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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

DH refusing to financially help sister after she went on holiday.

573 replies

Sallymeblue · 29/03/2025 14:01

I need to keep this as vague as possible. We are financially supporting me sister and have been doing so for several years. This year for the first time, in a very long time, her family are going on holiday and this has enraged DH. He is seething that we are supporting whilst they are going to holiday, he doesn't think they should expect help and go on holiday.

He is taking his anger out on me because I don't work due, and be feels I dont contribute to the household and he support me and my sister

OP posts:
honeylulu · 29/03/2025 15:32

I don't think so. OP's posts say "my sister".

There isn't enough info to properly comment.

Is the reduced rent the only "financial supoort"?
If so how much is it reduced by? A small reduction to ensure a regular rent can be commercially sensible rather than a hand out as it reduces the risk of a property being empty for months at a time.
Does she have a formal tenancy? If so he can't just up her rent overnight, there are processes and timescales to follow.
More info OP!

Amilliondreamsisallitagonnatake · 29/03/2025 15:34

I’m confused a mini break would be £300 on a caravan for the weekend. £1500 is an actual holiday and more than we spend in a double income household.
So what’s actually happening here is you and your sister are living off your husband. Are you getting any help for your mental health or just saying you can’t work again?

Temporaryname158 · 29/03/2025 15:34

What have you done to help your mental health other than not working?

you need to seek medical support and therapies and access the job centre for support back into appropriate work. It’s not good enough to just say it was stressful so I don’t bother and let DH pay for everything.

if your sister isn’t earning enough, she also needs to take responsibility and see how she can increase her income (more shifts, promotion, a course to increase her skills) if she is on UC she will be getting rental help anyway.

it is not your DH responsibility to sub your sister and support you as work was too stressful. I am sure he is stressed too

TwoBlueFish · 29/03/2025 15:36

So your sister is working but paying a below market rent, is this the only help your DH is giving? How much below market rent is it? If it’s just a small decrease then it’s not really his business. A reliable tenant is a good thing and can be worth a lot to a landlord.

it feels like he is more resentful of you not working and helping with the finances. Maybe you need to sit down together and go through your finances and how you can help. Maybe a part time less stressful job. How old are your children?

Minecraftvsroblox · 29/03/2025 15:37

Purplebunnie · 29/03/2025 15:28

Holiday cottage last year in North Devon in May £500.00. It slept 4 people. same cottage for a week in July this year is £810.00 - I've just checked

If you was to go in May I doubt you would spend £1500 for the week on cottage, petrol/travel, food, snacks and booze/drinks. If you went in July you could easily spend £1500 for the week. Our go to holiday is either a cottage in the UK or a villa abroad. It's always home from home. My partner calls me the mean one and I call him the spend thrift.

Winter2020 · 29/03/2025 15:42

Takemymindoff · 29/03/2025 15:17

I get how he feels. We were supplementing my DS and DiL monthly with their mortgage. They struggled at the end of each month, both working hard.

To visit and find that DiL had bought herself a personalised number plate for her new car, felt unreasonable.

Helping out when others prioritise their spending is one thing, spending on the unnecessary is another.

I think whether this is unreasonable depends on whether they ever actually ask for your help. Which if they are buying new cars and number plates is very cheeky.

My FIL is very generous and puts one or two hundred pounds in my partners account each month and also pays for some things - like if he knows our car has been in for repair he picks up the bill sometimes. I will always say there is no need but thank you that is very kind, and he says "I know how it feels to be struggling".

The thing is we don't tell him that we are struggling - that is his perception. We do OK and spend pretty much all our money on our kids e.g. my eldest is going on several foreign school trips and a further UK residential this year.

My FIL is quite frugal in his own life and my partner has in the past wanted to not mention in front of him if we are having a take away for example. I refuse to do this. We both work and earn our money and while I am grateful for any help we are offered I wouldn't accept it at the price of being told what we can do with our own money. The same for the odd weekend away to a tourist attraction etc.

I agree it is different if we/your son was saying "we are struggling can you help us". I wouldn't expect someone to ask for help then splash hundreds on a luxury in the same month unless the request went "We are struggling this month can you help us ...because we are taking the kids to the Alton Towers Hotel etc etc". To be honest my FIL is all about the kids and would probably be happy to help with anything that treated them but less so any luxuries for adults which he would consider a waste.

