AIBU to tell my brother to stick himself?

[fallenninja]

OK so brief background. about 10 years ago my DB got himself into a quite sticky financial mess. He had what should have been a very profitable business but he kept "borrowing" money to fund his and his DWs lifestyle. Cue massive debts, and verge of bankruptcy.

I very luckily had a house with a fair whack of equity in it, due to inheritance / buying cheaply when my parents divorced. With a whole host of conditions and reservations and following massive conversations I agreed for DB to raise a loan secured on my house (idiot) in order for him to sort this out. This was for £150k (i know even bigger idiot). Arrangement was simple. DB repaid the loan, over the 20years that it was for. DB didnt. Massive family falling out. I ended up remortgaing and obviously am now and will be forever paying the stupid loan off.

Over the last 5 years or so we seem to have repaired the family rift, and whilst it still galls me, I suppose in some ways ive let it go.

So now ...
DB yet again has got himself in a mess, there is to be a family meeting tonight to dicuss how to help him. Hes in a deep depression, his wife has left him (money issues - he can no longer keep her to the style she expects) and he obviously is in debt again. He tried to commit sucide last weekend.

Now obviously i am concerned about him, I love him, and dont want anything terrible to happen to him, but i have no interest in helping him financially or in any big commited way, which is where the disagreement is coming in.

Suggestion 1. I have a parcel of land which I know a builder would purchase to develop, so option is that I sell my plot of land, give the money to DB, and then his mum/DB will pay me a monthly sum up and until the value is met (including interest), so Ive not lost out as such.

Suggestion 2. DB IVAs and we as a family help him with the payments and also with the running of his business, I as an accountant seem to have been signed up for the massive brunt of this. Set up budgets/monitor expenditure/blah blah blah. However I know my brother and he wont pay any attention to me saying no, so i think it wont work

However if he did do something stupidly stupid because I didnt help i would struggle to forgive myself, but this is how i got guilted persuaded to help last time

So AIBU to say get lost? Or is DBs mum in asking me to consider this?

(Im off on the school run then popping to town, so shall return at lunch for the verdict)

If your DB has any property, can you get part of the property put in your name (in trust) as repayment for the rest of the £150k he owes you? This would need doing before he gets made bankrupt.

be firm - say no to your family

No wonder she's postponed the meeting to discuss the plan-you are the plan! If you don't play ball, she'll have to think of another plan and as that will either involve him going bankrupt, living with her or embarrassing the in-laws, she's not going to give up on you being the cash pot without a fight!

You need to tell her you won't be coming to a meeting and the fact you are £150k down because of him shows you clearly do care-so not to try that one! Can you email her rather than speak? Send her that previous letter and do not speak to her about it again. If she never spoke to you again-would you be gutted?

If you lost your house because of this mess-she'd put a roof over your head, would she...?

Fuck me, that Panda gives good letter!

Ah, BitofFun. What have you done with my fez?

[waves "Panda For PM" placard]

Blimey, CCC may have a point. Never mind pumping more money in, what about you are the one who sues him to bankruptcy? At least then a portion of whatever-there-is will stay in the family instead of DB losing everything to outsiders.

Float this idea past his mum and see how she reacts to that! (and can I be a fly on the wall please)

I've been lurking too and I agree with Grandhighpoohba. Your DB's mum understandably is panicing and seems to think that if she can just his life back to how it was he'll be "all better", but the life he's led is the reason for his breakdown.

Someone has to be strong and say the only chance your brother has for a happy life is for a complete change. Instead of feeling guilty for not helping him further financially I think you should realise you are the only one doing what is best for you brother.

I can't imagine the strain he's been under, he didn't sound like a con man, just some one who's got himself in an awful pattern and feels he can't stop because he'll loose everything, including a wife who doesn't appear to feel anything for him beyond a bank balance.

So putting aside the facts that you've done far, far, more than your bit the last time, and that you've got your own major issues to deal with, the best thing you can do for your brother is to help him break this cycle by not lending him more money (which can only increase the weight on him), and help him wind up a business which is clearly too much for him. I honestly think the only reason you should feel guilty is if you do lend him this money.

I think Panda's letter is fantastic - but I'm wondering if there was a typo in there:

It is quite clear to me that you perceive some sort of financial and moral obligation towards DB on my part. It is also clear to me that you do not, for reasons that I do not understand, feel that I should be allowed to be financially stable when he has failed financially. I do not see that you will be content until every penny and every asset I own has been handed over to DB. I accept that it is natural that you will have more care for your natural son than for me, but given that we have had a good relationship in the past, I find it extraordinarily hurtful that you want me to place myself and my children in the position of having no financial security so that your son can be saved from the stigma of blackmail. It appears to me that you have no real concern for my family situation and that is deeply upsetting.

