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.

Despite OP being seriously ill, DH appears to be doing nothing other than sitting back and waiting to be her beneficiary. And insulting DS.

I think OP has a DH problem.

(Based on the small inconsistent information available)

I'd really like the op to explain why she considers her dh to be absolved of all responsibility in this. It doesn't make sense.

How do you figure the house is nothing to do with DH ? OP has already said he works. And how is the son not getting a good deal. £400 a month total living expenses in London sounds like a fabulous deal to me. Up until OP became ill DS was living there rent free and OP was paying the loan. The deal was that he was to pay £300 rent, which he has never paid. So living there free, just because his name was on the loan. Now the situation has changed due to OP’s illness, that £400 loan payment could be seen as the rent he should have been paying all along. Why does he need to blow up his parents’ lives at the most difficult time by insisting on the house being sold, when nothing needs to change ? I think the fact that he now wants his own house and has discovered he can’t get a mortgage while he still has the loan, has a lot more to do with this than OP’s inability to repay.

I would be concerned about your DS relationship with his girlfriend foremost, she sounds like a right gold digger and your DS sounds like is scared of you dying and too eager to jump into a fully committed relationship where he will be taken advantage of! If he was always a good person that is what I would be worried about. I would go to family therapy.

I was reading the thread and my I comment was made on what the OP had posted up to that point.

I assume this question is sarcastic...

OP literally said DH is not involved because it is her house. You need to read the updates more carefully.

Because that's what op herself has suggested. It reads to me as though the op and her dh took advantage of a very young man who had money simply because they wanted the bigger house. It's reasonable that he is now unhappy with the situation.

It's irrelevant that £400 rent seems reasonable you, the agreement was £300 to live there and they pay the loan. He's now stuck bearing responsibility for the loan, which is higher and affects his credit etc if it isnt paid.

Why has your critical illness cover on your mortgage not paid out? What time frame did you originally agree to repay the loan?

How can you call the GF a gold digger? We don't know how long they've been together or what their plans for the future were, plans that are now on hold because of the financial irresponsibility of OP, her DH and her DS. Shes a 30year old woman who may want to start trying for a family but this is now pushed back because of what this family have done.

@Rosscameasdoody OP has literally said this is nothing to do with her husband, it's her house, but he'll inherit it when she dies.

And she's been very vague about her DH involvement. I feel there's something more going on here.

Why has your husband not contributed if he's the one who benefits from the house? Why hasn't he tried to get a loan yet? You're planning to release your pension which was to be your son and daughters inheritance. Is your son maybe questioning why he's got himself tangled up in all this for a house he will never inherit?

I'm sorry @Tiredtrudy - your son isn't behaving well - but you asked whether you were being unreasonable.

Hindsight, of course is a wonderful thing, but as older and presumably wiser adults than your then 23 year old son, it was unreasonable of you (IMO) to accept your Son's offer of the loan. You couldn't afford the house you wanted and you should have stuck to your guns when you initially turned down the loan from him.

I am so sorry that you have got cancer and won't be able to work again and it is very difficult for all 3 of you, but regardless of what you gave your son before you had to give up work, you and he had an agreement that you would pay his loan bill of £400 every month and he would give you £300 'board' money. What you gave him as 'gifts' as his parent, is irrelevant , as is his salary

So it seems reasonable to me that since he was paying £400 towards the loan, it was equally reasonable that he offset the £300 due to you against the loan. That still left you owing him £100 every month.

You have paid him £3200 - but as the loan will also have included interest - you will need to work out what the total loan was for, less the £3200 and then also deduct the £300 a month he was due you for the unpaid board - and that final total that is what you need to pay him when your house is sold.

Of course your son is behaving very badly, but I nevertheless have some sympathy for him. I do wonder, from your posts, whether you have treated his worries about his finances, as important as they clearly are to him, or whether you have been a bit dismissive of initial requests from him to sort things out ( as you didn't have the money to give him then)? Is that a possibility? You say he has always been a sweet boy and his behaviour now is not like him. So it sounds to me like he is at the end of his tether and is feeling shafted by you and his dad?

Agree with this. And what do you call parents who take a 20k loan agreement from their 23 year old son and then default on payments,?

But then she couldn’t afford the payments.

So OP needs to clarify whether she expected him to pay the £400 on top of the £300 = £700
Or just pay the £400 which he’s been doing.

And whether this was actually agreed by both of them or just assumed.

The fact that this hasn’t been mentioned makes me think that this was never agreed and she just assumed that he would pay £300 + £400, whereas he probably assumed he would be paying £400 instead of the £300.

He was 22 or 23 when the loan was taken out. A recent graduate who works in finance and earns a large amount, according to the OP.

The house doesn’t belong to DH, so presumably the agreement between OP and DS was just between the two of them. And if DS hasn’t paid the agreed rent I would think DH would be reluctant to step forward and throw money at him if there’s the viable alternative of DS paying the £400 loan as the rent contribution he should have been making all along. If DS already has a mortgage offer, as OP has said, perhaps DH could offer to make a contribution to the loan payment, so that DS can move out and get on with his life. OP can then pay them back when her insurance payment comes through.

gosh this is such a sad read

i would ask him to move out

you have given him so much

it doesn’t explain why you needed 20k or why you could not borrow that yourself from a bank

gosh I hope you spend as much of the inheritance as you can before he gets his grubby hands on it!!!

@Rosscameasdoody well there's the question of why the house doesn't belong to DH? Could he not get a mortgage? More financial mismanagement maybe?

“How can you call the GF a gold digger? We don't know how long they've been together or what their plans for the future were, plans that are now on hold because of the financial irresponsibility of OP, her DH and her DS. Shes a 30year old woman who may want to start trying for a family but this is now pushed back because of what this family have done.”

The OP said the girlfriend brings nothing to the table deposit wise and didn’t visit the DS at Christmas. His mother is seriously ill and she is making it all about herself and the house a younger successful man has supposedly promised her! There is no way any good person who loves someone who is clearly close to their family experiencing cancer would ever do this. The DS is vulnerable and confused. Unless there is a child in the picture that needs housing, I would be very concerned about this girlfriend.

It’s a horrible mess OP and perhaps none of you have been reasonable to set this situation up in the first place.
I think DS is reasonable to ask for details of how you propose to pay back the loan.
He is unreasonable to scream about it.
You are unreasonable to think of these unpaid loan repayments as in any way offset by gifts and the money you spent on him as a child and young person.
You are reasonable to be scared and upset by this awful situation.

Do we know that OP has critical illness cover or did I miss that 🤔

it doesn’t explain why you needed 20k or why you could not borrow that yourself from a bank

Defaulting on a £20k loan from a bank would have potentially more serious consequences than defaulting on the same loan from her son.

<cynic>

She also says he works hard to keep a roof over their heads.

I assume it’s her name on the mortgage as he was too old but he’s paying for most of it and as they’re married it’s half his.

Perhaps he’s trying to stay out of it to keep the peace.