How much do you help your parents? Pt 2

As many of you may remember I posted a forum where my parent's home owner's insurance company told them they needed to replace their roof, which wasn't leaking, simply because it just looked old. My dad is 85 and is non mobile anymore. Mom is 79 and is his caregiver. Dad is retired and mom never worked outside of the home. Now . . . there are 4 other grown adults living in the house. 3 of my siblings (brothers) and one of the grandsons. The youngest sibling is 53 and the grandson is 25. Back when the roof issue came up one of my sisters got several quotes and settled on a $9000 bid. The dead was that we all would chip in the help replace the roof, well, we didn't have much of a say so in this since the sister got the estimates. Each sibling would contribute $1000, the parents would contribute some and then the rest divided by the 6 grandkids. In speaking with my sister who got the quote I expressed to her that I didn't think it was fair that those of us who didn't live in the house had to contribute just as much as those who do live in the house. She agreed with me but said that to keep down the confusion it would be better if everyone paid in the same amount depending upon where you rank. I flat out told her that I just didn't have $1000 at the moment because I was working on a major car repair which has set me back. I told her I'd have to get her the money when I could.

Ok, roof and gutters replaced and we moved on. This morning we get a text from one of our other siblings saying "Just a reminder that some people still owe for the roof for momma and daddy. Let's get this done they may need us again and we need to be there for them because they do so much for us."

Again, I still feel like those who actually "live in the house" should be footing the bill for any and all repairs that come up in the house. The youngest sibling is 53. All three brothers work and the grandson is there too and he works. Again, let me say this. I do not mind helping but there are limits to helping too. What happens when the stove or fridge goes out. They have a foundation problem, mom's car has to go to the shop? Those are things that at some point needs to be addressed but I think they need to be addressed between the 4 other grown men living currently in the house. Voicing your concerns is one thing but when you hear "you're right but we're still going to do it this way" bothers me. When I had the major car repair no one had a family meeting to say "we all need to chip in to help him get his car fixed." They all looked at me and said "that's a lot, wheat are you going to do?"

Again, am I wrong here? How much do you help your parents with financial things like a repair?

 

Nothing divides a family like coughing up money.....maybe mom and dad can put the sibling's rent money toward the roof ? Ha......rent money...I told a joke...

Four working people, not paying for housing and they can't come up with nine grand for roofing job? Do they comprehend how much apartment rentals cost?

I just guess you have to decide just how much of a shit storm you want to create with the rest of the family. Just wait until mom or dad needs to go someplace for care....you'll be coughing up that much every month.

Keep your promise with your sister and pay what you can when you can - she is likely the one that will end up taking care of mom and dad. Don't feed into Junior's texts, that's a no win situation.

Oh, and nine grand for a roof and gutters isn't too bad....

 

No, $9k for a roof and gutters is not bad at all compared to some of the stories I've heard from other people. But my situation was that I had a major car repair at the time I was working on so someone else's roof was not high on my priority list. And I'm with you, 4 grown men who all work should be the ones to cover the roof cost since they live there. No one took up a collection to help me get my truck fixed. Not that I was expecting them to but you feel me I hope. You take care of where you live not where you use to live.

Right now my oldest sister and the one brother who had to move back home are going back and forth via text and he said to her who made you the authority over everything. My brother mentioned that it's hard for him right now and he's living paycheck to paycheck. Ok, he works as a technician in an eye doctor's office. I don't know how much technicians make but he's always talking about his raise or a bonus he got. His truck is paid for so he only has insurance, gas, and what ever maintenance he has on it. Our parent's are only asking for $100 a week from him and his son each to stay there. And they, our parents, are covering every other utility in the house. For him to be saying he's living paycheck to paycheck right now is baffling to me. What is he doing with his money. There was a time when he was struggling to pay the $100 a week. Yeah, he's paying a storage bill each month on his furniture and things he moved with but that can't be that much given he's not paying any utilities. Honestly speaking, I think he's gotten some young girl pregnant and she's kicking his tail for child support and he doesn't want anyone to know. That's just my gut feeling.

Sometimes the best thing to do is say nothing. I knew I hadn't paid anything but I didn't reply either. Like I said, I told my sister that I would start making payments when I could because I have to take care of home first and she was fine with that. When we got the text this morning, I didn't even reply because I knew I hadn't paid anything. My brother saw the fire and decided to jump right on in. Now him and the oldest sister are going toe to toe on this issue. My sister told him maybe he needed to get a part time job and his reply was that he has undiagnosed health issues right now so working a part time job would be pointless. My sister's quick response to him was that with all his undiagnosed health issues then maybe he needs to stay home from church so much. That could be time he could be working a 2nd job. My brother thinks that his church can't run unless he's there to unlock the door and carry the pastor on his back to the pulpit so his feet don't get dirty or his legs get tired.