Butchyrestingface · 29/03/2025 15:44

@Sallymeblue Is there a reason you won't respond to posters asking whether the financial help from your husband entails only the reduced rent OR something more?

Because I think you might get very different answers depending on which it is.

Ponderingwindow · 29/03/2025 15:45

Renting slightly below market value in exchange for a reliable tenant is not financially helping your tenant. It is a mutually beneficial arrangement. The discount would need to be huge for this to be an actual subsidy.

if he is paying her bills, then going on holiday is unreasonable. It doesn’t sound like he is paying her bills though. It sounds like he has a reliable tenant in exchange for making slightly less money from his rental property. That is a choice landlords make every day.

howshouldibehave · 29/03/2025 15:45

I don't blame your partner for being pissed off!

Purplebunnie · 29/03/2025 15:45

Minecraftvsroblox · 29/03/2025 15:37

If you was to go in May I doubt you would spend £1500 for the week on cottage, petrol/travel, food, snacks and booze/drinks. If you went in July you could easily spend £1500 for the week. Our go to holiday is either a cottage in the UK or a villa abroad. It's always home from home. My partner calls me the mean one and I call him the spend thrift.

I don't think I would spend another £700.00 on petrol/travel, food, snacks and booze/drinks. We don't have little ones anymore and we always made sandwiches to take to the beach - maybe I'm wrong.

I had presumed that the £1500 OP's sister had spent didn't include spending money

Marshbird · 29/03/2025 15:45

Sallymeblue · 29/03/2025 14:36

I tried going back but has MH issues, so I have been a SAHM

I think your dh is probably having MH struggles too.

do you ever think about what taking the full responsisiblty for bread winning is like? The full burden of having to keep performance up to try to keep your salary in line with inflation and stagnated tax allowances. For circumstances you never agreed to do, never thought you’d have to deal with? .

I’m the wife in my case. Exh was diagnosed with severe and enduring mental condition. Psychotic illness . 10 years into our marriage. I spent the next 20 years solely supporting him and our dc. But with mental illness, it isn’t just earning is it? It is taking on being sole carer, sole parent, sole household admin, etc etc. it made me mentally ill. As it does for 50% of people caring for a partner with mental illness.

it broke my marriage in the end, as it does in 90% of marriages. Mental health teams were surprised we managed 20 years .

but if my husband had said to me, I needed to slog doing all this, shouldering all that burden, and then “give” his sibling money to support them…I’d have been gobsmacked . And certainly said you have to be kidding. Not even for a one off. Let alone as a reduced rent on income that could be used to take pressure and stress off my breadwinner role. There are times you can be generous to extended family - and this isn’t one of them.

i don’t know, frankly, how you persuaded him to do this. Your sister should be bloody embarrassed by his generosity frankly. For your sister to then continue to take money , and go on holiday is outrageous. If she has saved enough for this holiday, she should have paid it to him, for him to take you on holiday as a thank you. First. Only if she was able to increase her rent payment first, should she have considered taking holiday. I know a lot of people think going away on holiday is a right. It isn’t. Having holiday off work, sure, we all need that, but we can do vacating at home. All the time she is relying on hand outs she doesn’t have luxury of putting her wishes above your husbands wishes.

if I was your husband, I’d be putting rent up to market value and saying that she can obviously afford it, if she can save for holiday.

and I’d advise you to be very careful about how casually you are treating your husbands earnings and employment. Both wrt to your mental health, and your entitled view wrt your sister. It took me 30 years of marriage to realise my exh could and should have pulled his weight more , despite his severe illness . But I did divorce in the end. It’s funny how much more he now seems to do for himself, when he has to and can’t just abdicate everything to me becuase it’s easier than making an effort, or getting right help to overcome issues, or even complying with his medication.

JorgyPorgy · 29/03/2025 15:48

How else does your DH financially support your sister besides the slightly cheaper rent ? Does she have a partner who works ?

telestrations · 29/03/2025 15:49

If the financial help is just charging rent lower then "market rate" but covers costs then he is being extremely unreasonable in resenting her paying for her own holiday. Especially if she has in effect been paying his mortgage for several years, even more so if he's doing so off the books

Otherwise he needs to give reasonable notice and stop.

anyolddinosaur · 29/03/2025 15:51

You are not answering questions - how much lower is the rent (what percentage)? What was your work and if you found it stressful why have you not looked for a lower stress job?

