Are we being unreasonable for not letting my sister and her family live in our house while we are gone?

[timeaway4now]

My husband, son, and I are moving away for a few years. We were going to ask our niece, Sarah, to live in our house for free in return for looking after it until we return. She is currently looking for a new place in the area, so we thought it was good timing all around.

My sister found out about the situation and wants us to instead let her and her family live in the house because it’s much bigger and she wants more room for her kids. She and her husband have 4 children (ages 14, 11, 8, 6) in a small flat.

Our house on the other hand is larger, so the older two would be able to have their rooms. The house also has an office that my sister says we could convert to another bedroom so Sarah could live there for free as well. Although we know that Sarah wouldn’t want to as she prefers to live alone.

Aside from having more room my sisters other reasoning is that she and her husband want to to save up for a deposit for a house of their own. They have been having trouble doing so and living in our house rent free for a few years would help them a lot.

My main issues is that I don’t like the idea of a bunch of kids living in my house. Things get very hectic at my sister place. It makes me feel like it is inevitable that things would get damaged. I also worry about upsetting our neighbors with how loud they can get. Our area is generally very peaceful and quiet.

We would also have to deal with putting our things in storage to accommodate their furniture. Sarah doesn’t have many things so we would only have to rearrange somethings and store them in the spare bedrooms.

Lastly we planned on coming back to town to visit once or twice a year. If my sisters family was living here it would mean we would have to either stay in and pay for a hotel or we would have to deal with them being there and sleep in the house without our things.

Overall having my sister’s family live here makes us uncomfortable and just seems much more inconvenient than having Sarah stay. However my sister as well as some other relatives think we are being selfish not to help out them when we are more privileged than them.

The OP was very clear she doesn’t want to rent it out, because (a) she needs the ability to stay there when she’s in the Uk and (b) she doesn’t want strangers living in / damaging her home

Oh, and if you’re, by your own choosing, living six in a flat and complaining about it to the point where you think someone else is obliged to provide you with something else, then yes, that does suggest poor life choices were made.

YANBU and your sister is being very entitled. You'd be mental to let her stay in these circumstances. She chose to have four kids and it's not your problem. I think letting her stay would ultimately damage the relationship more than you refusing and would most likely leave you thousands out of pocket and potentially homeless if she refuses to leave. You already made an arrangement with Sarah and your sister will just have to accept it.

I would go with the sister to help her kids however I would charge her the rent she currently pays and put this into a separate bank acct, so then you know you have control and know the money for a deposit is being saved plus it’s there to cover any damages to your home and there would be no excuses she couldn’t leave when you return as you can hand her all the money from this acct so she has her deposit.

If she pays OP the rent that she pays at the moment, what's the point? She's asked to stay so that she can save for a deposit.

Well no I'd have a conversation about it, so I'd say it would be for 2 yrs or whatever (so no need to 'evict' them) and when I visited the country once or twice a year they'd have to stay elsewhere.

So you’d expect a family of 6 to decamp to a hotel for a fortnight once or twice a year - how kind! And saying it was for 2 years does not guarantee they’d easily find somewhere else at that time so, chances are, you would have to evict them!

Oops. Sorry. I don't know how I missed that last line. Really stupid of me. Sorry.

Yanbu. Your DSis sounds like she’s part of the ‘what’s mine is mine, and what’s yours is mine/somebody HAS to help me’ generation.

It’s the expectation that really grates.

If your nieces and nephews have to change schools to accommodate living in your house, it'll be so much more difficult to get them all to move when you return , even with a lot of notice.

Honestly OP, having to put your furniture in storage is a massive hassle, never mind the expense. Walls get damaged etc. Is she aware of this and has she mentioned covering the cost of what is essentially a house removal?

When you have talked about wanting to come home a few times a year, what does she say about that? Does she just expect you to camp on the floor in your own living room?

Shr might even be planning to sub-let her flat at a profit while she lives in your house for free (not sure how involved her landlord is)?