 

Understand, every family has its own shit show and that they are 'only' family. You're related, yes, but you don't have to be friends. And on that line, everyone has problems and gotten themselves into messes, so how kind of your folks to help out, it's hard, but don't begrudge them their charity. All you can do is pay what you can when you can. Go by and cut the grass or change mom's oil and look like a hero.

Everyone is looking for workers. Especially on weekends to squeeze out $500/mo. If you're not busy making money, you're busy spending it.

Just don't get buried in the text battle, it's easy to say things there and to also take things wrong. Maybe time for a little family chat, maybe you bring the pizza to get things off to a good start. Clear the air.

 

Trust me, I'm not getting involved in the text back and forth because I've already discussed with the one sister what I could do and when. Yes, the parents are being extra nice and caring to my brother but this isn't the first time he's had to crash with them. When he divorced his 2nd wife he ended up back on their floor / sofa for a few months until her found him and his grown son a place. A few years into that he got evicted again and is now back with them. The other siblings are tired of him always using the parents as a parachute or soft place to land. He can seem to do everything he wants to do instead of doing things he needs to or has to do.

 

Unfortunately, people like this never change and to make matters worse, they feel the world owes it to them because of their lifetime of poor decisions. Case in point, my lunkhead idiot brother in law. He's been a contract union laborer for ever. So, when he works a job, he makes killer money, pisses it away and cries broke until he gets off his ass or lands somewhere else. Divorced. 3 fine kids that hate him. Got thrown out of the army, it goes on and on, drugs, health issues, terminal stupidity. He had a particular bad run of luck for a while and we were helping him out living at some shitbag hotel. I'd had it and it seemed the only solution without pissing more money away or breaking her heart, "come move here, there's lots of jobs, stay for a while until you get on your feet...." He landed a welding job pretty fast, temporary, until they could get his paper work and background checked out since it was a medical factory....so, a month later "oh I got laid off" and everything went down hill from there. Evidently there were a few 'blemishes' in his past and they fired him. So, after about 4mos I told him it was time to hit the road - I gave him a few places to stay cheap, he had some money mooching off another state's unemployment, so I wasn't tossing him out in the cold. He was a big tall unstable man. I had my son, who is a big tall strong stable cop come over for a visit when I told him it was time....fearing trouble. It took all afternoon, but he finally took off to never be heard from again after being called the worst people in the world for supporting his dumb ass for a long time. A few days later I got one of those automated calls from some county jail...I didn't recognize the number so I didn't answer...had to be him - what was he thinking, that I'd bail his ass out?? Never paid us back anything but crap. "oh, keep track, I will pay you back every penny, I promise....". Right. Even after his mom died and left a pile of dough for him, never a peep. So, he's either in jail, or dead from covid or shacked up with some fat stupid girl that pays his bills. I figure the tax man probably caught up with him eventually, they always do. I figure I get a few thousand years off of purgatory for this time...

So. Be glad they don't live with YOU.

 

Yeah, I hate that you had to go through that . Let me give you some insight on my brother. He's been married twice and divorced twice simply because of his stupidity. His first wife he met while in the air force and no one really liked or cared about her. They decided to have a kid then get married. That lasted a few years until he found out she was spreading it all over town. They divorced and he started dating a girl that lived in the apartment complex he and his first wife lived in. Everyone seemed to like this one though. She was quiet but nice. That went on for a few years and then they decided to run off and elope. None of us were invited to the wedding which was just about 20 miles over into the next city. They worked on their credit and eventually were able to build a house from ground up. The problem was that my brother (my twin brother) couldn't keep it in his pants. He and I had a ton of conversations when he and his 2nd wife started having troubles. He thought he should just have sex whenever he wanted with his wife multiple times a week and she wasn't having it. So . . . he started paying escorts for sex. And I'm not talking about these $20 or $300 an hour escorts really nice hotels. We're talking those cheap $50 and $60 ones you found on Craigslist and Backpage who would basically you go pick them up, they climb in your back seat and you drive around the back of the grocery store or down some dead end street in an industrial park at night. It got to the point to where when he got this prominent position in his church that his wife found out about his shenanigans and threatened to walk up in his church during sunday service and give the pastor all the evidence she had on him during the middle of the sermon. At that point I told him he needed to cool it but of course he told me I couldn't tell him what to do with his money. So at that point he and I had stopped speaking. It had gotten to the point with him to where he would start taking these cheap girls home to his marital bed and photograph them naked on the bed he hared with his wife then he'd text the pics to me.

