so. Likewise you can give gifts (and the money is a gift, I’m puzzled by any debate about that) with stipulations, but you have to give those stipulations upfront so the recipient can accept the gift or not based on them. It’s not up to a recipient to check back with a donor whether if X,Y, and Z are acceptable ways to spend money given without any stipulation about XYZ, or about asking, at the time it was given.
So I agree with several other posters, though maybe in different words: it would be nice of the daughter to pay the dad’s debt. It’s what I hope I’d do. It’s what I hope my kids would do. The mother needn’t be told because it’s not really her business, she has no right a veto, and so there’s no upside to involving her. I wouldn’t however say ‘it’s the right thing to do’ since that tends to create the impression that doing otherwise is morally wrong, which I don’t think is true here.
I’m not seeing what obligation Joan has to her father; she didn’t borrow anything from them, and it’s reasonable to assume that the education was essentially a gift from her parents. I don’t think she has an obligation to earmark the first 30k from the great aunt’s inheritance to pay off her father’s debts. I agree that it should probably be put toward a down payment and/or setting up a college fund for their children (the earlier the better).
But we’re talking 30k on a loan with probably what… 10 years to go, and 30k coming in annually? There’s no real reason they can’t do everything they need to, assuming that they’re not trying to do it all at once. I mean, after 5 years, they’ll have received 150k, which is way more than enough to fund a down payment, set up a college fund and earn enough investment income to both pay two car notes as well as assume the remainder of the student loan debt payments. And they’ll have another 210k coming in over the next 7 years as well.
The gotcha, I suppose, is that you can’t do it all at once.
I can see why Joan is hesitant to take the money from her mom or in-laws, honestly; apparently in this family, if you take money, you have to spend the next decade (at least) on a continuous guilt-trip.
I would really like to know if he still has her student loan debt after ten years because it was a huge loan, or if it’s just he’s generally shit at money management and has made “that $30k I borrowed for YOUR SAKE because your WHORE MOTHER made me” the beginning and end of all his financial troubles.
I would also like to know how it was presented to her at the time. If he told her 18-year old self that he could afford it, that it was no big deal, that she should go to the school she wanted and not worry about the money, then it’s so shitty to come back afterward and say “Wow, I really couldn’t afford that, you ruined my life, woe is me”. It’s not an 18-year old kid’s job to know their parent’s finances.
I think it would be a nice thing to do if she picked up the debt. If I were in this situation, I would think about it a little differently. The question I would want to ask myself is if this debt, that he agreed to, is hurting my dad financially in terms that he will be homeless in the near future or if it means he has to buy store brands rather than name brands and has to wait 3 or 4 years to get a new car rather than 2. (I am painting with broad strokes here). I’d never let either of my parents become homeless, but if it’s just cramping his style, I’d hope he would stop complaining and just pay the bill.
I love my parents dearly, but I would much rather they live in their own house instead of mine.
College tuition is expensive, so I assume it was a sizable loan. It’s possible irresponsible spending is the biggest culprit of his financial woes; that’s how it is for a lot of people. But I don’t see why this means Joan shouldn’t offer to relieve him of a loan that went towards her education. This isn’t gambling debt or shopping addiction debt or any other debt of his own making.
But I’m of the opinion that parents aren’t obligated to pay their kid’s college expenses, so this might be affecting my view on things. It would have made me feel guilty if going to college meant saddling my parents with debt. Fortunately that didn’t happen in my case, but if it had? And then later the money fairy started raining cash on my head? I would at least offer to pay my parents back.
If her relationship with Dad could be improved by eliminating this college loan, that’s another reason it could be worth it. What is of greater importance? Being richer? Or knowing that Dad can stop all the harping about all the money he owes on account of me?
All I can say is that I would. And I think she is a shit if she doesn’t.
But it won’t end. Pay off the college loan, and he will bitch how he ruined himself keeping the family hime for “her sake”. Pay that off, and it will be how he has PTSD because he atayed in an abusive relationship for her.
Again, if he asked her not to go to the out of state school because he couldn’t afford it, that’s one thing. But if he lead her to believe that it was something he could afford, coming back later and endlessly laying on the guilt is crap.
Does anyone feel she’s obligated to pay pff his mortgage? He did that for her, too.
I don’t equate supplying housing for your dependent child with paying a young adult’s tuition bill, so no. Morally speaking, there is a huge distinction between the two.
And he didn’t pay for college for her. He paid for college because it was a legal obligation put on him by his divorce decree - when she was ten or whatever. If he didn’t like the terms of the divorce, he should have dealt with it then - but by no means should his daughter - who was a child when they divorced - be made responsible for his obligations.
If her Mom paid her Dad child support because she made more money, should Joan pay her Mom back for child support?
We have spent a ton of money over the years keeping my husband’s divorced mother who got screwed in the divorce proceedings comfortable - we fly her places, we pay to have her car fixed, we’ve paid for her cell phone for twenty years, and there is the gift of cash from time to time - but I don’t feel obligated to do it, nor do I think its immoral if we don’t. Our first priority is to our own children (adults now, so when they are done with college, there will be just help)…our second is to being able to afford our own life and retirement. And then we can help out his mother.
Wow, do you have a negative opinion of all males? The school is directly for the daughter who should have taken the full free ride at her local school.
Joan should absolutely not make any kind of major financial decision because she thinks it will change her father’s behavior for the better, and furthermore, if she does decide to pay off some of his divorce debt, she should prepare in advance for it to make things worse.
conundrum
But he stayed in the super expensive, more than he could afford family home “for her”. He could have sold it and moved somewhere ge could afford.
What on EARTH does this have to do with gender? Seriously? It’s about parent/child obligations.
Because you bashed and nitpicked on the dad.
FTR, Joan was a senior in high school when her parents divorced. She’d already been accepted to her chosen university with the blessing of both parents so the cost was known to both parents. And even though Joan could have gotten a full ride locally, it wasn’t the best school for her field. In fact she’s currently employed at that university in her field, and will receive a nice raise and promotion upon completion of her Masters.
When our kids went to university, we told them up front that we’d pay up to $25k per year for no more than 4 years. They both chose a school within that budget. While I can certainly understand why people think that Joan should help pay for the loan, as do I, she chose an out of state university in part because she wasn’t given any limitations and because she had no concept of how much it would burden her dad. So some blame should be placed on them. it’s kind of like a parent not putting a limit on their daughter’s wedding and then after the fact complaining that they had to take out a loan. Well, no, they didn’t have to spend over what they could afford.
Joan is an only child.
Why should she have done so?
You’re treating the two schools as though they are directly interchangeable – same quality, same degree, same contribution to her future earning power, etc – but they aren’t. Going to the “cheaper” school could be a good idea, but it could also be penny-wise and pound-foolish if it has significant negative effects on your employment potential, e.g.
I’m not looking at this as a matter blame. I’m sure Dad wishes at the time he’d been more upfront about limits, but I can also see how that might’ve been difficult to do if divorce-guilt was in play and he was just trying to make his daughter happy at the time. Do you think that mistake should permanently disqualify him from even the offer of financial help later on?
I’m not saying he’s entitled to her money, mind you. If I were in his shoes, for the good of my relationship with her and my own self-respect, I would just suck it up and expect nothing from her. But it would be hurtful to find out my daughter had come into a bunch of money and her first impulse was to think up with reasons for not helping me out. “Well, tough titty for you; you should’ve told me not to go that expensive school before I signed up”. Yeah, this would not make me feel very loved.
If Joan had won the lottery and we were talking about multi-millions instead of 30K, would you see things differently? All the arguments against Joan paying the debt would still apply it seems.