Just struck me that it might have been meant to be bankruptcy. There's definitely blackmail going on, but not in this way!

It horrifies me that your DB's mum would see you, your young children and the (very ill) father of her son homeless and impoverished so that her DS can continue to maintain the pretense of a lifestyle that he cannot now and never has been able to afford - mainly, seemingly, for the benefit of his IL's. Who seem to be the only people involved that might, genuinely, be able to spare £50k without putting themselves at financial risk to do so.

I can kind of see that your DB's mother is trying to do what she feels is best for her DS - but she's doing it by putting you and your family at risk (again!) and by trying to manipulate you in the cruelest possible way. You are not responsible for your DB's actions - and if your DB has been brought up to believe that his (little) sister will bail him out financially every time he needs it then that is HIS MOTHER's fault. NOT yours.

I totally agree that lending him more money will only make situation (financially and emotionally) worse. It won't change anything. It won't solve anything. It'll just make the fall, when it inevitably happens, that much harder. Giving him more money is not "caring" for him.

I've just read this thread and wow, I feel absolutely furious - please don't give in to their blackmail. I think the advice you've received here is excellent and kungfupanda's suggested email is amazing. I know that you are caring and it might sound harsh to send something that strong, but if you show any sign of giving a little, they will try and push you to give a lot more than you're able to. With your ill brother present at any of these discussions that could be really distressing. You need to take a hardline and stick to it and refuse to attend the meeting. It is ridiculous that anyone needs 4x the average salary to live - how dare they try and make you responsible for him living so far beyond his means when you've already taken on such a massive debt for him! He was prepared (whether deliberately or just through negligence) for you to lose your home while pregnant, I think you've been extraordinarily gracious in forgiving him. Please don't let them take advantage of you anymore.

OP, please listen to all of the advice on here. You now have over 300 messages of support and not one person who thinks YABU. It must be heartbreaking watching your DB go through this, but he is not your responsibility; your children are. Please, please, please, refuse to have anything more to do with this situation (further than meeting with/calling/writing to your brother on completely mundane, unrelated subjects to keep in touch with him and show how much you love him)

Repeat after me: "I am being reasonable; DB's mum isn't. I am being reasonable; DB's mum isn't"

Morning all - bloody hell ninja (I was calling you fallen but given the circs I think you need to morph completely into the NINJA as of from right now! )

Well none of this is really much of a surprise, is it. As quite a few people have pointed out, basically, up til now your DB's mum has been what you considered a nice supportive family member...well that was while you were helpfully playing the role of the amazing cashpoint that never fails to pay out. So here it is - this is what she's really like and this is what she really thinks of you. I'm so sorry that your eyes have had to be opened in this way - and as you've so astutely observed, this isn't about your brother (who it seems can barely stick two sentences together at the moment) it's about his horror of a mother.

Bottom line - this woman is a manipulative con artist and you need to kick her to the kerb before she shits all over your children as well as you. She is entitlement personified - basically, she sees your assets as somehow rightfully hers and her son's, simply because you're related. Because she knows you, she knows how best to get you - through guilt. So she's pulling out every stop she can think of to get your assets off you. She'd see you on the streets as long as her boy was ok. If this were you, you wouldn't see her for dust.

You need to fight and fight dirty because this boils down to you fighting for your children against a woman fighting for hers. Mad as that sounds.

You have had lots of amazing advice this morning, I could waffle for ages but I'd be saying so much of the same thing and I'm sure your head is spinning. Here are my points.

Practical stuff:

1. Don't go to the meeting. The point of it is not to support your DB but to gang up on you until you cave in. I would send kungfupanda's letter word for word - I can't think of a better way of putting it all. Send it, that says EVERYTHING you need to point out, and finish up by saying - I won't be coming to any meeting you organise. I WILL come to see my brother IN PRIVATE to speak to HIM and explain why I TRULY BELIEVE that the best way to handle this is for him to go bankrupt and STOP TRYING TO RUN BUSINESSES. But I will not come to any family meeting on this EVER.' fluter's suggestion of getting your solicitor to contact DBmum is also a good one. Get professional - your solicitor can do a good letter pointing out that your current committments (thanks to DB already doing his best to bleed you dry) mean that there is no mechanism for further withdrawals. Get solicitor to hint that land is already mortgaged to the hilt perhaps?

1. Threaten back. You REALLY need to fight back here. Tell DB's mum that if she does not accept your position on this and continues to harrass you, you will have no choice but to inform his wife's parents of the situation. This would be the right thing to do, incidentally - as others have said, it's awful anyway that this is being kept from them, but this is approaching DANGEROUS - it is obvious to absolutely everyone on this thread that what your DB's mum is trying to do is not in his best interests. Do you have contact details for his wife's parents? If you do, I would both threaten this and then do it anyway.

