Mum demanding payments each month

[Lifeisinshambles]

At 17, I moved out of home. This was due to constant, every single day of my childhood, verbal and physical fights. It cooled a little after I moved out, but they got more, almost spiteful? I believe they felt affronted that ‘I’ had caused social services to become involved (they kicked me out so I stayed at a friends house, I told them what happened, and they told their social worker), and therefore never really forgave me for that, even though they made it seem like they had for the most part.
Since then, when I had absolutely zero money, was living on my own, and to be honest I still felt like a child, I would have to end up borrowing small loans from my mum, such as £10-£20 here and there for food shopping until the end of the month.
From there, due to having pay back more and more each month but my income not increasing, I have ended up in a situation where the debt has continually risen. She is now demanding £400 a month from me, my current wage is £800. It used to be £200, which would then of course still leave me short for the month so by the end of it I would have ended up having to borrow more again to get food shopping etc. I’m not sure why it has suddenly gone up to £400 from £200? Basically, it’s an endless cycle that has been going for years, of me not being able to afford to pay that first £20 back and still make money stretch for that month simultaneously, and hence never releasing myself of the debt.
She has recently, in the last 3 years or so, come into a lot of money from various sources all at one time. I’m not sure on specifics but she has at least £150k+, and will soon be getting her share of another £400k+.
I have told her I simply cannot afford to pay her £400 a month, and how will I make it through the month with less than half of my wages left?
She is threatening to cut off contact, and I assume will forever more talk bad about me to the rest of my family.
AIBU, or is she?

Kindly, youre not listening.

You need to stop paying your mum money, you dont owe her anything.

As a mother, I cannot fathom how your mum has treated you! I want to give you a hug and comfort you because thats what a mother wants to do, not keep demanding money from you.

Please, please stop paying your mum more money. Not one more penny.

No. Pay her nothing more. Keep your £800 (which must be hard to live on) all to yourself. She’s trying to make it impossible for you to survive alone.

OP this is batshit. I have a difficult relationship with my daughter, who moved out at 16. I’ve helped her financially a great deal by giving her money and buying her things she needs for her home. I would never ask for it back! Even the money she asked to ‘borrow’. I’d certainly not take half her bloody wages! Call her bluff and go NC. She is literally ripping you off like a loan shark!

Stop paying her money, she is controlling you. Stop today , and cut contact her, she sounds nasty

You’ve moved out and your mother is demanding hundreds of pounds in repayments? I’d give her nothing!! She sounds despicable and fleecing you for everything you’ve got. Move away, cease contact. She sounds poisonous!!

Your mother is demanding regular payment in satisfaction of some unspecified debt... which will carry on into the future, for just as long as you are unwilling to say enough is enough.
This is financial abuse.
You're mature for your age & you sound very responsible - but the emotional hold your parents have over you is wearing you down, financially and I would say, psychologically.

I hope you find a way to just tell her she shouldn't expect your financial support any more. Stand your ground.

Hi OP

Hopefully what you’ve got from this thread is a realistic idea of how wrong this is. @RawBloomers said not to share the calculations you’ve had on here with your mum, and she’s right, any discussion will just descend into very stressful chaos.

I gave you a very simplified version of where you could be based on the limited info you’ve given us, I don’t believe your mum has any idea of any true figures either so unless she can come up with a verifiable schedule of how much she’s given you v how much you have paid, you have to draw a line under it. This has to stop.

So for you this is now not about the money, it is about getting yourself in the right headspace to tackle the situation. Sleep on it tonight then let the mn vipers support you to confront her.

No don't pay her anything. If she comes knocking on the door just don't answer it and tell your boyfriend not to. If she won't leave tell her you will ring the police. This is what I have to do with a family member who has alcohol addiction issues. She can't stay off the drink and can get violent.

You are paying her to keep her in your life, all she is interested in is keeping control of you and keeping you down.

I’m sorry you didn’t get the parents you deserved, their behaviour is not normal and you sound like a really nice person so I hope you eventually accept that you deserve more than this continued abuse x

Tell her you’ve calculated the amount you’ve paid back and it definitely covers everything she lent you.

can she actually prove how much you owe? Has she kept a record?

