Interfering dad causing hell

[Grubsmummy]

My dad is 70,he is a very controlling, opinionated person, a narcissist, everyone is wrong about everything, he is right.

I am mid 30s, married with 2 young kids, been with my husband for 17 years. I left home at 21 as couldn't bare to be with my dad any longer and me and oh rented a place.

Dad started to interfere and put pressure on us and 10 years ago, my husband and I ended up making (almost forced to) a rediculous, stupid decision to accept my dad's offer of buying us a home and us paying him reduced rent when i had the children . This sounds amazing, and i realise we are exceptionally lucky to have security in our home, but it was basically forced upon us. We should never ever have done it and i regret it every day.
At every opportunity my dad likes to bring up that we pay him a low rent, he doesn't think we should ever buy anything, go on holiday, have pets, decorate, anything we spend should be offered to him as extra rent. I feel like we can't live at all. We live very frugally, low priced food, buy clothes from charity shops, all our furniture is 2nd hand, old cars etc.

Im reaching the end of my tether now, ideally I want to go no contact with him for many many reasons, (my sister has already for the past 3 years) but can't because my poor mother would see noone and wouldn't see her grandkids. I want to sell up, give him the money back and break free, preferably in another part of the country but we can't because we are trapped by large outgoings. We don't have a spare penny to even afford the lowest rents or mortgages anywhere.

What the hell can we do to change this situation. We live 2 miles away from them so they watch over us with a magnifying glass. I'm concerned that he will start doing this with my kids when they are teens and start forcing cars and houses on them that come with conditions.
I know we are lucky and I am grateful but that doesn't mean we should have to live like this does it? Noone ever dares to say anything to him :-(

Doesn't sound like the OP could afford a fair rent though.

You need to get legal advice about who has rights over the house. My DF offered to help out with a house at one point, but I would have had to enter into a very onerous loan agreement with him, under which I had to pay a high rate of interest on the loan, and he could require full repayment from me at any time for no reason. I declined the offer. At least your father doesn't seem that bad. But find out what your legal position is. If you are in a good position (own the house with no legal rights on his side) then you can risk toughening your approach - still pay him back, but don't put up with all the rubbish behaviour.

I am due to return to work very shortly so will have more income then, probably another £500-800 a month which would enable us to move.

Rough outgoings are £200 rent, £600 household bills, £500 on car and loan repayments, plus food food, fuel, kids stuff.

I call it rent but it's not rent, we just agreed to pay him back slowly. It started as a £600 payment, then reduced to £400 after first child then £200 after second child. It's all very generous etc but id rather just have a nice relationship with my dad

Why are you paying so much on a car? Mortgage repayment would be £900 to £1000 a months but you are happy to spend way more on a car than a house. Houses normally go up in cost but cars always go down.

Off the top of my head, thinking about what I might do in this situation... get a weekend job to pay him a higher rent? Or move out, rent the house to someone else with the rent being paid directly to him, and rent somewhere else yourself?

You can't really have it every way. How are your bills so high? How expensive is your car loan? If you can't afford to pay the going rent in your area, you need to be bringing in more money. So one or other of you needs to get more hours working if you don't want him scrutinising every penny you spend. Also, don't let him know anything you're doing.

Your outgoings do seem extraordinarily high. I'd really recommend getting someone to look over them to see where they can be reduced.

You could then start paying more and tell your dad that you're doing so because he is obviously resentful about the debt and you want him to stop the digs so that you can enjoy being a daughter again rather than ever fearful about him bringing up money at every turn.
When you return from mat leave, what will your joint gross income be - you don't have to say on here, im just trying to see what size of mortgage you might be able to get.

You say your father has always been like this, so wanting him to change is a total waste of time and emotion, OP.

As for your finances, you do seem to have very high outgoings.

I had a similar situation but over a car, which he was very keen for me to have. Several years later it came back to haunt me and we had a horrific row about it during which many other things were dredged up. I too was worried about his relationship with my children but sadly I’ve gone pretty much nc now. Everyone has lost out but his need to control has ruined everything and for my own health I have had to cut ties. I’ll be there if/when they need help again with health issues but honestly op, sometimes you have to accept things aren’t going to change. He’s not going to have a personality transplant. Have courage to do what’s best for your own family or he will make you ill.

I think you need to have a grown up conversation with your father. I also think that you are very lucky to have an interest free loan being paid back at a ridiculously low amount. How about you tell him how you feel about his interference in as gentle way as possible and when you return to work, you put the repayments (not rent) back to £600 and suggest to him that this more reasonable amount should be enough to buy his silence on matters that don't concern him - and that now is his time to just enjoy his retirement and grandchildren.

It's all very generous etc but id rather just have a nice relationship with my dad

I think you're conflating two things: (1) paying back the loan and (2) having a nice relationship with your dad.

