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The original was posted on /r/bestofredditorupdates by /u/Choice_Evidence1983 on 2024-11-05 05:02:07+00:00.
I am NOT OOP
Wife: u/Lost_Time37
Husband: u/TopVersion2940
Originally posted to r/AITAH
AITAH for telling my husband we need to suck it up and buy our daughter a new car?
Thanks to u/Lynavi for suggesting this BoRU
Trigger Warnings: accident, body injuries, emotional abuse and manipulation, possible gaslighting
Husband’s Post:
AITAH for telling my daughter I won’t budge even if she never speaks to me again?: September 13, 2024
My daughter Casey (17f) worked and saved up money for around a year to be able to afford a better car than we could buy her with our family budget. My other daughter Alana (16f, has ADHD) recently got her driver’s license, and asked to drive Casey’s car. Casey allowed it, but Alana ended up having a bad accident around 6 months ago which basically rendered the car unusable.
The insurance payout wasn’t nearly enough to cover the replacement, and with Alana’s medical bills from the accident (thankfully there was no permanent damage, just a broken arm and leg), there was no way we could afford to replace Casey’s car immediately.
Alana was very apologetic to Casey, and so were we since we couldn’t afford to replace her car. Casey didn’t accept our apology, and has been basically avoiding us, skipping family dinners, and pretty much pretending that her mom, Alana, and I don’t exist and only talks to us if she needs a form signed for her school.
I begged her to come to a family therapy session, and she eventually relented but with the condition that Alana wouldn’t be present. In the therapy session, she told us that she won’t be resuming a relationship with us until we replace her car, which realistically won’t be until next year. When the therapist asked how she expected us to do that, Casey said we could just make Alana work to earn the money.
The issue is that Alana has severe ADHD, and already has trouble managing her school work. I’m worried that making her work to earn the money will harm her grades and have significant ramifications for her future. Casey said “well she should have thought about that before destroying my car, I don’t care, I’m not gonna speak to any of you unless I have my car replaced”. I responded that she was free to avoid speaking to me for as long as she wanted to, but I’m not going to permanently harm her sister’s future to get her a car earlier.
My wife agrees with me that we need to stand firm on our position, but is also genuinely afraid of Casey never speaking to her ever again. I understand that her car was ruined, but I as a parent I need to look out for all my children, not just one. I also don’t want to set the precedent that emotional blackmail will work even if what you’re asking for is unreasonable.
AITAH?
AITAH has no consensus bot, the husband was YTA
Relevant Comment
Commenter 1: Anyone wondering how much convincing it took for Casey to LET Alana drive her car
OOP: No convincing at all. We weren’t even involved in the convo between them.
Commenter 2: I’m with Casey on this one. You’re coddling your youngest. And you have no idea if having a job could actually help your youngest learn to manage her time. You’ve left your oldest hanging.
*edit to add. If Alana can get her drivers license she can get a job.
Commenter 3: YTA - You’re shitting all over Casey to protect Alana from the consequences of her actions. If her condition is that bad, why was she allowed to drive in the first place?
Wife’s Posts:
Original Post: October 8, 2024
I (39f) and my husband (43m) have two daughters, 16 who we’ll call Alana and 17 who I’ll call Casey.
Casey has held down a steady job for over a year now and was able to get herself a car, now, she got this car right as Alana passed her own driver’s test, so there was a little issue between who was going to be driving.
After a little persuasion, Casey did allow Alana to use her car, so long as somebody else paid for gas. We told her that wasn’t going to cut it, Alana doesn’t have the money for that, and it’s her car, her responsibility to keep gas in it and keep it on the road.
Here’s where it gets difficult- Alana wrecked about a month ago. Luckily, she was fine aside from a broken wrist and a mild concussion, but Casey was fuming the entire time, and seemed to have this expectation that we would be replacing her car.
Her and my husband got into it, and she threw her arms up like a child and just stopped speaking to us. We coaxed her into going to family therapy with us, though it wasn’t productive, as she and the therapist agreed that it’d be best to maintain the reduced contact until she’s paid back.
Here’s the problem… that car was $15 grand, she saved up every penny for a YEAR for that car. She’d ask us about twice a week if we “changed our mind” and obviously the answer was no, but that was the only thing she’d say to us. It didn’t seem to bother my husband and he kelt saying she’ll get over it, until last week, she packed some things and had MY mother come and get her.
She’s been staying at her grandmother’s for a little over a week now, and she gave me a good earful, whatever Casey told hee worked because earlier today, my husband and I were informed we had 30 days to replace the car in full or she was taking us to COURT.
I think my husband is admirable in wanting to stand his ground, but the way I’m looking at it, we have two options. And I am sick of my daughter not talking to me because of shit that is not my fault. Alana has been a wreck, she’s already battling severe ADHD, and now she’s shaking at the thought of having to appear in court.
So I sat them both down, and said we have two options. We can suck it up, pay $15,000 and have our daughter and sister back, and Alana will just have to buck up and work. Or, we can let my Dad sue my husband and I on Casey’s behalf, and almost certainly lose.