If it was me I would not move a sister with 4 kids into my house on a longj term basi. Too many problems with it. 4kids means a lot of wear and tear that won't happen with the nice, leaves op with nowhere to stay when coming home and there could be massive problems in getting them out later so it would be a definite no from me.
If, however the op does want to help sister this is the only way I would consider it. I would take the same rent she is paying now but tell her you are saving half towards a deposit for her when you come back. This would alleviate the sisters space problem for now and provide a way forward later. Children are massive money pits and if the sister has always struggled the extra money from not paying rent would probably go on the children. There are higher bills coming for all of us so the sister would have that to face at some level even in the flat. The op could decide sometimes to use the other half of rent occasionally if she wishes to help out with utilities, maybe a tighter times like Christmas. I wouldn't do this too often as when sister moves out into her own bigger place she will have higher bills so she will need to see that and get used to it. If the house needs refurbishing when they've gone the op would have half the accumulated rent to do it. She would also have money for storage, hotels ext as needed without having to keep pressing her sister for it.
This would be a hugely generous offer giving ops sister the extra space she needs and a way of definitely saving a deposit. She wouldn't be saving money in the short term but she would have extra space and know she was saving more than she has ever been able to save before.

Pretty sure you have to be living there too for her to be considered a lodger legally.

There may also be implications for your home insurance. If the house burns down because you didn’t treat this as a AST and get the required checks etc you could have very serious issues.

'We've already promised it to Niece'.

YANBU OP, all your reasons for having your niece live in your house and not your sister's gigantic family are fine. You've explained it all perfectly.

The sense of entitlement your sister has to ASK to live in your house for free (and sod what you've already promised to someone else) doesn't make me think she'd have the greatest respect for keeping it in a decent state, or indeed moving out when you want to come back.

And imagine being Sarah and being told that instead of being able to live alone for a few years (with her boyfriend over when she pleases) she has to share a house with a family of six???? Don't do that to her!

@Tryingtokeepgoing

What I am saying is that maybe the OP should reconsider letting it out.

She will be getting rental income which could cover any damages (her family could also damage it with no income to cover it).

Also the rent would pay for her to stay in accommodation every now and again!

I find it a trifle distasteful for posters to say the sister is terribly feckless to have 4 children without the space to put them in. Perhaps it's because I had 3 without the space to put them in (and a 4th once we did have the space). You don't always know how people get into the situation they're currently in and it's not always their fault. Sometimes it is, but people do make mistakes and when that mistake is too many children you can't send 'em back.

HOWEVER: I'm in the "for heaven's sake don't let her over the threshold" camp.

I've been the sister living in a tumbledown shack when my siblings were rattling around in a 5 bed house which we part-owned, DF having died recently and left it to us all equally. My then husband even tried to get me to insist we move in. I made the mistake of telling them he'd said this and they totally freaked out. But the thing was, I thought it was a terrible idea. The house was going to be done up to be sold, which would have been far more difficult with three lively children (one of whom had absolutely no sense of cleanliness or tidiness - the good news is he did grow up ok!). Their school was 20 miles away. Muggins, who worked full-time, would have been responsible for all the expense, packing and admin of moving our life one way and then back again, and cleaning up after the little perishers, not to mention soothing the extremely ruffled feathers of a brother and sister who just didn't "do" children, all while the three of us had recently lost our surviving parent. It was daft and unworkable, but XH didn't see it like that. So many reasons why he is ex...

I do believe you should help a sibling as long as you know they would help you too. Maybe they can't, I wouldn't keep score, but you need to know they would do you a good turn if they could. Things like, let's say at random, making sure they didn't trash your house, and that they could promise to be out of there when you needed it back. Doing a favour should be rewarded, not with grovelling gratitude, but with the appreciation that it was a favour and the giver should not be expected to suffer unduly for having done it. I'm pretty sure the OP doesn't have that kind of relationship with her sister or they would be closer and maybe she would have thought of them first when looking for house sitting. Maybe. In any case OP knows a lot better than any of us how much reason she has to trust her.

