Moral Dilemma - to sell this and pocket the cash?

[PersonaNonGarter]

I have a moral dilemma.

A Sponging Relative (‘SR’) has run up so much debt that he has finally been evicted from his property and is likely to be made bankrupt shortly. He is also a massive hoarder. Recently, my aunt went to visit SR and suggested he part with some toys rather than pack them before eviction. The toys were given to my DC.

The toys turn out to be worth a lot of money and I will sell them rather than have them take up space - DC aren’t going to play with them. Should I :

1. Pocket the cash and give it to my DC on some way like a holiday
2. Give it to the very skint SR
3. Give the cash to some of the people SR has sponged off.

He doesn’t sponge off me although he has tried. In law, I know they were a gift and are mine/DCs. But morally...?

CRoss posted with your last post

Op how can you refer to the people owed money by your relative in such a dismissive way when you yourself are planning to profit from this mess despite not being a creditor?!

It is laughable that you're using your aunt's hoarding tendencies as an excuse not to return the items.

If you don’t have entitled, spongy relatives, I can see this would look strange. If I tell him the value of the toys, he will expect me to transfer that, in cash, today. And when I don’t, he will demand and call and pester me to sell them (my own expense) and transfer the money. All the while being abused for selling family heirlooms from my aunt. It would be hell.

Just give them back to him then. Your Aunt had no right to give them to you if they belong to him?

I'm still curious about what the toys are. Toys can be difficult to value, especially vintage ones (especially if unused in box) as they're hard to come by. So potentially the 2k valuation may even be on the lower side.

Sorry - just to be clear. The toys are not my aunt’s and she is not the giver. My aunt is not a creditor.

Just tell SR and that he needs to come and collect them, arrange for them to be collected or posted.

Is anyone actively dealing with paying off the creditors prior to bankruptcy?

I would find out who is, and then give them back to that entity. They can deal with how the money should be redistributed. Don't give it to aunt/landlord directly - there would be a priority in who gets 'first dibs' on the assets.

That definitely shouldn't be you imho.

Op I'm a bit shocked about the replies you are getting!

In the 'neighbour sold the baby clothes thread' she was told they were given in good faith and can do what she likes with them - so why are you getting the opposite? Is there a black hole somewhere?

Sell the toys

Enjoy the money as 'back pay' for the missed birthdays and Christmas gifts and time spend trying to help

I wouldn't worry about the Aunt and Son they have bigger issues to deal with

Just as a support op, we had a hoarder in the wider family and I completely understand why you need to get these things out of your house, even if you have space to store them. The horrible feeling that you are obliged to store items that come into the family and once something is "owned" by one of you, you aren't allowed to stop owning it.

That your home will become an extension of their storage space if you let it.

Sell the toys for your own sanity.

Realising now your aunt is as bad as SR, don't give her the money or tell her about it (if she asks where they are, tell her your dcs didn't want them, but you found someone who's dcs would and handed them on, but she probably won't ask.)

I would give the money to whichever family creditor is most likely to be discreet, asking them not to say what happened to the toys.

That said, not been trusted to probably store the hoard is not a bad position to be in, your house stops being a suitable safe place for the junk to be left. It stops it arriving in the first place.

Who gave the toys to you if they belong to SR and he isn’t aware? Sorry op I thought it was the aunt who had given them to you.

OP - you have been placed, without being asked, into an awkward situation, you have asked for advice, and you have instead been "rewarded" with a judgmental drubbing by people who don't know you. Basically your situation is that you have been passed a lemon, but uniquely among the parties involved, you know how to make lemonade.

It sounds to me as though you have turned the issues this way and that, and have good reasons not to follow many of the specific suggestions (Send the toys back to your aunt! Give the money to SR! Become the arbiter of SR's creditors!) You have not said this directly, but I'm sure you've realised that if you spend the time to offer any funds to any of the creditors, you may well end up with all of the SR's creditors on your back hoping that you will come up with more of what is owed to them by SR. Similarly, if you give any money to SR, then you will get added to his call list for the next time he needs money.