They're not related.

You might do (1) but I don't think you'll ever have (2).

People don't tend to change, especially as they get older. If nobody in the family never calls him out on his behaviour or tells him he's being awful, he has no motivation to change.

All you can do is change YOURSELF. You can change how you react to him.

You can tell him to stop bringing up the money. You can tell him when he's being awful. Tell him you won't be spoken to like that. or your h doesn't need advice on cars, or tell him to mind his own business.

If he gets cross or shouts, then so what? That's his outlook. You have the power here as you don't actually have to see him.

(Your outgoings, esp car and loan, do seem very high for your income. If you really want to pay off this loan, you should look at where you can cut costs. If you're running a car that you pay £500 a month for, that's not frugal.)

That's great for you that you'll soon have more coming in. Put it completely aside to get out of this!
I'm not sure how much it is to get cars on loan, but £500 sounds like an awful lot. That's nearly £20 per day!
Without a car you'd have £500 more a month in your savings pot.
These are all choices.

Just playing devils advocate a second - could your dad think you guys make bad decisions with money, and thinks he needs to help guide you?

I do feel for you OP - I had a similar situation in my previous flat with my DM, although she’s nowhere near as bad as your dad! She owned the flat and we paid her a subsidised rent but she would always come over uninvited and comment on how tidy we were keeping it or how we’d decorated etc. It drove my DH bonkers. Now we own our own place and a large amount of the money needed was gifted by my DM so we only needed a fairly small mortgage. Our names are on the deeds and she has butted out.

As you say it’s natural and right to be grateful to your DF for the gift which has allowed you to get the house but a gift is just that, a gift. I got from your previous posts that you don’t have a mortgage with a bank and just pay him a certain amount each month - is that right?

You definitely need legal advice with this as it’s pretty murky. You really need to know where you stand legally and only then will you be able to go to your dad and sort it out, with knowledge of property law behind you. Hope you get it sorted.

" I left home at 21 as couldn't bare to be with my dad any longer and me and oh rented a place. "

So sadly it probably isn't a surprise that things have turned out like this.

How would you have managed for the past 10yrs if your dad hadn't been able to buy you a house?

Tbh I'd want to sell up, pay the £250,000 back & start again.

Hmm, you car loan is very high: but what you list totals £1300 which gives you £700 for food and fun.

If you are going back to work then you have no problem surely. Once you earn more you can do what you like.

How did your sister get out of her house loan? Did she have the sense to say "No" or did only you get offered one?

£500 per month on your car!

Do you have a past record for making bad financial decisions, OP, because that sounds like a really bad one?

To you really need to have some professional advice on this. If it's in the joint names of you and DH, surely it must be mortgage free! Df wouldn't have been allowed to take a mortgage out on a house if his name wasn't on the deeds And if you had a mortgage on it, you'd know about it and you'd be paying mortgage to a lender, not rent to df.

Household bills seem high, if don't include food, as does car cost.
Presumably all your earnings, minus commuting costs, can go to your father, or part to your father and part to pay back loans?
I wouldn't back out of this deal if you don't have to. Being in a bad financial position and in cheap private rented housing as we head into Brexit would be nasty. Nastier than how your dad is treating you. Check the legal position, and then detach a little in a non-aggressive way.

I do not class a £500 a month car as "nothing pricey and classy"!! I can see why you dad would be pissed off with that.

Sorry, you actually said "nothing fancy or expensive"

Sorry the car is only £180 of the £500 loan repayments. We have 2 loans to pay back for the next 4 years aswell that we needed to do a new boiler and a new roof

200 rent on a 250+k property is extremely low ! 500 per month on a car is too high. ( You could have bought an old banger car for 1k) You have not got your priorities right. Have you worked out how many years it will take to pay your father back & what about interest ? Your household bills seem high too. Did you understand what you were getting into when you signed the original agreement ?

Can you break down the £600 on bills, as that seems high too?

If you pay as you say £3300.00 a month for a 225k house, without interest it will take you 68 years to pay off.

If he died tomorrow and left a will would siblings etc. have a share in the house if it was proved it was gifted.

Either get legal/accountancy advice or pray that the sh1t does not hit the fan one day.

Personally I would have to know for peace of mind.

Oh and if he died tomorrow do you have money put by to pay the inheritance tax?

Clearing loans and car loan would be a top priority, maybe say that to your Dad, that once your loans are cleared you'll go back to paying him £600 a month?

Who decided to lower the amount you were paying monthly? £250,000 was a lot for him to lay out, he might possibly feel that you're being a bit cavalier reducing the monthly pay-back so drastically when he'd made a very generous gesture. In his shoes I might secretly be resenting that you could take out a big car loan while paying him a pittance monthly. £250 monthly is kind of taking the piss.