I think she’s mugging you off, and she sounds like a fucking awful parent.

you sound lovely, and it would have been so easy for you to have not coped. Instead you’ve done brilliantly so far, and should be proud of what you’ve achieved.

it must be difficult for you having shit parents, but don’t feel obliged in any way to keep in contact with them. We can’t choose our relatives.

you need to put yourself first and only do what’s best for you.

I feel like Mumsnet has adopted a collective daughter here.

I also agree with the poster suggesting you go together to citizens advice around managing the burden of the supposed debt for both of you. I tended to find with my mother, calling her bluff with approaches like this would often work. God forbid an outsider might judge her for what she was!

My mother did the exact same thing to me years ago

My ex left me,with two small kids and 8k of debts

She paid it all off (which i will be forever grateful) and I had to pay her back at £150 a week

I did,every single week I gave her £150 cash

This went on for 15 years-there was always something I owed her

she'd pay for the kids birthday party,let's say £300 and I'd have to pay back a grand,another trick was to pay for the kids school trips (from £1.50 to £200) and it would get dumped onto 'what you owe me' and I'd end up paying thousands back

It didn't end,i know that at one point my brother was in thouands of debt and i was paying it off and she even stole my milk tokens,she took milk out of the mouths if my children

i lost my temper when I owed a £30 phone bill and was planning on paying it on payday (this would have been the Friday and I got paid on the monday)

She snatched it off the table and walked out with it

She rang to say she'd paid it and I 'owed me and I'll add it to the debt,god you are useless and wouldnt have paid it,ill have had to bail you out again'

I lost it and told her I never wanted to speak to her again and slammed the phone down

She went nuclear and has tried to slag me off to everyone and has tried to blacken my name to anyone who will listen

I don't care,I know what's said about me and it's only words-she has no power
over me and she can't cope with it

As soon as I walked away,I was better off in every single way

Her?she's a bitter old cow who only has her hangers on and family who can't wait for her to die so they can have her money

The irony is,she's a millionare-it was never about the money,it was about control and she has none

Walk away from your mother,keep your head high and let her say what she likes,its only words

You will be better off and not just in your purse

It's hard,having a mother like this but it's either that of she will milk you dry

This makes me sad for you. Pay her a small, manageable amount - no more than £50. If you have to pay more you’ll end up borrowing back and never pay her back. The other thing to do is to actually ask her how much you owe and ask for her calculations. It seems a bit much and she should not be doing this to you. She’s your mum. Sending you a Hug x

Your mother isn't behaving like a mother to you. As someone else said upthread, it's likely that you've paid her back and then some.
As parents, we expect to help out our offspring.
I would cut off contact with her and get your brainspace and wages back to build your own life.

Sending warm thoughts and a hug OP.

You are surviving ongoing harm and trauma. You do not deserve to be in this situation. Keep your head up and consider leaving her too it. Clearly the care and love she should have given as a child and young person is not and probably will never be forthcoming.

The amount of money you owe is inconsequential. She should be paying you to make up for turning your home from a safe haven of comfort and love into a war zone. I can’t imagine what that was like for you.

She owes you so much more than you owe her.

You probably won’t read this - but if you do - you know what your mum is doing is wrong. That’s why you asked for help here. Listen to us - stop paying.

OP please save this. Screenshot it or something.

I completely agree with everyone regarding how much of a terrible mother she is but all of that aside you clearly quite literally do not owe her any money and you very obviously have paid her back.

You are talking about £2 here and there. You cannot possibly have lent so much that it’s still not paid off.

So let’s switch things up here and speak more honestly. We are not discussing whether you should continue paying her back because you logically owe her nothing - quite the opposite. We are discussing whether you should pay her a fee every month not to cut you off.

Please try and see that. There will never come a point where she says “ah love you’ve paid it all back now”.

You owe her nothing. Not just morally but factually.

You have been and are being abused by your mother.

Are you familiar with trauma responses? I wonder if you identify with the fawn response (maybe google)?

