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I’ve heard a lot of stories before about parents loaning their children money but then NOT accepting the reimbursement years later…
But this is a different kind of story about paying back parents.
And it comes to us from Reddit’s “Am I the A**hole?” page.
Read on to see what happened.
AITA for expecting my adult daughter to pay back what she owes me?
“My (48M) daughter (21F), Aria, abandoned us (her stepmother, younger half-sister and me) when she was 15 to go live with my enabling ex-wife, Sandra, and her husband.
Until then, we had 50/50 custody, but Sandra has always been less “strict” than me. She’s always let Aria do what she wants and has never had any home rules. She also buys Aria everything she wants so she will want to live with her.
Sandra lives in the same town where Aria’s highschool was, while I live 25 mins away. So, one of my rules was that if she went to meet up with a friend there (meaning I had to drive her), the next time they met it was her friend’s turn to come. If the friend’s parents didn’t want to drive the kid here, then Aria wasn’t allowed to meet them again while she was with me. Everything was fine that way for years.
The major fallout happened in her last year of highschool (she was 15). She went on a trip to another country with her school and didn’t bother to send more than a couple texts when she was away for 5 days. So I decided to ground her, because she had to learn to respect and show some love for her family.
She insisted she had sent messages to her mother but we had barely heard from her. She’s never had a lot of friends, but she had been invited her to some popular girl’s birthday party. This was my punishment, not going to that party after forgetting about her family.
She got upset and started calling her mother to come pick her up, but it was illegal to get her if it was my week. Plus, she wanted to go to her mother’s because she would lift my punishment and let her go to the party. Her mother came by the end of the week and I told Aria that she didn’t have to come back if she didn’t want to.
I waited, but I heard nothing from her again. Her sister kept asking me why she didn’t come back, and I didn’t know how to explain to her that she didn’t love us and that she preferred staying with her mother, her parties and her free-of-rules life.
Over the years we’ve communicated through lawyers, because Sandra has 0 intentions on helping me get my daughter back (she finally has her to herself). They’ve been demanding that I pay for child support, even now that she’s 21 years old. I have to pay for that and for half of her college expenses (by law).
When Aria turned 18, an adult, I started adding up everything I had to pay in an Excel that I send to Sandra when I update it so she knows what damage she is doing to our daughter (I expect Aria to pay her debt, but I gave Sandra the option to pay for her to which she refused). We are now at 18K.
Aria has been trying to get in touch again. I told her that we can’t fix the emotional part unless we fix the money part first. She needs to prove to me that she doesn’t only care about the money. Sandra says I’m an a**hole but I think she is, since she has done nothing but try to take my daughter away and she finally has what she wants.
So, AITA?”
Now let’s check out what Reddit users said about this.
This reader said this guy is a terrible father and they don’t blame his daughter for leaving.
Photo Credit: Reddit
And another Reddit user said that this guy is definitely the a**hole.
Photo Credit: Reddit
Another individual argued that this guy only cares about money.
Photo Credit: Reddit
What do you think?
Let us know in the comments.
Thanks a million!
