Should I accept this money?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

A couple of years ago, my brother, his girlfriend and their son didn’t have anywhere to live, so they were staying with my parents. They lived there for over a year. It didn’t work well at all and was very stressful for everyone. My parents ended up giving me and my partner a lot of money for a deposit on a unit, which we bought and rented to my brother and his family. My brother had a place to live, my parents had their house back, and my partner and I had an affordable investment property. Everyone was happy.

Last year, my brother lost his job (global financial crisis and all that).He was out of work for 9 months, recently got another job, got laid off again after only a couple of months, is still looking for work now. Because he’s out of work, he is not paying rent, which makes the property much less affordable for us (though still manageable, if we cut back on our lifestyle). If we kick them out, they will move back in with my parents, recreating the horrible situation from before. My mother’s health is not great, and I don’t think she will cope well with the stress. So kicking them out is not an option.

My parents are offering to pay half the rent. They don’t think it’s fair that we have to support my brother’s family. Of course it’s not, but it isn’t fair for them to do so either. They are retired and live on a budget. They already gave us a large sum of money to buy the unit in the first place. On the other hand, my partner is really not happy about the sacrifices our family is having to make in order to cover the mortgage. My brother is looking hard for another job, but he doesn’t have a lot of marketable skills, and is finding it tough. Who can say how long he will be out of work for?

2

Jeeze, that’s a tough call. Your brother should be supporting himself and his family, not living off of you, but if he is indeed looking hard for work, you can’t make miracles happen just by wishing for them. You haven’t mentioned the girlfriend; is she working?

Is it possible for your brother and his girlfriend to pay you any rent, and reduce the amount that your parents help you out with, so the hardship is split three ways?

3

I’d take the money, mostly because I can’t come up with a good reason not to. If they’re offering it, then they can afford it. And if the GF is complaining, then it’s clear that you can’t afford it. Grief is always best when it’s split up, so I say take it. That way, the parents will feel good about helping out, the brother will be taken care of, and the partner can stop feeling put out.

4

Hmm…I’d say to take the money…with this caveat:
You TELL your brother you are doing it.

Your brother could be doing a shmo-job like delivering pizza, flipping burgers, or scutwork for a temp agency. Tell him that *if * your parents are paying half the rent, he should be able to take a temporary, crappy job(preferably in the evenings so he can look for a better job during the day), and maybe come up with the other half.

If he was out for 9 months in for 2 and out again, I assume he’s not getting unemployment-so that won’t be screwed up by said crap job.

Girlfriend can also look for something, too, maybe part-time and around his schedule, so that someone will be home to watch the kid.

5

I can’t see any reason not to. If you refuse, all that will happen is that either you will end up paying, or your parents will take them in and be miserable.

OTOH, why didn’t your parents just buy the secondary housing for your brother in the first place instead of through you as a intermediary?

6

No, you should not take the money.

Your brother is coming up short – not you. He should take the money if they will offer it to him.

I was going to say it should be in the form of a loan he is obliged to repay, but that’s between him and them.

I don’t understand why you have to be entangled in between him and them. And why didn’t your parents buy the property themselves? Or give or loan the money to your brother? As it is they have subsidized a purchase for you, that you probably wouldn’t have bought on your own, and also forced a tenant on you who can’t cover your mortgage costs.

7

Less said about the GF the better. She has a litany of reasons why she can’t get a job (or do a bunch of anything), and a nasty temper when challenged so I don’t want to go there. Just leave her out of it.

My parents went through us because even when he was paying rent, it didn’t cover the mortgage. He couldn’t have afforded it. The unit is in a good location though, and should increase in value, so we were happy to have it as an investment.

Of all the families involved, we can most easily bear the extra cost. My parents will have to cut into their share portfolio to pay us, which will affect their income permanently. We would spend the money on a holiday, and singing lessons for my daughter (and paying off the mortgage faster). It wouldn’t be right. It does bother me (and my partner especially) that we are supporting my brother, and my mother is getting insistent about giving us money. I just don’t see why she should have to pay his rent.