There is no perfect answer here, but I don't think any of the courses of action that you are considering would be immoral. The only possibly useful bit of advice I can think of is this: in case you do decide, in the end, to sell and use proceeds to benefit SR / SR creditors, don't tell them the origin of the funds. Let them see it as a gift from you - not to get their gratitude (even though that might be deserved), but to try to avoid triggering further demands upon yourself that may go well beyond what the toys are actually worth.

Enjoy the money as 'back pay' for the missed birthdays and Christmas gifts and time spend trying to help

And deprive those who are owed money by the owner of the toys?

And to the poster who keeps banging on about the bankruptcy trustee...family members don’t know when other family members will go into bankruptcy.

That's irrelevant. 1.The SR is insolvent now, 2.What's happened in the two to five years before the bankruptcy will be probed.

Bluebell that happened to me. My mother gave dd, years ago a pile of costume jewellery for her dressing up box. It included a 1950's ring with a huge pale blue stone that had been my grandma's. I comnented at the time about whether it was tat. Many years later the dressing up box was ditched and for some reason I cast said ring into my make-up bag from the jumble box. There it stayed for many years.

A cpl of years ago I hoiked it out and noticed the band was hallmarked. When my engagement ring needed a repair I took it to the jeweller. Turns out it's a 15ct aquamarine.

Haven't told my mother.

I personally think the moral thing to do is 2. Yes he did give them to you but he gave them to you for your DC to play with and enjoy and unknowingly realising they were worth anything. You should tell him you have discovered they are worth some money and ask him if he’s still happy for you to have them. If he says yes then do what you like. It’s a large amount of money and relative may have other items not realising they are worth anything and get rid of those to other sources to de clutter when they could make money towards creditors.

Right, I know they weren’t the aunt’s, she was just the vector , but she seems invested in them.

You already said SR has no contact with the kids. So make it about the impact in family relationships.

As Aunt will not find out hat they are sold, and no family relationship issue will result, treat the toys as wholly your children’s received property to do with as you will, and sell them.

Send the toys back to SR

And work on your shitty attitude towards landlords who are real people too, with real love and real family and perhaps, ended up being a landlord through things like illness, loss of jobs or other shitty life events.

SR gave them away, his choice. Given they were NOT your Aunt’s toys and she’s just dumped them on you, I think it’s fair enough to dispose of them as you would any other box of stuff you were given but don't want. If you can be bothered selling them, do that and use the money however you want to.

It would be totally different in different circumstances, but it’s irrelevant in this particular situation.

SR gave them away, his choice

I'm not actually sure that SR knows they have been given away.

PersonaNonGrata I have more than one SR in my extended family, and I get where you're coming from.

Personally I'd probably store them for a couple of years til the dust settles and see if I was contacted by the Trustee in Bankruptcy. I'd be hoping that some better idea occurred to me about what I'd like to do with this unsolicited moral dilemma.

If not then I'd sell them (it doesn't sound like their value is likely to change much between now and then) and hold on to the cash for my children. Alternatively, Yankee Dad's got a reasonable point of view.

It's not a moral dilemma at all. Give the toys back and let him deal with whether he wants to sell them to appease his creditors. You can't sell stuff that isn't yours. You can't pocket the proceeds or decide how to share it.

PurpleSheep. IF they get sent back to SR they will go into the stuff in storage which will be sold as a ‘lot’ and they won’t get any more for it with the toys.

I was a LL and may very soon be again (reluctantly as a job move might be unavoidable), so I’m definitely not ‘anti LL’, but this LL is owed £39,000. Sending them a box of old toys to try to sell probably isn’t going to thrill them right now. YES, the op could do all the leg work to sell them and give the LL the money, but really, who is actually going to do that?

Sorry autumn I was definitely projecting which wasn't fair - but tbh, if I were the landlord owed 39 grand, I'd take anything I could get because it would ruin me so completely

Why should you profit from this though? Your aunt thought you were going to keep them or your children receive them. That's not the case so she should give them to someone else who will... At the very least you should talk to your aunt

For clarity, OP said on page 1 of this thread that she doesn’t know for sure if SR knows she now has the toys.

So, SR may ir may not know that his property has been given away. Aunt arranged for the toys to be sent but wasn’t the person who gave them to OP and has nothing to do with them.

I’m confused OP, sorry. Who decided that you should have the toys?