To expect Sunday Dinner as the agreement?

[TipJarTroubadours]

Small details changed but the short of it is:

1. We allow people to stay in self contained accommodation for 'free'
2. The only 'cost' is attendance to Sunday dinner
3. Aibu to refuse to let someone stay (or charge them market rent) if they don't attend dinner

The long of it is

DH and I own a residential static caravan site. It has been in DH family a long time. It has great transport links to a major city.

We allow close family/friends to stay rent free whilst they attend uni in the city/start a new job. We have had 15 different people over the years, some for six months, the longest five years.

Currently house DS and nephew who are both at uni and DHs best friends daughter and her partner who has just started an apprenticeship. All four attend Sunday dinner, as have the 15 beforehand.

(For those that are interested, I cook the meal and then they take turns to make/buy a pudding and wash up (most goes in the dishwasher) I have had one with severe allergies who used to bring their own food, and one that was fussy so I used to make them beans on toast every Sunday. )

My sister's son has been living with us since September, I was very clear on the rules- it might seem odd but for a 10k saving a year I expect attendance at one meal a week.- they both knew about this.
Since starting he has attended one, preferring to go to the pub/gym/game on a Sunday. It has been raised with him and we have said if he doesn't attend then we will charge him rent (we have other uni students renting although they are all mature)

I have gone to my parents for half term and have just met my sister and told her the same. My parents and her think I am completely unreasonable to ask him to attend Sunday dinner, I think they are completely unreasonable to expect me to house him for free after agreeing to my rules ( there are costs involved for me, utilities etc plus not being able to rent it out)

I've said he has to attend tomorrow or I will bill them from now until Christmas and if it isn't paid will evict at Christmas.

Am I being unreasonable to expect my nephew to do what he agreed to in return for accommodation? (I don't think I am, even if expecting to attend dinner is unreasonable, he has agreed to the terms, he could have just rented halls)

But things change, especially when young people go to uni. He can still be a part of the village and family life without compulsory attendance at this dinner every week

He may have thought this a great idea at first and wanted to partake in the arrangement, but now feel completely beholden to it. He may want to join a darts team or social club on a Sunday, get a job or feel burnt out by Sunday evening and want an early night, but can't as in doing so he goes back on the long standing arrangement and potentially have to pay rent.

He may prefer to see op snd other family a different time to Sunday evening, but again, can't as if he wants to remain in this particular accomodation (and my not be able to afford to actually pay the rent) he has to go to the dinner

I'm all for family ties and am part of a large, close family myself. I wouldn't expect a weekly meal that weekly attendance was potentially agreed 6 weeks ago, I'd prefer to be flexible in fostering family relations.

Can you give a bit of background as to who attends your dinners? Their ages, relationship to nephew etc?

Swanned and lorded over? Bowed down to?

I can't even imagine the toxic and disadvantaged mentality of someone who interprets the OP's scenario in this manner.

A great many socially functioning adults really wouldn't like this weird controlling behaviour either. Hence the range of suggestions for 'payment in kind' which are less coercive, more neutral, fairer, actually more useful despite being more onerous in life (such as paying rent or doing particular helpful practical tasks in return) but less insistent on the nephew pretending to feel things and create a pretend atmosphere or set up that the OP approves of.Ironically, if she hadn't insisted, he might have been more inclined to naturally do what she was hoping for. That she enforces it so rigidly on pain of losing accommodation is what is so deeply strange.

Weird. Unreasonable. Inflexible.

Do you live in Royston Vasey?

Insisting on him turning up when he doesn't want to is more likely to cause him to run a mile rather than be a member of the extended family.

You can't /shouldn't do good deeds with the expectation of getting something back.

Then you do you. The OP and her husband are carrying on THEIR family traditions, which apparently have suited more than a dozen other tenants.

No one is forcing the nephew to do anything. If he prefers a different lifestyle he is free to move along and establish the Sunday routines he likes.

It’s a very strange rule op. Sunday dinner may just be one meal, but it’s an often very time consuming one which takes up a large proportion of the day. I wouldn’t have wanted to give up several hours every Sunday to attend a meal when I was a student. There’s a lot of other things to do like play sport and do activities like hill walking with friends.

However they are your rules.

Well that’s the image I’m getting.

An unfunny version of Hyacinth Bucket and her candlelight suppers.

Yes, I would be happy to host that meal, if I believed, as the OP and her husband apparently do, that in the long run the tradeoffs are worth it for the sake of building ties among the extended family.

Don't forget, she's giving up thousands of pounds a year in order to facilitate this.

If nephew chafes at the obligation he is free to pay rent or to move along.

For someone who probably can't afford to b,c or d that's not a choice at all, is it.

This is not the OP being generous at all. She's being abusive. She doesn't need or want her relatives to be paying her rent, she wants to control them and dictate to them what they do with their own time.

He probably thought that his aunt wouldn't force him to attend her bloody dinners every friggin Sunday. I mean- who does that? It would be different if he was a stranger- then he would show up at the dot doing his "service" every Sunday thinking about what he had to gain in free lodging.

Then don't accept free accommodation that requires you attend Sunday dinner. Instead pay for your accommodation like everyone else.

It's a bit odd but your nephew is a freeloading dick.

Yep, MIL made OP and others sit there like the grateful poor to feed her ego. Now OP's fucked if she's not going to have her turn at head of the table. She's "earned" it.

Grim. Time to end the cycle of control tradition. Not extend it.

You would be happy to host a meal for people showing up because they had to in order not to get evicted/pay rent?

It’s not attending lunch with ‘her’ it’s with the wider group he has chosen to live with.
It’s bizarre that you’re so threatened by this concept.

Who would actually believe that anyone who isn't obviously batshit crazy would follow through on a threat to evict them because of a refusal to attend sunday lunch?

I mean, the signs would already be there years beforehand, and you'd know never to take up such a poisoned chalice of a gift in the first place if you really believed that OP was serious.

Yes, if I thought it was for the greater long-term good of the family.

Nephew is free to pay rent instead, if he finds the OP and her husband's company so distasteful. I wouldn't be offering free rent to someone who didn't think I was worth 2 hours a week chat around the dinner table.

Agree. I think you'd have got very different responses to this.

FWIW, if someone offered to pay my mortgage, on condition I came to dinner every Sunday, I'd be delighted. I would show up, eat and chat, and when the arrangement got too much I'd start paying my own way again and thank them sincerely for their generosity.

Your nephew, I'd guess, thought 'ah, she won't actually do anything if I don't show up'. FAFO. I may have missed this but what's he said when you've told him he will need to start paying rent now?

I'm not "threatened" by anything.

I just recognise abusive behaviour when I see it.

It's a multi-generational family tradition that no doubt the extended family members are well aware of. Not something the OP just made up the other day in the spirit of "how can I CONTROL my nephew!" while rubbing her hands together with glee.

She's not evicting him, she's telling him that if he wants to be an arm's length renter with no family obligations, that is fine, but he can then pay the same monthly fee as the other arm's length renters who don't attend Sunday meals.

Nephew has several options open to him. The OP isn't obliged to give him an easy life at her expense, especially if dining with her is such an awful chore.

What makes you think he can’t afford
b, c or d

Im assuming you are aware this is what students do to attend University