I do like all these "well IF I had a sister who had four children in a small flat and IF I had a bigger house and IF I was going to live abroad for a year or three, I would..." type responses. You haven't, you don't and you aren't. So it's all kind of speculative, isn't it?

Do not let your sister and kids move in. If you have misgivings now they will be worse if it happens.
My sister moved herself into my mums house (which I was caretaking in preparation to sell) without permission when my mum went into care.
I have spent the past 2 years trying to move her out, this weekend I went to clean ready for completion of the sale and she has trashed the place. As she has been living there for 'free' she has not valued anything and there are broken, damaged things everywhere. Things I didn't know could be broken, damaged or that dirty have brought me to tears this weekend.
She hasn't stopped telling me how much she loves mum and how awful I am in evicting her from mums home even though it's being sold to fund mums care.
She's treated it like a really crappy uni student although she is a grown adult with a well paid job.
I'm not saying your sis would necessarily be the same but as it's not hers and there is no financial risk to her or her children don't expect them to necessarily value your stuff and once family are in they are very difficult to move on.

'do like all these "well IF I had a sister who had four children in a small flat and IF I had a bigger house and IF I was going to live abroad for a year or three, I would..." type responses. You haven't, you don't and you aren't. So it's all kind of speculative, isn't it?'

Ah right. We've got to have exactly the same set of circumstances before we can have an opinion. Got it.

Yes, it’s very easy to say what a complete stranger should do with her own family’s property, based on your own family relationships rather than theirs, and basically say that anyone who wouldn’t do what you would is a bad person. It’s especially easy when you’re not the one in the position of having to make good on your word and take the resultant hits.

'Yes, it’s very easy to say what a complete stranger should do'

That's the very nature of chat forums like mumsnet. Everybody is speculating based on their own life experiences.

Sure, but I’ve found that people usually attempt to consider things outside of their own box.

But it won't be permanently life-changing, will it? Sooner or later the OP is going to want her property back. Or her circumstances might change during the interim, and she may decide to sell. In either case, at that point there will be a sister in that property, along with her large family, who have as good as become dependents. At best, with the sense of entitlement she's already displayed, there will be awkwardness and myriad reasons why their lives are going to become impossibly difficult if OP takes that property back. In doing someone a good deed she might well be taking on moral obligations and complications that she simply doesn't need. At worst, without a cast iron legal agreement between landlady and tenant, it could present very real legal difficulties.

Sister is a CF. She clearly expects OP to bear the cost of storing all her furniture and staying elsewhere when she comes back to stay in her own house. That's some sense of entitlement right there, and a likely indicator of what will likely happen when the time comes to vacate the property. And if, as a PP suggests above, this would cause very real difficulties in the sister's future relationship, then that's on the sister.

In this position I'd take legal advice about formally letting the property at market value, which would then more than cover the cost of storing my furniture and possessions for the duration. It would also ensure any legal issues were appropriately taken care of. And frankly any expectation from anyone - Sarah or the sister - to expect to stay in a place rent-free for years is not remotely reasonable.

I think it's utterly your choice & would
Think no less of you for choosing Sarah.
That said - it would be a wonderful thing to do for your sister & if you seen fit to do so - I would only do it under following circumstances.

• she pays all storage & removal cost
• she pays a big deposit (2 months current rent eg)
• she agrees to pay for a hotel of your choice for all of you in area of your choice when your travel home
• she puts into a savings account enough to rent a flat deposit for herself so she is able to move out instantly if your circumstances change & you need to come home.
•she pays for any damages after move out
• she pays for new lick of paint before you move back in

Or she pays you rent - high enough to cover all these costs - low enough for her to save

She cannot expect you to go without or have costs.
Cost neutral to you is the Only way this is doable.

Personally I'd go with Sarah x

Yes I do think people living in SMALL flats with 4 children have made poor life choices.

If they live in a large 3 or more bed flat then that's fine.

"Just doing your best" is not choosing to have 4 children when you don't have the room and, quite possibly the money.

Why is it so difficult to understand people need to take responsibility for the choices they make, including how many children they have? Sick of the "I want 10 children so I shall have 10 even though I can't afford it" attitude