Caregiver son pushed to edge as disabled dad helps sisters commit benefits fraud. 'I'm done.' AITA? UPDATED
"AITA If I stop supporting my disabled father over his preferential treatment towards my siblings?"
I (26M) have 2 sisters (18&23) from the same mum and dad (50s). When I was 16 my parents went through a messy divorce which resulted in my sisters staying with my mum, and I stayed with my dad.
My dad is disabled and has been unable to work due to a long list of medical issues since I was 16. He has kidney failure and is currently on dialysis while waiting for a transplant. This has meant that I have been looking after him in a variety of caretaker ways for a decade now. Throughout this time his contact with my 2 sisters has been minimal.
He has in the past allowed my eldest sister to claim benefits that she was not entitled to by claiming to be a carer for my father amongst others. She has at no point in her life provided care for my dad. This caused many fights between my dad and I as I felt he was allowing her to commit fraud just so he could feel like he was helping her.
I was recently contacted by his doctor who told me that my dad was no longer on the transplant list to receive the kidney transplant he needs. Apparently his health is now so poor that they don't know for sure if he'll survive general anesthetic for the operation.
I was told that a major factor for this was his poor diet which was exacerbating his existing health issues. Hearing this my wife and I decided to move back in with my dad to try and get him onto a healthier diet to hopefully prepare his body for the transplant he needs.
After we moved in I was going through his most recent letters when I discovered a letter informing him that my youngest sister had applied for a grant for young carers as a result of caring for him.
My dad is lucky to see my sister once a month, let alone the 16 hours a week this grant requires. I confronted him and he said he was just trying to help her out in any way he could.
This again led to a massive fight as currently me and my wife are the only family members supporting him. My sisters do nothing for him. They are both adults and yet neither has lifted a single finger once to help him. And yet, here he is again essentially committing fraud to help them out.
We can't help but feel taken for granted and simply unappreciated. We do everything we possibly can for him, sacrifice our time, energy and money to ensure he has a more comfortable life, but time and again he chooses to focus his energy on helping my sisters cheat their way to funds & benefits they don't deserve.
He's never once asked them to help him, so the burden of responsibility for his care rests entirely on our shoulders, despite the fact that of the 3 siblings I am the only one not currently receiving any benefit related to his care!
We are now at the point where we are considering pulling all our support (financial and physical) and leaving his care entirely to the two women who are actually benefiting from "providing" it. AITA for withdrawing support from my father?
Here is what readers had to say in response to the OP’s post:
NTA!
Tell him that if he wants you to continue to help him then he needs to contact those people from the benefits back and say that he was lying.
Yeah he and them will get in a bunch of trouble but otherwise then he can contact his daughters for assistance because you don't want to commit fraud (and presumably you got no 'help' from him in that way either). Also whatever happens to him without you there is his own fault because he is lying and committing fraud and the only way to make them NOT be doing that is if they step up.
HLayton (OP)
I will say that during uni I did get qualify for a low income support grant as my dad was my sole parent supporting me (mum wanted nothing to do with me), so I did receive that in "help". That's about it though.
I know that I have no responsibility to help and that ultimately I'm only doing this because I love him, but that's what makes the decision all the harder. I've been the only one willing to help, so I really worry for how much long term damage will be done to his health as a result of pulling support :(
TBH it seems like there is already long term damage that he has done to himself. His doctors in the past probably have told him what diet he should follow but he didn't listen to them and that shouldn't be on you to 'correct'.
HLayton (OP)
The current "boundary" we set with him was to tell my youngest sister that he won't assist her in getting the carers support that she applied for unless she actually comes round and helps him. That was yesterday and he still hasn't spoken with her. If he can't do that then the balance of support/don't support would definitely shift more towards "don't support".
NTA I’m not sure I’d be able to stop caring for him, but the petty person in me would be contacting whoever portions out those grants to let them know the truth. Pretty messed up that they’re comfortable taking that money when it should be going to people who are actually carers and would need it.
Four whole years later, the OP returned with an update.
I remembered this post as my dad's birthday recently passed and thought I might as well give an update, even though no one asked. In January 2023, my father passed away from complete kidney failure. It wasn’t a surprise to me; his health had been in decline, and a transplant wasn’t going to happen. The rest of the family, though, were shocked.
The last time he spoke to anyone, I showed him the 7-week scan of my now 2-year-old son, his first and only grandchild. We’d rushed to get the earliest scan we could, knowing he didn’t have much time.
My son looked like a seahorse tadpole. He cried when I showed him, and we had a short talk about fatherhood before exhaustion took over. He fell asleep and never woke up. I asked him not to tell anyone since we were still early and didn’t want to jinx it. He said, “I’ll take it to the grave,” and passed away three days later. He kept his word. I think seeing the scan and having that moment made him die happy.
As for my sisters, they never changed. I let it go. I knew I couldn’t change my dad and he was on borrowed time. For his birthday that year, we rented a canal boat since he’d always wanted one. He crashed it almost immediately.
They gave him less and less consideration, ignoring him completely on what turned out to be his last birthday. No visit, no call, not even a text. He was devastated and reduced contact with them, though he never stopped helping them financially.
When they found out he was dying, they rushed to his side and stayed until he passed. But like before, it was too little, too late. He was already unconscious. They hadn’t shown urgency when he was first admitted, only showing up when I told them he had chosen to end life support.
I’d been told the day he was admitted, over two weeks earlier, that he might not survive. I believed it. I’d seen him in these situations before, and this time felt different. The rest of the family still thought he would recover and didn’t treat him as a priority.
Eventually, my dad asked me if he was dying. Everyone else had been giving him false hope, mostly for themselves, so I had to tell him, “Yes, you’re going to die soon.” That was not an easy conversation.
He passed surrounded by family who barely gave him their time when he was alive. My sisters definitely regret how they treated him, but it’s too late. We were civil at the funeral but haven’t spoken since. I scattered my share of his ashes at the end of the canal he never got to see. My sisters turned theirs into jewelry.
I miss him every day, especially as his grandson looks so much like him. It’s a shame things never got resolved with his daughters while he was alive, but I think he died a happy man, and that’s enough for me.
Here is what readers had to say in response to the OP’s post:
oh man...its a shame things ended this way. I'm so sorry.
Seems like OP's dad wanted relationship with his daughters . He tried to buy it by various ways, meanwhile taking son for granted. He was just a desperate and deathly sick father. It's good that OP cared for him till last, and gave him few good moments with baby scan.
I wonder at the sisters and father’s relationship — there’s a LOT we don’t know, and that OP may not know either — but the grandson moment was a good moment to be the last. Made me cry.
The person I feel the most anger at is the mother. She abandoned her son in favour of her daughters. It may be because her son reminded her of her ex husband. And there's a large part of me that wonders whether she didn't take her wedding vows very seriously.
When it came to 'for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health' she may not have wanted to support an infirm husband who couldn't contribute financially. I wonder who will help care for the mother as she ages because you don't know what life will throw at you.
She may be a perfectly healthy and spritely 85 year old or an unwell 65 year old following a stroke. I can understand why the father was responding like he did... it was as much of a connection he could have with the kids that he didn't get to see much.
Speaking as someone who knows about benefit fraud investigations in the UK — if he reported ONLY his sisters, only they would get investigated (very likely at different times based on the case pull rates).
Of course, based on the findings, the agents then potentially could make their own referral for the father to check, which would also be its own separate case, but legitimate documents regarding PIP/DLA should’ve been more than enough to close the case as no further action needed.