Man tells the saga of his 'crazy entitled aunt;' 'She infiltrated our entire family.' AITA? UPDATED 5X OVER 9 MONTHS
When this man is exhausted by his 'crazy aunt,' he asks the internet:
"I'm here to tell the Saga of my Entitled Aunt. AITA?"
So, I (M25) have recently moved to a house I bought in October. The house was one of the houses my dad's friends wanted to sell so he gave me a discount for the house (he has lots of properties in my city and wanted to sell some because he is moving to Germany for work in April).
It is a 3-bedroom house with a small garden in the front and a big garden in the back. I also finish my master's last August and now I'm planning to travel to Europe in October for at least half a year after I'll finish the project I'm in charge of my job in July.
Now for the problem, I have an aunt (F32) from my dad's side who started college last October, around the time I bought my new house. She just told everyone she doesn't have the money to pay for the semester and can't continue unless she pays till February.
The thing is, no one in our family can help her to pay but me and her brother (M39), who said no and now everyone is on his back saying how heartless he is to his little sister.
Even though I bought the house in full (so I don't need to pay for the mortgage and own my house by myself) I had my trip money saved and if I give it to her, she will have enough money for the rest of her college years. where I live college costs around 15-20 thousand dollars for all the years unless you study medicine on average.
Now she asked me if I'm willing to pay for her college and she appreciates the gesture, she said that I don't have a mortgage on my house so I can help her, and she would make sure to pay back by the time she finishes her studies and even give interest if she can.
The thing is if I'll give her the money, I just won't be able to travel as I wanted to be planned and saved the money for almost 7 years. This aunt really knows how to infiltrate the entire family.
My mom said that I need to help her cause she is family and she used to help me a lot with me when I was a kid even though she was a kid herself at the time. My dad on the other side said that I should not help and let her figure it out herself.
He said that I deserve a break and should just ignore her and the rest of my family if they don't like my decision and that I should just focus on my project and plan my trip when I have free time.
I talk with some close friends about my insane aunt, and they are divided. I'm split about this myself because I truly want to help her out but I also don't want to sacrifice all my hard work. I didn't want to lose on the trip that I planned and worked for.
So would I be the asshole for not loaning money to my aunt to finish college? I would appreciate your full honesty about the matter.
Before we give you OP's updates, let's take a loook at some of the top responses:
okdebate3051 writes:
NTA. You’re still HER nephew. Wtf? Sorry, this type of shit pisses me off. It sounds like your aunt is a leech. I would never negatively impact my nephew in any way or expect him to pay for my college. I would never guilt trip any body into giving me their hard earned money.
She can take out a loan like everyone else. The most I would offer is a place for her to stay. If her own sibling isn’t loaning her the money, I would follow his lead. F family. F them for trying to guilt trip you. You don’t owe ANYONE anything for what they chose to do for you as a child.
You were a child.This isn’t right. Moving forward, stop telling your family about your success and how much you do/or do not pay because they are obviously watching your pockets and will have their hand out again.
temptiger writes:
NTA. You do not have to pay for her college if you do not want to. You do NOT owe her anything for her doing things for you when you were a child because you were only a child.
IMO: I'd be more concerned with trying to keep up with paying for your own house. I'd keep some spare money (when you have it) aside in a saving account for your own house 'just in case' something comes up. You never know when things will come up like needing a new stove, fridge or other things.
Just remember, if you need money for some reason, you won't get it back from her while she is in school. Let your mom give her money if your mom thinks it is so important.
OP's first update (next day):
Thanx to everyone who comments on the post. In the end, I decided to listen to ask my dad why both he and my uncle are so against the idea, my dad told me to talk with my uncle because he doesn't want to shame her.
Well, after he said that I went to my uncle's house and asked him why he didn't help just to know if I really should and he said to me that she will most likely not pay back by the time I need the money or she stops learning again like last time.
Something I didn't know is that both my dad and uncle helped her in the past when she tried to go to college a few years ago but she dropped out and didn't return the money to both of them.
My dad and uncle decided to forgive her and not let anyone in my family know about the money because she is their little sister and didn't want her to be shamed by the rest of the family after what she did.