After this, refuse to pick up the phone. Go incommunicado. Pull out all the stops. Say you're so stressed and shocked by the level of aggressive blackmail you're being subjected to that you're not sure you can even maintain a relationship with them now. Tell them you're going to the doctor because it's giving you panic attacks.

The vitally important thing is that you use any and every method to get yourself into a safe position where you do not give them any money. If you do, this will never end, and two? three? ten? years from now, you will still be being used up financially and emotionally by these bloodsuckers. But by then, your assets will be depleted, your children's future gone, and you will be a nervous wreck.

So how do you armour yourself to be able to withstand this pressure and implement the above? I feel for you so much here ninja - the stress you must be under is immense. It's so easy for us to get fired up and rant on about what WE'D say - so easy when it's not your own family with its little web of relationships and pressures. I'm sure each and every one of us can think of a person close to us who we couldn't speak straight to to save our lives. That's where you are. Here are my thoughts:

1. Can you see your therapist for a bit of an emergency meeting to talk this through and get some support? I think you need to start seeing this as a pretty traumatic attack being made on you - that's what it is! Start protecting your mental health. I can guess that your therapist might be able to help you with the fact that YOU ARE GOING TO FEEL GUILTY DESPITE THE FACT THAT YOU'RE DOING THE RIGHT THING. Get help to face that guilt and start seeing it as a 'false' emotion and it might make things easier.

1. Please take time to think through all the very clear PERSONAL reasons why what you are doing is the right thing for your brother. This is very similar to forcing an addict to go cold turkey, or staging an 'intervention' on someone on a downward spiral - the difference is, imagine that your DBmum is actually the drug dealer who doesn't WANT her 'supply' removed! It's been said so eloquently by so many on this thread, some of whom have tragic personal experience of having people like this in the family. You could give your brother 50K now, and after another three years of nice cars and meals out and expensive clothes for the wife, he'd be back to ask you to remortgage your house again. You could sell everything you had and give it to him, and eventually you'd have him turning up on the doorstep homeless complaining that it's your fault, you didn't look after him enough. It's a sickness, and his mother has it too. Look at the way she's rewritten history over the original loan - in her head, the story is different. (Incidentally, if you provided 50K now, how long do you think it would be before that turned into a 'loan' too? Or if you sold the field for 75K, how long would it take for DBmum to convince herself that she'd done you a favour, you'd probably have only got 35K for it given the climate, and so she thinks that's what she should repay?) There's a serious problem there, with both of them. You CANNOT help any part of the situation by providing money. They are demanding it, hysterically, in the way an addict demands more heroin as the answer to their problems. By refusing to provide more supply, you are doing the right thing both financially and personally.

1. Get that professional head on and put it right next to your mothering instinct. Any money you give to this is tantamount to smashing your kids' piggy banks and pouring the cash down the toilet. 50K won't change your brother, but it will change the future for your kids. You are a single mum (am in awe, by the way!!) who has used her brains and determination to build up a security for them. Don't let the weak points you still have hanging over you from your own upbringing trash it for you all!

1. Finally, I feel like the hectoring voice of doom saying this but I think that if you start to face up to the fact that this will proably reopen a complete rift between you all then it might be easier to cope with. As in, you might as well do what's right for you and your kids because after this they won't be around anyway. As an outsider I'd say YAY to that but it's never that simple - I'm sure you'd rather continue to have a good relationship with them all - but I'm not sure that's going to happen unless you continue to be their cash cow. Could your therapist help with talking through this? There are such big pluses to it, you see - for example, do you want to see your kids becaome the next target for the beggars as they grow up?

Anyway I've waffled for FAR too long and thing have probably moved on apace - post hamster post and let's catch up with the others.

Go NINJA go!!!!!

Excellent letter. Think it should be "the stigma of bankruptcy" rather than "the stigma of blackmail"? Just in case you plan to use it verbatim!

brilliant letter kungfupannda

jeez i'm wound up now too.

is this woman for real?? in which case i wish i had a mum like her.

i could do whatever the fuck i wanted to and she'd get someone else to pay!

Yes! Bankruptcy not blackmail!

[makes What Hamster Said placard and joins the line]

I've read pretty much the whole thread and quite apart from being gobsmacked at the sheer cheek of DB's mother (and the awesomeness of Kungfupandas letter), I'd like to throw a couple of suggestions into the pot relating to contact with DB (and the rest of the tribe) regarding the loans etc.

