Loan outstanding to our son is causing weekly abuse

[Tiredtrudy]

I'm not sure if I'm being the unreasonable one here. We moved two years ago. Our adult son (now 25) was living in London. Our mortgage offer came up £20k short and he covered the shortfall with a loan (we had maxed out on the house due to our ages). Payments to be paid by us, and his terms were he wanted to move in to save for a house deposit. That was eighteen months ago. During that time I became seriously ill and will not recover. I'm the high earner. I'm waiting to be medically retired. These things are never quick as insurance doesn't want to pay.
He has paid nearly all the monthly payments as I've been unwaged but never given us any keep. He might buy the odd takeaway. Anything he pays for is recorded on a spreadsheet which I didn't know existed until recently.
The monthly payment is £400 the same as many friends charge their adult DC. He eats a lot. He earns more than his father who is in his 60s and still working to keep a roof over our heads. We also have a younger DC at home who is at a local University.
Things have come to head as he wants to buy this spring. I haven't been able to confirm if I can give him this money back then. He is now forcing us to sell our home (which we do need to due for mobility reasons). We have equity in the house to repay him and move to a smaller property.
I'm now expected to give full weekly updates on our finances and any accessible work options I might be applying for. If I don't give him this information he flys into a rage screaming at me and telling me I've ruined his life.
The payments he has made are less than 10% of his take home pay.
He had mostly a private education and I paid off his sports car finance two years ago. He's never offered to take that off 'the bill'.
My DH has told him I'm ill and when the house is sold he can have his money. It doesn't seem to be enough. My husband things he's a privileged brat.
To punish us he refused to attend a family party at the weekend. Yesterday he shouted at me for an hour. I was crying. It turns out he had promised his GF a house last year. She was going to leave him as this hasn't happened.
Due to my health I am barely able to walk. I can't just go and work in a shop or warehouse. He does stay with his GF a couple of days a week and we all breathe a sigh of relief. I'm not frightened of him but he is so nasty to me. I don't know what to do.

Another one suggesting graduates are clueless at their jobs. I'm surprised they manage to get jobs at all.

The plan was for the DS to move out in the next few months with the loan being paid off. The OP now can’t guarantee that.
The DS now needs to remain stuck at home due to being lumbered with the balance of the loan.
Why is it confusing that a 25 year old is upset at now having to live at home for several years more to cover his parent’s loan?

Not sure why you dont know what to do @Tiredtrudy - you have to sell the house for mobility anyway, so any forcing your DS is doing is irrelevant.

He will get his equity and that's that. Thank god hes been paying that loan off you should have been paying him back, eh? Not that youd be in trouble if payments had been missed.

You using him to get a loan in the first place but now accusing his GF of forcing him, feels a bit rich.

Yes, OP.

Is your son meant to pay:

£300 rent
£400 loan repayment

or £700 pm loan + rent?

Its very strange that you’re painting the 22 year old as the irresponsible one and not the couple in their 60s who have badly planned their retirement and pissed away their money on private schools feels they couldn’t afford and fancy cars leaving themselves with a large mortgage in their mid 60s and a top up loan their child took out for them which they now can’t service.
People seem to be forgetting if the OP was given a higher mortgage she would be defaulting on it right now, instead her adult child is bailing her out.

The DS was supposed to pay £300 in rent. The OP was supposed to pay the £400 loan.

Your son sounds frustrated. He really doesn't get a good deal in all this does he? Your dh meanwhile will inherit a house that is apparently nothing to do with him. It's sad that you are ill and have all this going on. Perhaps dh could help more in some way to ease the pressure all round.

That's what I think too but people are passing out with rage at the mere suggestion of it. Actually I think he should just pay the 400 without OP giving him 100 but any of these options should be done.

So what about the £300 a month rent that he agreed to and never paid ? Is that not changing the terms ?

He's 25.

He effectively pays £400 per month to live somewhere, all in. I would say that is a fabulous deal. There is almost nowhere in the UK where that could happen in the private sector.

This is why I think the payment of the loan itself is not his actual problem. The viable alternative is for him to pay the loan and view it as rent, contribution to the household, or whatever you want to call it. Instead he’s going for the nuclear option of forcing the house sale to get his money back, because his actual motive is the fact that he can’t buy his own house until the loan is paid back. How were he and his GF planning on buying a house in the spring when the loan is ongoing ?

Yes, it is a good deal. But the problem he has is that he now has to live there, because he isn't paying cheap rent, he is servicing an unsecured loan.

I strongly suspect he was lead to believe the loan would have been repaid long before now.

Precisely and the op wants him to pay the loan and the rent.

Thank you - so if the son is now paying £400 to cover the loan surely he doesn’t owe OP any rent.

The agreement is at least 2 years old as he’s already been living with OP for 18 months.

he was 22! He may have started working in the financial sector but that doesn’t mean he knew what he was doing!

According to the OP that doesn’t count. She should just be able to default on her loan payment with no consequences.

The parents should have refused the offer of the loan. Who borrows such a large sum of money from their 23 year old son???!!

@rightinthedavinamccalls he was 22 when these discussions were happening

Quite. He's stuck.

Lets not forget, OP managed to lose lots of money last year. Money has been sloshing around and mismanaged recently.

I may have put it differently, but this was my thought, also.

OP, you say that DS is now behaving completely out of character, so perhaps the GF is the source of the change. Her refusal to visit over Christmas sounds like an attempt to coerce.

She is five years older, so around 30, yet not contributing anything towards the deposit for their house? Why? DH is older than me; during our engagement and while we were working apart in the first year of our marriage I lived very thriftily so I could contribute almost equally to our first deposit. It was a point of pride.

Could DS be in thrall to this woman? Could she be looking at the sports car, hearing about the private education, seeing the good job and falling in love with his money as much as anything? Not that there is much parents can do about it, sadly.

My only real difference of opinion with @Mrswhatsit40 is that I think you and DS’ father are the wrong people to try opening his eyes to this, if it is indeed correct. Does your DD know the GF and if so, what does she think of her? DS might listen more readily to his sister.

Edit: nvm misunderstood!