After what he said he told me I should keep it secret from everyone but also not give her the money cause he and dad think she will just waste the money and drop out like last time and just use my money for myself and no one else.
Because of that, I chose to call her today in this morning to tell her I know about the last time when dad and uncle gave her money, and even if I wanted her to succeed, she should have planned her college days better.
I may have been harsh on her, but she got the message and said she won't ask me again. I do hopes she finds a way to finish her academic studies but I'm not going to help her after what my uncle told me.
OP's second update, 5 days later:
This is a sort of small update from this story on AITA. TLDR-my aunt needed money for college, I could have helped her but chose not to because she already got help from my dad and uncle in the past, didn't finish college, and didn't pay them back like she said she would.
So far what happened after, is I got calls from some family relatives from my dad's side telling me that I should have helped her because this is what a family is for, and I act like an ungrateful brat for only thinking about myself and ignoring a close family relative cry for help.
Well, this pisset me off and I chose to write in the family WhatsApp chat about how much I hate them for thinking that just because my aunt was dumb with her money and chose to go to college even though she didn't have the funds it wasn't my responsibility and if there want to help...
and why don't they cheap in to help her out or do you just don't really want to help yourself and just like to act all high and mighty in front everyone. After that, I said that to everyone who shamed me and my uncle for not helping her...
I'm not going to talk to or see them for a long time or even forever depending on how I felt, and they aren't welcome to come to my house and I would consider them trespasser if they came and called the police on them.
I left the WhatsApp chat after that and my dad called me a few hours later, he said that even if he thinks that my reaction is over the top, he does think that I'm in the right and should handle it however I like, even if he doesn't agree with sharing everything publicly.
I was happy with the fact he was on my side, and my uncle was also on my side and even said that I was too nice in calling them out.
My mom doesn't like how I acted but my dad did said that she thinks the way everyone talks about me is wrong and I should ignore them. I'm not sure if she agrees with me but it is nice to see that she does not agree with the rest of the family even with the fact she was basically on their side before.
It has been almost a week and every time I get a call from an unknown number it is some annoying family friend or one of the ones, I said that I'm not going to talk to them saying that I should apologize for what I did and act like an adult.
I do block every number now and even if how the act is annoying, I still feel great with all of that weight off my chest and only focus on my work and my trip.
OP's third update, 7 months later:
Hey, I was not expecting to post on this account but as you can see in the title, things happened last week that I wanted to share on Reddit. This is an update on my AITA & TrueOffMyChest, TLDR-my aunt needed money for college...
I could have helped her but chose not to because she already got help from my dad and uncle in the past, didn't finish college, and didn't pay them back like she said she would. I told her I was not going to help her, then cut contact with all the relatives who attacked me on the family group chat and things have been all right ever since.
So, I decided to go on my vacation 2 weeks ago because I finished the project I was working on in late May instead of July like we thought we would so I started to plan the vacation, Who is going to look after my house (I chose my 19 brother cause he can live in my home free of charge as long as he takes care of the place and I trust him).
Now to what happened when I was in Germany, I got a WhatsApp call from my brother about how when he was away to get food, he found our aunt's car next to the house, and when he went to check he found that she broke the door and was looking throw my staff to most likely to find something of valuable to steal...
and she most likely didn't know my brother is temporarily live there and thought my house is empty. He called her out and said if she didn't get out, he would call the police and Dad (he didn't want to handle the cops by himself) to try and threaten her.
She refused and said that I owed her because now she has to take loans to continue college and she believed that I should help pay her loans because I didn't help her back in January. He ended up calling the cops and messaging our dad and when she realized she went to her car and drove off.
When the cops and dad came, he told them what happened and showed the camera footage which shows how she broke the door went through my staff, and wrecked the place.
The cops took a copy of the footage and told my dad that they would handle the rest and keep in contact with him when they finished with her.
He told me they caught her later in the night in her friend's apartment and they were going to charge her with breaking and damaging my property (my TV, PS5, part of my games collecting, my gaming PC, and some stuff I don't care about as much as them).