8

Times are really tough, and let’s hope that we don’t live long enough to see them as bad again. Sit down with your parents and find out how badly it will hurt them to pay some of the mortgage as rent. Remember that they will be helping both their kids and they want to and they probably have more experience living through tough times than you do. Have a lot of family dinners.

My very, very distant cousin Hildy wrote this book http://www.amazon.com/Living-Arrows-Hildagarde-Spielbauer-Brooks/dp/1441593683/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1284793021&sr=8-2 about how during the Great Depression her parents and siblings moved in with their grandmother, eventually making 14 children and three adults living together.

9

When your parents blow through all their money trying to support your brother, where they gonna turn? Yeah, that’s right. Then you get to support everyone.

Kick your brother out, sell the property, and sit on the cash for a few months until they sort their shit out. Then buy another property and rent to non-family. Or, hell, why even do that? Just kick the brother out, keep the property, and rent to non-family.

Your parents will still blow through all their money trying to support your brother and you will have to support them (the parents), but in the meantime you collect full rent for the property. If I have that right, you come out ahead.
Edit: Or at least do what** The Second Stone **suggests and see what your parents can afford. That’s a far better suggestion than mine.

10

You’re brother’s playing you for a sucker and you’re falling for it.

Suppose you and your family die. Where’s he gonna go? To your mum. Is she gonna cope? Of course she is.

The fact is he is playing on your sympathy and you know what? In all seriousness, you’re not doing him any favours. You need to learn to stand on your own feet. He’s standing on yours.

Millions of people are out of work and they are getting by? I’m not saying abandon but now you need to construct a plan.

Tell your brother, you have 60 days to start paying rent. You need to find a job and get back. You don’t need to charge him full rent but say, “OK you need to start paying rent in 60 days. I’ll take 40% of your take home pay from whatever job you find in the next 60 days.”

He’ll move back with your mum? Yeah he might, but that shows he’s not serious. If you have a concern for your folks, he should too. If he does not, he’s using you and them.

Unfotunately you seem determained to make it harder for yourself. You’re letting everyone else dictate your happiness. Well that’s not going to work.

You want to solve everyone’s problems, while letting your own go ignored. So your brother has stress, so your mother has stress? What about your stress? Are you gonna risk having your family walk out so you can support your brother and “shelter” your adult parents from stress.

You’re brother and your folks are not nearly as helpless as your making them out to be.

How do I know? Imagine you’re gone, killed in a car accident. Would they get by? You bet they would.

It’s time to implement a “tough love” plan and stick to it. Just don’t go overboard on the “tough” part and forget the “love” part.

And yes it will hurt, hurt everyone. But when I learned to ride a bike, I got hurt. When I learned to rollerblade I got hurt. But now I can ride a bike and now I can rollerblade.

Good luck

11

Then how about you offer your brother a temporary home, but make clear the offer doesn’t extend to the girlfriend. Then you can rent the place out to someone who can afford to at least cover your mortgage payment.

12

The brother has a son whose mother is the girlfriend, so an offer to two has to be an offer to three.

Of course you should accept your parents’ offer. And tell your brother. What goes around comes around. In 5 years time it may be you living on your brother’s charity.

As for ‘menial’ jobs - and I put that in quotes because I’m not too proud to turn down any work - if the job market near you is as hard as it is here, then competition for those is very fierce.

13

OK, time to sit the whole family down and have a talk.

First of all, is it fair that either you or your parents are being asked to support your brother and his family? No. Let’s get that out of the way first. It’s not fair. As we all know, though, life is unfair, particuarly in these times. I empathize with brother - I got laid off three years ago and have been getting by on crappy part time jobs and family support ever since. On the other hand, my husband and I have been busting our asses to be as little burden as possible and have contributed in time and labor to the rest of the family while we were asking for help. My empathy for brother is not unlimited.

