I 40(F) and husband 42(M) have 4 children our oldest son 22(M) lives on his own. We have 20(F), 18(M), 10(F) and our 2 year old grandson that live with us. Our 20 year old daughter is currently a single mom in nursing school she lives with us we pay for pretty much all expenses seeing as she is in school and we want to see her succeed. I also dropped my full time hours at work in order to help with childcare so she can work and attend school. We have had to cut back and money is much tighter but all in all we are able to help her at this time and thankful we can help her as we were also teen parents with not much help we lived on our own worked paid our own bills lived on a tight budget.
Now comes the AITA part, so as stated we pretty much support our daughter and grandson while she is in school. We are also paying for her attorney for child support/custody not something she wanted to do but the father started a legal battle after she tried to work things out civilly. We have taken all of our children on spring break vacations and summer vacations every year and always paid for these trips. Last summer our daughter decided her and grandson were going to go on a trip to Alaska to visit friends that live there. They would fly out the day we returned from our summer trip. Husband and I kept our mouths shut and let her go. Now I caught wind she is planning another trip to Alaska when her semester ends in spring. I told her absolutely not as we are financially supporting her and our grandson and also footing thousands in legal fees for an attorney. Her taking a trip and spending that kind of money is disrespectful in my opinion. If she can spend that money than she should be paying her own bills. I told her although she is an adult and can make her own choices that she lives in our house and those choices come with consequences such as her car, insurance, phone and all other financial support would be over. Essentially this would be the straw that broke the camels back. As much as I don’t want to see her struggle as a young single mom I’m also not going to let her be disrespectful and take advantage of our willingness to help.
She is upset and says this is no different than her going on spring break or summer vacation with us as a family and that I’m just trying to hold her back and don’t want her to travel or have any fun. That she deserves to travel and go on adventures if she chooses to do so.
So AITA for telling her she will essentially be cut off from help financially if she chooses to take this expensive trip? Do you consider taking a trip as a family and paying the adult child’s expenses different then them taking a trip on their own and spending thousands of dollars when they aren’t supporting themselves.