Long story short, my DH's brother (lets call him J) tried to take him to court for his "supposed share" of the business when J wanted to leave the family partnership. Suffice to say, he wasn't entitled to it. It all got very nasty, but I have a pitbull solicitor so we saw the fucker off but the best piece of advice I was given (actually by a friend of mine who is a leading criminal barrister, FWIW) was (if we could afford it) to to keep everything in writing, and lodge a copy of every piece of correspondance we had back and fore, with our solicitor. Emails, copied in to our solicitor, the lot. Learning from our experience, I now take this stance with various other people we deal with professionally too.

Just the mere fact that the other side knew/knows that we were/are running things past our solicitor (even just to the point of copying in the solicitor to the emails) means that they don't try it on nearly so much. They are also more aware of the fact that what they say can come back and bite them at a later date, so (the politest way to describe it is) they are more circumspect in what they ask for and how they ask. It seems to me that a lot of conversations have been verbal and could potentially have the opportunity for misunderstanding on your DB's either side. Keep everything in writing from now, because it means that you can correct them when they lie later.

Good lord, if someone had lost me £150k I wouldn't help them out with so much as a penny of my own money ever again, no matter who they were.

He can get an IVA, time he grew up and took responsibility for himself. How will he ever learn if his family keep bailing him out?

if you send pandas letter i think you should sign it Ninja too,just to show you're not to be messed with.

ninja are there any accountancy regulations that would prevent you from being allowed to lend any more money to your DB once you have declared him as someone who owes you an unpaid debt? Is there any way in which financial rules could tie your hands ?

Ninja, do you have anyone you can lean on right now while this is going on? Think you might have mentioned a friend upthread, is there anyone you can spend a bit of time with and offload a bit who isn't anything to do with the family? It might also help to spend a bit of time with normal people who will gasp with shock at the MADNESS of it all and reassure you that it's DB's mum who is the crazy unreasonable one...

Ninja I agree with absolutely everyone else.

Send Panda's Letter

After 14 pages and 347 messages and with everyone in agreement I think you know what to do OP. .
Can't wait till you get back after you've told brother and his mum where to go.
Because you will, won't you?

Sorry this has to be bullshit.

Who the hell would take out a loan for £150k on the understanding was for him to pay it back if he could! No one would! How could your B's mother even suggest this was the situation at the time.

I am sure you love your B dearly however I am wondering a little about your family dynamics here. Your B is older and you share a dad so your dad obviously had a relationship with your mum after your B's mum.

Are you being made to feel guilty because your dad separated from your B's mum, are they blaming you for this and hence the you owe everything attitude from them?

You have gone way and above any family duty and look how you have been treated as a result. You had the bad attitude from nearly being homeless while pregnant because of your B's inability or just complete inconsideration.

You owe them nothing. If you give more they will just take and take until they bleed you completely dry.

Where is the care and concern for you having to pay a massively increased mortgage?

What will you have to cut back on to pay for what your B did to you if interest rates rise? Your children's savings? Their clubs/clothes/food?

Please don't do it. Don't waiver any more!

I like the idea spouted above of you being the one who sues him for bankruptcy, to force him into the bankruptcy he so obviously needs. You have already said you have pretty much written off the money anyway.

You are probably the biggest of all his creditors, use this to your advantage. Stage your own intervention.

Brilliant letter from panda, and Shoutyhamster makes a very good point about you getting some support from your therapist. It seems to me that DB's mother is ramping up the pressure and wanting things to happen urgently so you will be swept along with it and cave in to the plan.

Please stall. Actually, I agree with the poster who suggested going incommunicado for a few days. Get yourself all the time that you need to deal with this and think everything through. If you talk to anyone, explain to your father (preferably in writing) that you cannot and will not help, but that you are very worried about your DB's health. I expect your father, who seems quite realistic about what your brother is like, will at least take his part of the pressure off you if you do this.

His mother needs to address this openly: is your DB very ill, or isn't he? I don't want to extrapolate too much from my own experience but at this stage of my illness (desperate, not functioning well, hitting rock bottom) I had to leave work abruptly and go into daily treatment. I urgently needed a quiet haven away from all life stresses. I had difficulty deciding whether or not to clean my teeth, for heaven's sake.

If DB is in that sort of state, he can't do meetings. He can't run a busness. He can't put rescue packages into effect. It would be a dangerous cruelty to try and make him. You can't do it, and the pressure of having the business hanging over him to go back to would probably compromise his treatment and recovery. Quite apart from anything else, it would be an invitation to return to the old dysfunctional patterns of living and spending.

On the other hand, if he is not so ill, then the urgent need for you to sweep in and make all troubles go away is not there. He and his dragon mother can sort things out themselves, without you.