How far are you willing to help extended family financially?

[SnowBells]

Not sure where to put this as it is not really a 'Chat' topic. Ths is just for discussion only. I am conflicted about this situation, and don't really know how one should react to this.

As the question says - how far are you willing to help extended family financially? My mother who is in her 60s is quite close to her many siblings (some older, some up to 10 years younger). She has been a SAHM since her early 20s. Over time, when her siblings had financial trouble, whether it be paying for things such as an extensive dental treatment for the kids or simply lack of money, my mum would send money to her siblings. It's a nice thing to do, I agree. Out of all siblings, my mum is probably the most 'wealthy' via my dad. My dad used to just play along with it. Until recently.

The OH of one of my mum's siblings has a very serious illness, and there is an operation that the insurance has refused to pay for (after having paid for other operations in the past - but it just got worse). Of course, we are all devastated about this situation. However, my mum then decided that my dad shall pay for the operation. This is no longer a sum of a few hundreds - but as can be expected... thousands. My immediate family had a blow-up about this. My brother sides with my mum 100%. However, being the rational being that I am, I'm on the fence. The illness, I am sad to say, is very much terminal. This may seem cold, but after a lot of reserch, I'm somehow believing that everyone is just clinging on to the last bit of hope. If it's not this operation, it will be the next one that doctors will suggest. It's a bottomless pit. I can't help but remember that "Edge of Life" documentary by Louix Theroux where patients were treated in LA, millions were spent - and in some cases, it may have shortened the patient's life, creating financial difficulties for their loved ones along the way.

If I had as many siblings as my mother, there is no way DH and I could help each one of them out! There's also your own immediate family to think about. I would be fine with the occasional hundreds... but we would never be able to give thousands away to extended family. And even if I had LOADS of money (wishful thinking)... how far would you go? What if second cousins suddenly came to the fore that you've never even met???

To what extent have you helped extended family?

I don't really have much family but where I have been able to help I have. Never been more than £200 but then we are not 'cash rich' anyway. There is no way I would stretch to thousands unless it was one of my parents or my children, and under the circumstances described I probably wouldn't as my family member probably wouldn't ask tbh.

I feel for your father. Where does it all end? More relatives might end up in the same position and will they expect his help then?

I haven't helped extended family, only my sister back when she was still a student and I was already earning.

If I had lots of money and I knew they needed it or asked for it I would help aunts, uncles, cousins, friends or anyone I guess. That would be one of the really great things about having lots of money. But I wouldn't let my own immediate family go short in order to help others.

Well, after BIL 'took' his mum for tens of thousands we decided that the purse strings would remain tightly clutched. He has asked us to bail him out and was so self righteously indignant, bad mouthing DH to their Uncle, that it took all we had to remain polite - not falling about laughing at them both whenthey took us to task.

My Dad is a strange one when it comes to borrowing too. When he learned we were buying a house and not getting a mortgage his first comment was "If I had known you had money I would have borrowed some" - so now he too is on the never in a million years list.

So we don't even lend to close family, let alone extended family we may not have seen in years!

Your reservations are perfectly normal. I would be supporting your Dad in his no vote, too.

That's the thing. My parents are comfortable but I don't think they are millionaires. That's why I'm a little stunned.

Of course, in an ideal world, you'd help... and the operation would be successful. But it's not an ideal world. Money doesn't grow on trees, and all research seems to point to the opposite re. the operation...

In order to finance an operation costing thousands a person would need to have access to sums tens or maybe hundreds of times that amount if they weren't to compromise their own future financial security.

If someone was in dire straits and I had the funds I wouldn't think twice about it for immediate family. Extended family can take care of themselves as far as I'm concerned.

Perhaps your mother has led her family to believe that she and your father are much wealthier than they really are. Giving modest sums may have given them the wrong impression. Or maybe it's case of a tenner today and then a grand tomorrow. Who cares? They can afford it!

It's a hard position when it's ill health. But, the insurance is obviously not paying out for a reason, and if this is a clutching at straws scenario, I wouldn't pay towards it.