A long time ago it’s likely you coped with trauma by trying to be really small and passive and keep things nice. Perhaps you convinced yourself that if you could just be better than you would be accepted and loved.

That was never true. You were a child. You were good enough already. It was her who was not. You were a child - confused and alone and trying desperately to survive.

Telling yourself you could make it better by doing what she wanted offered you the illusion of control but you never had control because it was never your fault and was all hers.

You aren’t much more than a child now (I don’t mean that patronisingly I just mean literally in age regarding all that time she should have been still financially supporting you) and look what you’ve achieved. Look where you are. You’ve done all this and achieved so much even with her dragging you down at every step.

The voice telling you you couldn’t cope if she cut you off - whose voice is it? If you listen carefully I wonder if you’d find it’s hers.

The voice is wrong by the way. You have coped with so much. Things might even be easier. But it doesn’t matter because you’re not choosing to cut her off - she is choosing whether to do that.

I implore you to use any money you have available that could go to her on building up your life. Please get therapy and look forward.

You don’t need to fix anything anymore. Leave the broken pieces (the situation with your mom) on the floor and walk away, otherwise you will have to face being entangled in this situation for a long time to come.

Many parents fork out a hell of a lot for their children at the age of 17 and beyond to support them in starting out in life and flying the nest.. your mother sounds like a bit of a parasite..

No, you don’t owe her any more money so why would you give her £100 a month when you need it and she doesn’t?

tell her that you’ve paid her back now and stop any future payments to her. Her behaviour is disgusting and she isn’t likely to stop. Like a pp said, she wants full control of you.

you Are clearly a very strong young woman so take the control back. No more payments. You’ve repaid your (unfair) debt. Go forwards now, nothing tying you down.

if she cuts you off, it’s her loss. Not yours. You haven’t done anything wrong so don’t let her make you feel guilty

OP, I think you have been given lots of helpful advice. I think you need to access support. As, other poster have pointed out your mum is abusing and reason you probably feel so bad and guilty is because she has been abusing you for a long time. Please choose your self. You deserve more than this.

Please stop paying her anything, you've paid more than enough. She's taking advantage of you and your misplaced feeling of guilt.

You don't owe her anything. She's your mother...she's meant to take care of you. I've have two DS's aged 20 and 22. Youngest DS is at uni and lives with me in the holidays...he has quite a lot of savings but I pay for everything while he's at home. Eldest lives with his dad but when he's with me I pay for everything and I send him money occasionally for food.

That's what parents do and that is what you deserve too. In fact you deserve it more after being abused for your whole childhood. It's hard for you to see because of the way you've been raised but you've nothing to feel guilty for. The only people who should feel guilty are your parents, particularly your mother who I imagine has some sort of personality disorder. I know it's hard to cut contact but you have nothing to lose because you're not reliant on your mother for anything...she's giving you nothing either emotionally or financially and is trying to con you out of half your earnings.

Oh sweet girl, you’ve been through a lot and you’re doing incredibly well considering you’re only 20.

It’s so unfair that your mother is treating you this way. She’s a manipulative abuser. I hope you know that any kind of real mother would never hound their struggling child for that money, especially at only 20, and especially as it was only the odd £20 to keep you floating. My mum regularly has to send over a couple of £20 a month to my sister (in her late 30s) as she’s struggling. Now, my mother is a bit tight but she would never ask for it back as she knows she will never be able to afford it, never mind the fact that you just help your children where you can.

You don’t owe her anything. She’s keeping you trapped. The best thing you can do is to stop paying it. It doesn’t sound as if she’s ever going to stop asking for more, she’ll find more ways to make your life difficult because she’s no true mother and she’s taking out whatever life resentment or failures on you.

This.

I was thinking she lost the child benefit and tax credits when the girl was taken away from her care. That would be like around £900 for the child benefit alone plus some tax credits if she was entitled to those as well. She must be still bitter after all these years. But she’s taking the piss and taking advantage of the girl. What an awful person and a horrible mother.

I'm so sorry OP, this is absolute financial and psychological abuse.