The goal here is to find a way to keep brother and family under a roof and fed with minimal hurt to the larger group.

First thing, these items are the responsbility of brother & family:

  1. Able-bodied adults must be seeking work. This is in addition to everything else I mention.
  2. At this point, even crappy, minimum wage jobs should be looked at seriously so something can be contributed to the pot
  3. If brother (or GF) can render non-monetary assistance to the parents they must do so - in other words, if they live close enough they should run errands, take them to doctor appointments, etc. Do minor home repairs if they have the knowledge and skills, mow the lawn, whatever. Ditto for you and your partner. Cook dinner for those who are working. Whatever. If he and his can’t contribute money they can contribute labor.
  4. Brother and family need to swallow their pride and apply for Public Aid. That means applying for food stamps, to start. After that, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families. They need to look into assistance with paying their utilities. Free school lunches for the kid. That sort of thing. ANYTHING they can do to bring down costs is a contribution. If brother gets a job that’s great - he can call up the relevant agencies as say “Thanks, but we don’t need aid anymore”. Meanwhile, he has to acknowledge that there are long term issues here and they need to be dealt with. (Applying for such assistance in my area also acts as a gateway to job seeking and/or retraining assistance as well, so it might be a good thing for him)
  5. At no time is anyone in the larger family to make rude comments or make them feel bad for accepting public assistance if they can get it. Going to these agencies is not fun, filling out the forms is not fun, and overall it’s a pain in the ass to jump through hoops. If/when he obtains aid he should be told that he did the right thing and that every dollar in aid he gets is one dollar less of a burden on the rest of his family. It is a contribution. It’s the not the contribution everyone wants, but if that’s the best he can do right now then it’s right that he does it.

Now for the parents:

  1. Parents want to take care of their children, even their adult children. This is laudible. However, they need to do so in a manner that does not wind up making them a burden on their children.
  2. With this in mind the parents’ reitrement income needs to be safeguarded. It does the larger family no good to keep brother and family in a home if that means the parents’ go wanting. Repeat this to them - their “portfolio” needs to be safeguarded so they don’t become a burden.
  3. It is no more fair for them to support brother and family than for you to do so. So, if the family decision is to support brother and family than it must be done as fairly as possible. That does NOT mean everyone pays equally if not everyone has equal resources. If you are the best off financially right now then for better or worse the worst of the burden falls on you.
  4. Parents should be allowed to contribute, but not to the point it hurts them or jeopardizes their financial future. Not allowing them to help will hurt them emotionally and no one needs that. Make it clear, however, they are NOT to burn through the principal on investments or gut their own resources. Help rendered is to be done openly and honestly. All parties should know who is contributing and how much.

You and your partner:

  1. Acknowledge that no, it’s not fair that your family is being asked to shoulder this burden and your are asking you and yours to sacrfice for someone else’s benefit. It is, however, what families do for each other.
  2. Yes, you may not be able to pay mortgages off faster and have to cut back on holiday plans and so forth. Which is more important, your brother and his family or going to a particular location this particular year?
  3. You should give what is necessary and nothing more - enough to keep a roof over their heads, food on the table (less of an issue if he gets food stamps), and warm in the winter. This is for necessities only, absolutely no luxuries. Yes, that might mean school clothes for the kid are bought at Goodwill instead of a department store. Tough. Life is difficult right now.

I think you have a good family capable of coming up with good solutions - the prior problem’s outcome seemed quite agreeable and even advantageous for you and your partner as you obtained an investment property on top of your brother getting a place to live.

14

If they kick brother out he just goes back to living with the parents, which situation has been tried before and made everyone miserable. This is an improvement… how? And if he’s living with mom and dad then mom and dad will still be supporting him and his. Not at all sure that’s ideal.

Why are you so certain of this? There is no indictation he is a life-long freeloader or anything of the sort.