So now she is in jail and has a court hearing and I need to be in the trial (Luckily my dad's Lawyer managed to only need me to be through Zoom instead of coming back to my country for the trial as long as my dad will be there to represent me as well).
Well, I feel like shit on my vacation even though it has been a week, I didn’t know my aunt was capable of doing something like that, and some of the games she damaged are old favorites of mine (Pokémon Colosseum & Platinum, SMT: Digital Devil Saga & Nocturne, Persona 3:FES, Resident Evil 4, and more).
now I hope that when I get to France there won't be any more bad news and I can enjoy the rest of my vacation, At this point I just hope the train ride will be nice.
OP's 4th update (the next day):
Hey guys, sorry for not responding I had a train to France 3 hours after uploading the post and immediately went to sleep after getting going to the hotel, Thanks for all the support in the comments.
Now about what I'm going to do, I will press charges against her for all the staff she damages she did to my staff. I'm not going to go easy on her for what she did and if anyone in my family will be against me, they can go f themself.
Tomorrow I will have a Zoom call with the Lawyer to see if I can get her to pay for the market rate of all the games she destroyed because most of them are GameCube/DS or ps2/3 games, so they are hard to get now and you can't even get them in my country and because most of them were in good condition.
I believe it will be easy to force her to pay for new or at least 2used at best.
The trial is on the 12th of September so I will update at least a day later about how it went. Now I'm going to enjoy my time in Frace and have the time of my life here before the trial.
OP's 5th update, 11 days later:
TLDR - My aunt needed money for college, I could have helped her but chose not to because she already got help from my dad and uncle in the past, didn't finish college, and didn't pay them back like she said she would.
I told her I was not going to help her, then cut contact with all the relatives who attacked me on the family group chat and things have been all right ever since. On August 26 my aunt broke into my house and damaged my property because I didn't help her and was arrested after that and there was a trial, the trial was yesterday.
Hey guys, it has been a nice 2 weeks and my time in Paris was great. So, let's get to what happened in the trial. The trial was longer than I thought it would be, we were there for an hour and a half.
In the trial, her lawyer said to her defense my aunt had a manic episode because of her not doing well in classes to the point she had to retake 2 classes in the summer and if she didn't take them she would have to repeat her first year...
and also because she was a recovering drug addict (something I didn't know) she chose to use weed with her friend group and that when the idea to rob me came and she did it.
As you can see, the defense wasn't good, I mean weed only became legal for medical purposes recently. I mean even her lawyer looked like she didn't have enough to work with, and the judge didn't look happy with this.
As some of you suggested, I told my lawyer that the stuff she destroyed (like my computer and games) were important stuff to me and that I lost the data from the games that I accumulated in almost 20 years (not true btw, I have everything save up as roms on my SD card in my room...
I just didn't tell that to anyone, thank god I did this) and he believes that she should also reimburse me for this stuff for market value as long as the other stuff like my door, fence furnishers and more stuff. I did my best to look sad when I was questioned about the whole thing, unlike my aunt who looked like she was faking it.
After all of this, the judge came with her sentence. She has to serve 3 years in jail (not because of breaking into my house, but because there was illegal weed in her car) but can get released early if she acts well in jail.
She now owes me 8,200$ for all the damage she caused, the amount of money for all the stuff she destroyed (as well as the games, they took almost 2k$ by themselves). Luckily, she can pay with her car and some of her expensive stuff I didn’t know she had according to my dad, so I'll get the money eventually.
Well, now she is in jail and I'm sure that some of my family (The younger one who liked her or the older course I don't know, it seems that my close family are fully with me after realizing how bad she was) will hate my guts with some of the messages I got in the past 3 weeks, calling me selfish, an entitled prick, a backstabber, a smock and more staff that are way worse than that.
Well, this is probably the last of this whole entitled aunt staff and I'm going to enjoy the rest of my vacation, tomorrow I will go to London and have fun there. BTW, if you ever see this somehow, Meseret, hope your time in jail was fun, and go f yourself for all you did. I also hope you changed as a person in the last years, but I will never speak to you again.