Grammarnut · 29/03/2025 15:52

Stop working at all the things you don't work at. Men have this blind spot that women at home do nothing. So do nothing. Not a stitch. When there are no clean clothes, unfed children, untidy and dirty house, unpaid bills etc he might realise that you support him all the time and it's about time he pulled his socks up and took a shift.
Meanwhile, if your sister is being supported by your DH it is bloody cheeky to be going on holiday (unless holiday was a gift) while she gets a cheap flat, which means you are presumably losing income.

jacks11 · 29/03/2025 15:52

Minecraftvsroblox · 29/03/2025 15:28

Add in that you as a family are providing financial support to your sister and it’s no wonder he is angry that she’s going on holiday. Cheap and cheerful or otherwise, holidays are a luxury you can’t afford if you need to rely on your brother in law and sister to financially support your day to day living costs. I’m pretty gobsmacked you can’t see that.

@jacks11 Op has said nothing about financial support only that her sister rents a flat from them. He probably feels that she owes him for letting her pay under the market value.

Well, he is still supporting her by default as I see OP has says she can’t afford market rate. In my view, the sister is getting subsided by him/them- because he/they are forgoing income to benefit his sister in law by not charging her market rates. That is a form of financial support, in the same way as if he was paying her electricity bill or putting petrol in her car.

what we don’t know is how much less than market rate she is being charged, and what she does in return. I.e. if it was £100 less but the sister does basic maintenance, then probably evens out. If she’s paying less than the mortgage payments and running costs associated with the property, then he is subsiding his sister in law as that money will come out of family budget. If it’s less than market rate then they are forgoing income they could get from the property and therefore she is being subsidised even if she isn’t getting money transferred into her account every month. It’s still being financially supported. The only question is to what level she is being helped.

scotstars · 29/03/2025 15:53

I would suspect it's less about your sister and more about you - the holiday is probably the last straw. How old are your children op? When you became a sahm he had no idea if this was a temp or perm situation and his mental health is probably also declining with being sole bread winner, caring for children, the household and I assume your carer if you are too poorly to work? In addition to that your household which is probably at breaking point financially and mentally are subsiding your sister- do you take holidays? If not I would be totally hacked off funding someone else's!

LEWWW · 29/03/2025 15:53

Depends. Was it a case you went back to work after maternity and then were expected to do all the running around, childcare, housework and cooking and couldn’t cope? Is he a high earner?

mainecooncatonahottinroof · 29/03/2025 15:53

Sallymeblue · 29/03/2025 14:35

I tried going back to work after the children went to school but I couldn't cope with the pressure and stress. I have been SAHM since, and he has started to resent that.

Team Husband. Both you and your sister are taking the piss.

NeverDropYourMooncup · 29/03/2025 15:54

Sallymeblue · 29/03/2025 14:31

It's just a mini break for a week and it's the first holiday her family have had for ages. It's was about £1.5k - hardly splashing the cash.

Means she can afford to pay your husband another £100 a month rent.

WhoMeMissYesYouMiss · 29/03/2025 15:55

Where is your sisters DH or partner @Sallymeblue ?

Enigma53 · 29/03/2025 15:57

Sallymeblue · 29/03/2025 14:35

I tried going back to work after the children went to school but I couldn't cope with the pressure and stress. I have been SAHM since, and he has started to resent that.

The pressure and stress?? Are you for real??

Enigma53 · 29/03/2025 15:58

YABVVU!!

adviceneeded1990 · 29/03/2025 15:59

I’d hugely resent both supporting you and subsiding your sister to be honest. Don’t you think he feels the pressure you speak of and that his mental health is impacted?

Schoolchoicesucks · 29/03/2025 16:00

If you'd explained that the "financial support" is slightly lower than market rate rent, in exchange for reliable long-term tenant who will take care of the property and always pays rent on time in the OP I think you may have received slightly different poll results.

A decent tenant without letting agent fees, vacant periods, refurbishment costs etc is worth a fair amount. Not 50% off market rate amount of course, but maybe 10-20% as long as the mortgage is covered.

Begrudging a tenant a rare holiday would of course be unreasonable. Your sister works - does she have a DP who also works?

It seems more likely that his anger is misplaced with you if he begrudge you getting to stay home with school aged children and not work because you found it stressful, while he is working in order to fully fund one household and subsidise another.

Do you intend to look for other paid work that would be less stressful than the role you originally went back to? If not, why not? If your DP is not on board with you being a SAHM then it is not really an option to be one. Would he support you to retrain?

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