That marriage fizzled and they eventually separated. Upon sale of the house they both walked away with about $26k. That's how he ended up at our parent's house the first time. Now, given that he was technically homeless instead of banking that money he goes out and spends some $17k of it on a used Tahoe which he didn't need because the Trailblazer he was already driving was running fine. Why'd he do it, because all the people at his church were getting new vehicles and he didn't want to be left out.

He finally finds a place with his son and the apartment works out fine until covid hits and there's a rental moratorium in place which as we all know, a landlord can't evict you for not paying your rent. That's fine if your job was affected by the pandemic and you were let go or laid off. My brother never lost a day of work. He just decided to stop paying his rent. When that moratorium was lifted he now owed all this back rent or his ass would get evicted. My mom and two of my sisters had to loan him some $5000 to get his rent caught back up. Yeah, the rest of the money he got from the sale of his house was long spent by now. Mom took money she had saved to get some dental work done and loaned it to him. That was Aug of 2021. Come Jan of 2022 another one of my sisters, one who loaned him some money, emailed me to say that he was being evicted from his apt that very day for getting behind on his rent again. This now causes him to have to go back to our parent's house. And here's one thing none of us can understand. When dad was up and mobile he loved to work with wood. There are 6 grandkids in the family and he hand built each grandchild a toybox. When my brother and his son were packing up their apartment the son left the toybox behind because he said he didn't want it anymore. You know how that would make anyone feel? Every grandchild still has their toybox but that one is now in splinters in the city dump somewhere.

When he moved back home the siblings and mom told him he had 3 months to get back up on his feet which meant he needed to find another place to stay. For 2.5 months he did nothing. Then when it came down to the last 2 weeks and his deadline was nearing then and only then did he start looking for a place to stay. When everyone turned him down he sent one of the other sisters this long manifesto text message about how he has screwed up his life and sometimes he feels like leaving and never coming back. That pulled at our mom's heart strings and she allowed him to stay and as of right now there's no move out date in place. So as long as she doesn't say anything he'll continue to stay there. And it's to the point to where mom will be outside trimming the hedges and one of the siblings will ask why he's in the house watching TV and his response will be "that's not my job." He's only required to pay $100 a week, both him and his son, and even for a while he was behind on that. It's very frustrating when you go visit and your mom is having to dress clean, and change dad and the one brother is sitting there in a chair because "that's not his job." But . . . let his pastor call him and say he needs my brother to come to his house and take his laundry out of the dryer or he needs him to drive to the airport at 3 AM to pick him up because he doesn't want to wake his wife up at that hour. My brother would make a beeline out the door and leave smoke like Speedy Gonzales. Yeah, every family has that one and this is our one.

 

Now, wait a minute. Is my brother in law living there???

Best you just let that all go, he's not changing any time soon....plus it only seems to bother you, not him... You have to understand that some people are just wired differently....they just don't think the same as other, their thought processes are all screwy.

Do what you can to help mom out and work on ditching the rest, it will just eat you up.

When my mother in law died, we decided pretty much just exit the family and have been better for it. Wait for that shit storm....who gets what, who is executor, who is hiding money.... Oh, it's coming. Ask mom to get a notebook and just write everything down to the last teaspoon of what goes where and who gets what. My grand parents did that and nothing was left to question. I still have all that useless expensive antique china, too.....whoo hooo.

 

It alarmed me, when you mentioned that the roof needed replacing, simply on the grounds of the mortgage companies companies word processor printout and without a detailed report from a QUALLIFIED surveyor. If the roof wes slate, it should have been repaired, but half the so called mortgage surveyors are unqualified and clueless.

The worst part is that they miss the real problems and since they are employed by a third party, you have no redress.

 

Insurance.....it's almost like they're in it for the money. Yeah, they can do pretty much whatver they want. But then again, why should they give you guaranteed replacement if your roof is at end of useful life?

 

No mortgage. The family home is paid for. Our parent's home owner's insurance company apparently did a drive by one day and just looked at the roof from the street then sent our parents a letter saying they felt that the roof needed to be replaced and if it wasn't they were going to drop the homeowner's insurance. There were no leaks anywhere inside the house but they just based it on a visual inspection from some 70 or 80 feet away while sitting in a car looking up.

 

Yeah, that happened to my brother, they did a drive by - but honestly, it really needed it, but they only made him replace the garage roof. He and a friend knocked it off on a weekend. Roofing is easy on a flat pitch but, on a steep pitch like mine, forget it. I was blessed with a hail storm a while back and they replaced it all right down to the plywood, gutter, drain pipes, the whole deal. One of the guys busted one of my porch skylights, so I got a new one of those, too.... I figure I'd been paying those insurance guys for 30 years....it's time I got something out of it...