Small(ish) lottery win - Do I keep it since they didn’t pay?

[swimmingforCB]

We’ve had a family syndicate going for 6 months or so now. Few £10 wins etc but nothing big.

For the past 2 weeks, nobody has bothered paying in. They kept saying they’d do it next week, and then next week came and they said they’d do it that week. But everyone forgot again!

I won on Tuesday. Nothing OTT but a sizeable sum

If I keep it to myself, it’ll change my life. If I share it between the 4 of us, it’ll pay for a fancy holiday and that’s it.

What do I do? 😬

⬆️ this 😂

As far as they are concerned they haven't paid so no lotto has been done, you bought tickets with your own money so the winnings is yours.

Keep it. Say nothing at all.
Stop asking them for the weekly lottery money, just leave it.
One day they'll remember they might need to pay you but by then you'll be saying, Oh, you've not paid for ages, I thought you'd stopped bothering?
Still say nothing.
Keep the money.
If they leave it up to you, can't be bothered to pay up and it wasn't someone's specific numbers that won, you're fine keeping it.

Wait two weeks - see who actually pays.

Shocking how dishonest people are on here (I'm not saying I wouldn't be tempted, but I wouldn't sell my soul for £20k)!

Do not tel you have won it will only cause many issues it's not worth it, they haven't been part of the syndicate for weeks so their loss.

Keep playing as normal going forward and sit on the money until you decide what to do with it. Any relatives that could have gifted you money perhaps? Could easily say any large purchases is a bank loan etc.

If another member of the family won, secretly kept it and you later found out, how would you feel? That's probably your answer.

i wouldn't even like to hasten a guess as to how many people saying 'take it, say nothing', would be screaming blue murder if anyone tried to do this to them in the same circumstances! I don't think the 'but you hadn't given me the £2 quid yet' would wash with them if it were them being denied 5 grand.

I say, treat others how you would want to be treated yourself. That's my moral compass. OP, if you were late paying and someone else picked up the tickets and got a winner, would you accept not getting any of it? In all honesty?

Mine too! This seems to be unassailable moral logic. Assuming that she would have accepted retrospective losing stakes then I think the OP ought to share the money.

(You can first knock off the ten quid that they owe you )

Keep it. I would. Unless the know/check the numbers. But then they didn't pay did they? I would say you aren't bothering anymore as noone pays. You can always say you won on a lucky dip for yourself in a few weeks.

I know. Gives a sad indication of how untrustworthy and money hungry most individuals are, right?!

OP, I reckon chasing up payments is part and parcel of a syndicate too. I often hear “How many weeks do I owe you?” before the collector checks their notes in work.

This is all very well in a culture where everybody fully accepts the need to pony up any arrears and does so; but what do you do with the people who either just do not understand (or claim not to understand) why they should pay for a week that's already past and where nobody won?

Fair-weather syndicate-participants are the scourge of agreements like this, where arrogant entitled people will deliberately engineer it that they never actually pay in advance, but only ever expect to pay retrospectively on weeks when a prize was won - and these are also the people who will go legal if they are thwarted, with the result being as mentioned upthread, where the legal advice is just to settle their demand to avoid a protracted legal battle that will inevitably end up costing way more.

I was coming here to ask exactly what @allrightclucky had asked....

If you would have accepted their cash in arrears for losing tickets, surely morally you have to accept it in arrears for winning ones?

If you hadn't won money and they came forth with the price of the ticket would you accept the money from them??

I couldn't keep it and say nothing. Even if I did think like majority of "oh fuck it they didn't pay", I would still feel ridiculously guilty that it wouldn't be worth keeping.

I think the phrase I often hear "they'll have no luck for that" is perfectly apt in this situation!

Well said.

I agree (as I’ve said a few times) - but I’d knock off a couple of quid more from their allocation for their cheek too. Call it debt interest. 😉

You took responsibility for buying the tickets not to chase idle people for not paying their dues. If they didn't pay then they are not in the lottery.

I have to say though, this thread has made me consider who in my family would not cough up. 😂 I’ve got a couple of family members who definitely wouldn’t I reckon. And I respond emotionally to that which I suppose informed my views about whether you should pay or not.

Indeed, it's actually quite depressing 😕

I'd probably do something boringly sensible, but which would help the family like paying most of it to reduce my mortgage. Which is what I did when I was made redundant and got a redundancy payout - I paid four fifths off my mortgage. 🌹

OP I would get this thread pulled as the press will probably pick it up

You bought a lucky dip, out of your own money, not the syndicates, therefore it’s YOUR win!

Those saying OP should pay, I totally disagree that's my regular numbers coming up, but me not buying a ticket that week and phoning up the national lottery and saying I'm entitled to the winnings beacuse I usually buy a ticket.

They didn't pay that week it's OP money she does not owe them anything

This

I would be very interested with those who would take it, how they would feel if they were one of the ones in the syndicate that didn't pay that week. I bet then they would be furious!

If you paid for the ticket from your own purse then keep it, I wouldn’t even tell DH if it’s in laws involved.
Don’t tell a soul haha!
Absolutely no one can know because it will cause issues - money turns people weird. Keep it and better your life.