'AITA for taking away my son's inheritance if he won't let me and my wife live with him?' UPDATED
"AITA for taking away my son's inheritance?"
Hello. I will try to make this brief. I (56) and my wife (54) have a son (23) who just got married he is an only child. My wife and I came to America when I was 22 years old. We knew no one had no jobs, but over the years we got a small restaurant and were able to make a living. 10 years after we got to the USA we brought my mil over.
We had saved for years to give our son money when he turned 25. In our culture you give your child money when they are young and starting out because they will take care of you when you are old (so they can buy a bigger house, etc.). This is our culture our son knew about this his whole life. His grandmother has lived with us has entire life. She just turned 81 and still lives with us.
My son got married in December. It was a nice wedding and his wife is very nice (she is a white-American, which will explain some cultural differences). In March, all 5 of us were having dinner and his wife mentioned that they were going to start looking at houses when the pandemic is over.
My wife mentioned a bedroom on the first floor for we come to live with them. My wife said it in a joking way. We weren’t planning to live with them for another 10+ years, at least until we retire. My daughter-in-law looked shocked. She asked why we can’t just use the guest room if we wanted to spend the night.
My son then tells me that she isn’t used to our culture and that they would prefer to live with the family they make. Honestly, I and my wife didn’t know what to say. Our son gave us the impression that he was fine with us living with him when we our older. He would even show us guest homes and the like from magazines. Currently, we have about 800k saved that we planned to give our son.
It’s not a huge amount to support 3 people especially older people. After they left, my wife and I discussed our options and we decided that our best course of action was to speak with our bank and use our money for retirement. He knows about the money, but not how much. I told my son and daughter in law about the new plan and my son got made at me.
Saying that he planned to use some of the money for a down payment on a house. This is our only money for retirement. It was supposed to go to him because he was supposed to take care of us. We have to take care of ourselves now and don’t feel like we owe him the money. AITA?
EDIT: They don't want us to live with them. They said it when we told them the plan. My daughter in law says that she would constantly feel like they were having guests over. She also said it wasn't because she didn't love us, she also doesn't want her own mother to live with them.
EDIT 2: Because we business owners, we take deductions that affect our social security benefit. We will not get a lot, but my wife and I are healthy now and we can work into our 70s or 80s maybe. I hope that clears some things up.
EDIT 3: He knew that he would receive a large amount of money to help push him to success so that he would have a life that would be easier to facilitate our care. We already used some of the money to pay for him to go to college to study.
My two brothers live in Canada with their wives and children and are doing the same thing. My brothers and their wives have also been saving with the same intent all of the children know this. This has even been discussed between our children before (about the money) and best ways for success.
What do you think? AITA? This is what top commenters had to say:
VirtualEconomy said:
NAH. Expectations change and that's fine. If he's not going to take care of you, you need the money to take care of yourself. That's really all there is to it.
the_last_basselope said:
NTA. Your son has been well aware of what that money was for his entire life. He chose not to tell his wife anything about it and chose not to volunteer the information to you that it wouldn't be happening (you only found out because of a fluke in random conversation).
Why on earth would he think for even a minute that he would still get money to take care of you when he had no intention of actually taking care of you? At this point even if he said he changed his mind I wouldn't give him a penny without getting something drawn up by an attorney and signed by all of you stating what you expect in exchange for the money.
And Citychic88 said:
NTA - i think this could be a "no a$$holes here" situation but given his response and how he continues to act then he could be an a$$hole.
**UPDATE**
PLEASE READ!!! My son called his cousin in Canada to vent. It backfired. She told him he's a disgrace and she can't believe "he would put his parents on the street."
She then called me and said that we should come to live with her and her husband and it would be an honor and could keep the money (she is my brother's second child and her husband in the 4th child in his family, which means no elders were going to live with them).
That's very kind of her, but we don't think we want to be that far from our son. Our daughter in law called crying that she didn't mean to be disrespectful. This isn't what we wanted at all. This why my wife and I tried to handle this ourselves without involving everyone. How do we fix this? Our family in Canada is threatening to not speak to out son.