'AITA for not giving my daughter a car for her 16th birthday and cutting her off financially?'

"AITA for not giving my daughter a car for her 16th birthday and cutting her off financially?"

I (48m) have a daughter Lisa (15f) from my first marriage. I’m not on particularly good terms with her mother, and Lisa unfortunately became an outlet for her resentment towards me, which ended up souring our relationship massively. Lisa is a good person, but unfortunately she takes after her mom in terms of demeanor and often acts rude and entitled.

A few years ago I married again. Lisa decided to not attend my wedding and she said a bunch of hurtful things to my then fiancée Rosemary (38f). Since then, our relationship got even worse.

When Rosemary and I welcomed our son a year and a half ago, Lisa sent me a text saying that since I have my perfect baby now, I could stop pestering her and trying to play family with her. It hurt me deeply, and I ended up distancing myself from her, though I kept sending her $100 a month as her allowance.

Recently we had an unplanned addition to our family. Long story short, Rosemary’s sister, who wasn’t a good parent to start with, terminated her custody rights over her son Blake (17m). Rosemary and I decided to take Blake in.

Unfortunately a few years ago Blake got in a horrible car wreck that left him permanently disabled. Luckily he can somewhat walk and doesn’t need 24/7 assistance around the house, but that’s about it. Blake is an amazing person and he quickly became a part of our family.

I decided to give the $100 allowance to Blake instead. He was beyond happy and grateful. I also made a hard decision and gave him my car. It’s a ‘22 Cadillac Escalade, and I was planning on getting rid of it this year anyway since Lisa is turning 16 in a month and I wanted to gift it to Lisa.

Now it’s Blake’s car and he absolutely loves it. He really needed a car because his mobility issues don’t let him get around easily anymore, and it changed his life massively.

Of course Lisa didn’t like it. When she realized that she wasn’t getting any allowance, she called me and asked what’s wrong. It was the first call I received from her in a year, if not more. I explained that now when my family had expanded, I’m not having enough money.

I’ll be still sending her mom the child support payments as per court agreement, but she shouldn’t expect anything extra. She asked me about the car since she knew about my plans on giving her a car.

I told her that now the situation changed and I no longer could give her a car. I’ll admit, what I said next was probably assholish of me, since I told her that I now have two children to play family with and asked her to stop pestering me.

This caused her to blow up completely to the point she got her mom to call me and scream at me, and so did her new husband. They threatened to sue me, Lisa said she’ll go no contact and so on.

I just brushed off the threats, especially since Rosemary is a lawyer and I made my peace with poor contact with Lisa years ago. They also managed to write a few mean things to Rosemary and Blake, and this is what got me wondering whether I was an ahole here.

Here's what top commenters had to say about this one:

No-Locksmith-8590 said:

YTA you're the adult, and haven't acted like it for basically her entire life. She was, what 10, 11, 12? when you divorced? "She takes after her mom" aka "I did absolutely no parenting and am SHOCKED she acts like the parent who actually raised her."

You distanced yourself bc a child said something mean. Omg, seriously? Will you do the same when your son does the same? Cause guess what? No teen has an always positive relationship with their parents.

More than likely, your kid will say 1- they hate you, 2- you're ruining their life, 3- they didn't choose to be born or something similar. So you just gonna dip when he gets to that stage?

WelfordNelferd said:

YTA. Lisa was, what, 12 years old when you got remarried? At that age, it's understandable that she copped an attitude (and then felt further alienated after you had another child). But instead of reassuring her that she's still a priority to you, you threw in the towel. Then you doubled down after taking in Blake.

Your disdain for Lisa, and the hateful way in which you compare her to your ex, suck. Did you promise her the car and then renege? If so, double AH move. Did you ever seek therapy??

Enjoy your extra $100/month, and don't act like a victim in the future if you realize how badly you screwed up. Not that I really think you have the capacity to self-reflect.

Spiritual_Garbage358 said:

Sorry but YTA, she is your daughter and she obviously feels abandoned, she has done nothing to warrant you spending less money on her, which let's be fair is the only love and attention she gets from you.

Telling her I have more kids now translates to I have other children I never really cared about you. I understand you have a new life and I don't know how you ended things but you don't get to have the cake and eat it. You had a child take responsibility, for all three of them.

Plastic-Abroc67a8282 said:

This 15yo girl is clearly a victim of her mom's manipulation, and you took the opportunity to bully her and rub it in her face? Damn dude you are not a good person. I get that she's ungrateful and selfish but you're supposed to be the adult. YTA.

Scenarioing said:

YTA. Not for your decision, but for the way you handled it. You should have stuck with the malicious compliance based explanation, which you thought was the bad part. Not throwing her language back in her face verbatim, but explaining that she wanted nothing to do and such. Instead, you chose to rub in her face that you were choosing the new kid in the household INSTEAD of her.

You should have couched as solely due to her hateful conduct. By indicating she had been replaced first, that's what the "play family" revenge ploy was about to her. An extension of rubbing the replacement in her face. Not a genuine consequence for bad behavior that was solely about her. Which would have left the door open for her to come around.

badlyagingmillenial said:

YTA. Your daughter was SO YOUNG when you got divorced. She's still young! Her emotions and hormones are going like crazy, and throwing in a divorce + a mom trashing you to her is going to cause some problems.

You can't hold a ~12 year old child accountable for being really upset with you when you got a divorce. Unfortunately what you've done is going to have a life long impact on your daughter, and it's going to be a real challenge to overcome that.