We spoke to four different firms, and all four echoed similar sentiment, that it would probably cost us close to triple in the end to bring it to court and fight it there, so that’s when I told my husband that I am not going $30 grand further into debt for him to hold the pettiest grudge.
He’s saying that I’m being manipulative by holding this whole situation over his and Alana’s heads, I’m not saying it’s not part my fault, all I said was that no matter what, at the end of the day, we owe Casey and he needs to just accept that. We can afford $15k to replace the car, but if we have to dish out double that, just to lose in court anyway, I’m divorcing him before he makes that mistake.
In either case, I’m done not supporting both of my daughters. We’ve tried reasoning with Casey and it has resulted in nothing. We lost this one.
AITA for trying to get my husband to accept it?
I feel I may be, just for how long I was being a passenger (no pun intended) in the situation, and for threatening my husband with divorce, I don’t think we did anything that wrong, but I’m willing to admit when we made some mistakes and we have to make up for it somehow.
AITAH has no consensus bot, wife was also YTA
Relevant Comments
OOP and her husband need to get Alana to pay Casey back for damaging her car
OOP: What is she supposed to do? Magically come up with thousands of dollars to pay my oldest back? It’s not a matter of not wanting to hold people accountable, it simply is not realistic.
I also want to state on record, I was very against Casey getting a car that nice as her first. She never listened.
Insurance would’ve likely paid for some if she would have just put her sister as an approved driver on the plan. If would not have been difficult. But no, it’s not Alana’s “fault” that she has ADHD, it’s not like she wrecked on purpose.
Commenter 1: Casey saved up $15k and didn’t pay the $300/mo to get insurance? Nope. Sounds like Alana wrote this and doesn’t know how insurance works.
Alana, pay for the gas if you drive the car.
OOP: She had insurance, but they really screwed us over because Casey didn’t approve Alana as a driver on the plan. That was a big determining factor in us deciding to hold firm. If Alana would’ve been approved on the plan, we would’ve covered the remainder on what the insurance was offering.
But this is the the result of Casey’s decision, hence, I agreed with my husband that it’s fully her responsibility. I just didn’t expect her to sue us out of nowhere like this, and I especially didn’t expect my parents to be enabling this behavior.
What’s in her best interest might suck now, but she’ll learn from it in the future. My husband’s been fuming for weeks over this and a lot of you are saying he even made a post, but if they ruled NTA then he wasn’t telling the full story.
Alana broke her arm in that wreck and all Casey has cared about the past month is her car. That’s the genesis behind the family therapy, and I’m very concerned that so many people are supporting her entitled behavior.
**OOP is blaming her parents for enabling Casey into sui…
Content cut off. Read original on https://old.reddit.com/r/BestofRedditorUpdates/comments/1gjz63x/aitah_for_telling_my_husband_we_need_to_suck_it/
OOP is blaming her parents for enabling Casey into suing OOP and her husband
OOP: I’m not absolving them of blame either, they’re the ones enabling Case in all of this.
Are you forgetting that it’s MY Mom and Dad suing on her behalf? You’re nuts if you think they won’t be hearing from me, results be damned.
I’ve been getting angry telephone calls for a week over this shitstorm, SOMEBODY has to answer for that, even her uncles are on her side in this. And the in-laws haven’t said a word, I don’t know what’s happening on that side.
OOP on what she and her husband do for Casey
OOP: We feed her, we clothe her, we were going to send her to college, she had a place to PARK that car because of us, and oh by the way, my husband got under there and fixed a tie rod about a month after she got it, for all of you saying about how awful he is.
He’s not. He loves Casey, we both do. But I didn’t see her putting that car up in the air to redo the brakes and fix the AC when she hit a deer, that was all her father.
I figured that allowing her sister to also drive their car was a more than fair ask for all he did, and is a big reason why I supported him. I just hate that I apparently can’t support him AND love my daughters.
If that’s the resolution you all want, forget it. Case is gonna take this to court, and then when she loses, she’s going to throw another fit, but that’s better than dishing out $15k for a car we’re not even going to drive.
It’s not lost on me that we owe her, we just don’t owe her that much, she’ll come around when she realizes how the world works.
Update: October 29, 2024 (three weeks later)
It’s been a few weeks since I last updated and I want to start out by addressing a few things that opened my eyes a little bit in regards to this situation, the first thing being, my husband’s post which came well before my own.
He and I fought over that, I truthfully didn’t love that he used real names, however when I found out he posted, for the sake of transparency, I used real names as well. But, with that being said, I went through with the difficult decision to serve him divorce papers.
To really abbreviate things, I went to therapy as lots of you suggested, and I was assessed with a diagnosis for and obsessive compulsive disorder in my second session, and in my third session, we discussed the whole car situation, and my personal therapist explained it to me in a way that made it hard to not feel awful for Case.