I've loaned my DB a few thousand when he let his air ticket expire and wanted to come home. He went to another country instead . Although he paid half of it back 10yrs later. And for him, that's a big thing. I would help him out again.

BIL, we sold our car to him, which he was to pay off monthly, as his had just died and he couldn't afford traditional routes. It was an EXCELLENT car, only 2yo. He stopped paying after he'd paid half off and still owes us several thousand pounds. Funnily the car got stolen and burnt out....And then he has the cheek to be angry at us for being tight, and selfish...... anyhoo, I wouldn't piss on him if he was on fire, let alone provide any financial support again.

This is might sound massively naive but insurance companies and, indeed, other financial institutions responsible for making economic healthcare decisions (such as NICE) usually have a fair grasp on what is appropriate "value for money" (excuse the insensitive phrase).

"Innovative" and usually "unproven" treatments are often determined to be not worth the economic outlay for such a poor chance of quality return for the patient. If an operation has a high success rate of buying six months of pain-free time, it will be funded. If an operation is a last ditch attempt to eke out life and likely to fail in offering a quality return, it won't be funded.

You sound like you've read the research. I'm a medical science person - if you want a second opinion, PM me. Therefore, I think I would argue from a "scientific invalidity" standpoint.

However, if it's not so clear cut - perhaps it offers an extra few weeks of improved but not good quality life - it becomes difficult, because "what price time"?

What does the patient/uncle/aunt think?

You say insurance - I take it you are not in the uk? Why has the insurance decided not to pay? Normally decisions to pay are made on a cost-benefit basis ie. it will cost a lot of money with very little benefit in return. Whereas doctors make the decision on is there any chance of any help? If it is terminal then doing 'something' is often seen to be better than doing 'nothing' even if the something doesn't actually help because to them cost doesn't matter (or worse it may be to the doctors/hospitals financial benefit). In a litigious society (America) extra treatments may be provided to avoid being sued. In the uk you can also have the problem that you can't be part-private for a spell of treatment so you may find yourself picking up even more costs.

I think I am probably with your dad on this one but would need a lot more detail if it were my decision, including what my aunts family were doing to raise the money themselves?

I think thing is, where do you draw the line? Like you said? How many more operations will there be? Did the not check with the insurance company first? If not, why not? Or is the expectation that your mum will pay.

I'm with you and your Dad.

This is a very difficult situation (because it involves surgery rather than a material item), but I agree with you and your Dad. I'm quite a pragmatic, logical person though.

There are two scenarios I'm imagining here:

1. The operation is at an experimental stage, with a "wait and see" prognosis - it might work, it might not. I would actively campaign against funding this, and have previously advised friends/etc considering such procedures to not waste their money (put more sensitively than that). Sometimes, the medics offering such stuff are little more than charlatans (obviously, in countries where they are paid for the work).
2. The operation has a good chance of offering some relief but will not significantly delay death. This is the difficult call to make.

It's impossible to comment on your situation without knowing the details of your parents finances, but I'm leaning towards thinking it would be wrong to pay. As your parents get older it's unlikely that this would be the last medical/health related thing that a sibling or their partner could benefit from, and if it doesn't blow up now it would eventually.

From my own family, my mum is also one of many siblings, and is the wealthiest by marriage. Not especially wealthy, but comfortable enough, and there is a significant difference between her lifestyle and that of her poorest sibling. I know my mum used to help out her sibling quite a lot financially, but eventually stopped as any help was bypassing her sibling and benefitting the DP, who is a lazy arse who is fully responsible for the state of their financial ruin.

It hurts my mum that she can't help her sibling anymore, but it really wasn't leading to any good.