Actually, quite a few of the millions out of work are NOT getting by - or haven’t you heard? Homelessness is on the increase. Among other things.

Apparently you are ignorant of the fact that in these times it is entirely possible to make a serious search for work and not find any. I know people who bust their butts 8-10 hours a day looking for work and don’t have any. Lake of work in these times is not proof of a lack of being “serious”. He may or may not be “serious”, but there are tons of people right now who are serious and earnest in their job searches yet not getting anywhere.

Yes, I’m sure the OP would be happier if her brother’s family was homeless or sucking the last pennies from the parents’ finances. :rolleyes: I’m sorry, did you miss the part where the OP is trying to help the larger family solve a problem? Not everyone things discarding unemployed family members like trash is the optimum solution.

You are stunningly naive to just how hard the world can be. No, there is no guarantee brother and family would “get by”. There are lots of homeless families living in shelters these days to prove that there is no guarantee people can pull themselves up by their own bootstraps.

15

In my opinion, if you take the money, you should try to sock at least half of it away for a rainy day. Because if your parents are affecting their income permanently, or if something happens to your present income, there may come a time when singing lessons and nice vacations may seem frivolous.

I can’t answer whether you should accept the money–seems to me like that’s an issue of family dynamics as much as it is about income alone.

Best wishes.

16

Bro obviously has skills, thus he should be able to get all the Temp work he wants. Temp work is the way to go now, many companies are (now) hiring temp then converting to perm.

17

Now would be the perfect time for your brother to look into going to school and getting an education that would give him marketable skills or learn a trade. He is a prime candidate for financial aid.

If he doesn’t get some skills or learn a trade, he will be in this exact same situation over and over again. Sure, lots of skilled people are out of work right now, but when the economy gets better, he will continue to end up sinking while others are back to swimming. Anyone could be in his situation once or twice in their life, but with no marketable skills, it’s going to be a situation that will repeat itself over and over.

Maybe you could trade future equity in the investment property for a loan from your parents in order to subsidize some of his rent and your mortgage (ie 10k to you now, you pay back 5k when you sell the property and your brother pays back the other 5k when he finishes school and gets a job). Or however you want to work it or split it. That way your brother has a way to stand on his own two feet, your parents are not (permanently) out their savings or investments, and you won’t really miss x dollars less of capital gain on an investment property.

18

If this was an ordinary recession I’d be right behind that suggestion, but it’s not an ordinary recession. I have skills, and 20+ years of experience and I haven’t been able to find even temporary work in my old field.

So really, it depends on what skills he has. If what he has is obsolete or now be doing by people in the third world he’ll have to reinvent himself. In which case re-education is a definite option.

However, “learning a trade” is not so easy a step once you’re past 30 or 40 - I have learned the hard way there is a very, very strong bias against anyone past their 20’s taking up one of the traditional “trades”, including barring people past a certain age from entering apprenticeship programs. It’s not impossible to learn a trade later in life but it is absolutely NOT an easy road to follow.

19

Broomstick, that was an excellent post, and if weedy and family do what you suggest, I think it could go a long way to permanently helping all of them. The subtext I’m reading here, however, makes me think that this is an extended family that is addicted to drama and they’re not really looking for good, healthy solutions. Girlfriend won’t look for work while extended family is supporting her? We don’t have a font big enough for my incredulous 'WHAT?"

20

Thank you. Unfortunately, my family has recently had to deal with similar issues, so some of it is the voice of experience. I am fortunate in that I come from a sane, ruthlessly practical, and loving family, but dealing with these issues is never, ever easy.

I don’t know what is going on with the girlfriend. Maybe her and brother’s child is young and GF feels very strongly she should stay home and take care of the child. I may not agree with that, but at least that would be an understandable viewpoint. Or maybe she’s free-loading hussy. I just don’t know. I’m trying to focus on possible solutions rather than passing judgment here. Regardless, she’s part of the family and needs to be factored in to any plans.