The discussion we had covered quite a lot, but the common denominator in everything that’s been going wrong has, in large part, been my husband. He’s the reason Casey shared her car, he’s the reason Alana got hurt driving on her own, and he’s the reason we’re set for court in barely a week and still don’t have an attorney.
And me… I don’t know what I’ve been doing, but it hasn’t been being a mother, if I’m honest. One of you asked me straight up, why I was “being a passenger” and I just don’t have a good answer. I let my parents know about the divorce and they were a little concerned, but what I didn’t expect was for Casey to reach out.
The last time we ‘talked’ was mostly her and my husband butting heads. I really thought she was about to turn me on a spit but I’ve never heard her cry like that, at least not since she was much younger.
I make a little bit more than my husband but finding an apartment was brutal, especially with Alana wanting to come with me, I don’t think I was clear enough about how badly I want to pay Casey back before, but I do. Most of my money is in joint savings though, so there isn’t much I CAN afford, but my husband wasn’t going to back down.
I won’t lie, I was selfish. I begged Casey to drop my name from this suit, I told her I would pay what I could afford to right this second, which wasn’t much in comparison, and she told me that it wasn’t so much the car or the value on its own she wanted back. It was the security to have something of her own, and she listed off probably dozens of instances where Alana got first pick over her and it was very hard to refute.
She told me that losing that much money “sucked” (which I fully understand), but the bigger loss to her was that her first “big girl purchase” which a lot of friends and family were excited about, was now going to be remembered as a family-ending disaster. She told me that she knows I can’t replace that.
We agreed to breakfast next week and joint therapy, us two, and her only condition was that I don’t try at any point to “save” him from the suit which I agreed to. Alana came to me even before my last post, saying she only drove so far because my now ex husband pressured her into picking up the grocery order early for something he wanted to make.
This also changed my perspective, I was under the impression that she was doing her own thing, but even my husband owned up to that which ground my gears, but I put it together. Illegal driver in an expensive car, not insured, and under pressure? Alana drove, but I’ve come to realize that my ex husband seems to have a tendency to like to pressure people. He’s pressured me a lot too.
He probably pressured Casey into letting Alana drive at all. Which brings me back to her, and we finished our talk with… better terms. I owe her so much more than breakfast out but I’m just beyond grateful she’s even willing to look at me.
I’ve seen a lot of bold assumptions that I ‘hate’ Casey and that I vastly favor Alana, but I only feel the second part was ever accurate. I’ve never hated my own daughter. I was frustrated with her over something I’ve come to realize wasn’t her fault.
As of now, I’m just adjusting to a much quieter place, and to my phone buzzing nonstop, I’ve only been moved out for 5 days and Alana has seemed so much less anxious, to me at least. It’s odd because my place now isn’t anywhere near what the house is, but I think last night was probably the first time I’ve slept 8 hours since high school.
Today was productive, and for Casey… I’ll admit it. I hope she wins. I hope she gets her car and then some. As for the divorce, I don’t want much material. I won’t say no to it, I’d rather just have my share of joint savings, and try to tackle my own issues, of which I guess I have more than I would’ve been willing to admit a month ago.
I know I’m going to get pelted most likely, but I want you to know I’m thankful. The internet is mean but it tells the truth, and however this turns out, it’s largely your comments that helped me see what I was doing wrong, and who was enabling those things. And most importantly, how I could stop it.
It’s times like this where my Dad would tell me I’m not ‘lucky’, I’m ‘privileged’ and I think that applies here. I’m privileged that my daughter didn’t just laugh, even though she could and arguably should have.
That’s the update, I’ll update whenever Case and I meet, barring she’s comfortable with it, and then you probably won’t hear from me until the whole suit and divorce is over and done with. I just wanted Reddit to know, I hear you all, and I wish I could’ve seen reason when I first posted. I’m frustrated reading my own comments.
Therapy is a powerful thing.
Top Comments
Commenter 1: It’s great that you seemed to have changed your tune a bit but this still screams of avoiding being held accountable. Your (ex)husband may have been the driving force behind the fall out with Casey but you were trying very hard to place blame on Casey in your initial post and subsequent comments and it’s hard for me to believe you switched sides that easily.
I hope that Casey gets the outcome she deserves from all of this, whether that’s your (ex)husband being taken to the cleaners or the both of you.
Commenter 2: Still YTA. You allowed this all to happen. Your daughter bought the car and it was OK to let the other daughter drive it? And not have to pay for gas? Take some responsibility and realize you are a shit parent.
DO NOT COMMENT IN LINKED POSTS OR MESSAGE OOPs – BoRU Rule #7 THIS IS A REPOST SUB - I AM NOT OOP
Man commenters are all over the place. I would be confused.
My aunt did the same thing to my mom’s car when i was kid. Same financial situation too. She went to get me BK and bam unapproved driver accident.
I’m shocked this blew up as much as it did. Parents should have met her halfway at the very least. Write it off as a life lesson or discuss a payment plan at the very least.