I’d like to know why the cost of this operation must fall on your parents alone. Since you come from a large family, why can’t each sibling make a contribution so that the financial burden is shared? What contribution can the ill sibling and their children make? It seems that the extended family has very quickly decided that the easy answer is for your parents to fund the operation.

example: is the expensive medicine for chronic condition of one family member worth skipped meals for the others

From one of those pop economic books, can't remember which:
This is actually an excellent way to generate true information. People who have to pay for a service tend to make far better informed decisions about how valuable that service is to their health. In places where healthcare operates on a 'control your own spends' basis, GPs are visited for colds and young girls are less likely to opt for smear tests. Obviously, there needs to be an element of national health provision to cover 'catastrophic' events.

Bit of a tangent but food for thought.

GPs are less likely to be visited for colds...

Depends on the family member. I'd be happy to help my brother, as he's helped us. We don't really have money to lend to him, but we've done favors for him. We have each other in our back pockets when we need to move and such.

Everyone else, it would really depend on the situation and how they got into it. We went out of our way a lot to help out FIL and he just kept asking for more and more. So now we just don't do him favors, or he'll think he can ask for more stuff again.

Yes, I'm with GloriousGoosebumps. Why can't everyone pitch in a little that way it's not just on you?

My OH is one of four children, the other three of whom all have limited finances through taking on large debts to find their large car/large house lifestyles. We on the other hand have a much more limited lifestyle, but no debt.

When the parents of my OH got into financial problems, through overspending, there was a lot of pressure on us to bail them out as we were the most financially able - which I was really unwilling to do, eventually deciding to contribute to the extent that all the others did, so the responsibility was shared equally.

It seemed fairer and frankly forced them to put their money where their mouth was. I think sharing the financial load might make others evaluate the situation from a different perspective

We have benefited from loans (paid back but without interest added) from both Ps and PiL. I know my FiL has bailed out his Parents/Father especially and sometimes the money has gone straight to his Sister/DH's Aunt (?!?). His Father/DH's Grandfather has gone through several inheritances and I feel no obligation whatsoever to him (nor does DH). I feel my PiL have been rather used by family members in this respect, though it has made them scrupulously financially fair in dealings with their children and, my FiL seems to have become more cautious since retiring.

Both of us feel we would support our Parents if needed. DH is wary of helping his Sister, mostly due to her DH and I can't see my Sisters needing help but I do hope there is a way we could make my Brother secure in his retirement. He is significantly older than me and, I suspect, even having worked all his life, won't be very comfortable in his old age. DH agrees and, I suspect, we Sisters will need to get together to sort it out.

Actually, prompted by another thread, I am thinking about where our estate would go if we all died together ......

It's rather a moot point at the minute, though!

Bilberry I'm in the UK, but my family is not (in fact, mum and dad are in a different country to aunt and uncle also). My aunt and uncle have exhausted most of their savings. They earned well previously. I think my aunt still works, but I guess they lost my uncle's income. They only have one son who's still in high school. Not sure whether my uncle has siblings.

GloriousGoosebumps The majority of the other siblings can't help. Maybe one of them could - the uncle that used to buy his kids shining new cars which my dad disapproved of. But he's quite old now, and might not have that sort of sum in his accounts anymore. My mum already helped all the others out previously and are much poorer than the uncle and aunt needing help now who earned well previously.

As an update: a family friend who has known my mum and aunt since they were kids is actually willing to gift them about 30% of the cost of the operation. My dad now says he may pay the remaining 70% after my mum asked a friend of my parents to talk to him. But I do really feel like we're opening up Pandora's box here. I'm seriously hoping this kind of help will not be expected of DH an I in future...

I feel really bad about not saying "have all the money you want". I just don't think I could give up so much money to people I am related to by blood, but many of whom I am not actually that close to.

And may I just say... I would help out parents and kids.

Even my one brother. However, I don't think I could help out eight siblings or something!

I'm with your dad and you. For one thing, your mum has no right to offer out joint money without consulting your dad. For another, what if she hands out thousands of pounds then your parents find themselves short for healthcare, or social care... As might happen as they get older.

We're not really in a position to help at all.

Would "only" be hundreds & if it couldn't be paid back, it would have to be a no.