How obligated do you feel to financially help adult siblings?

[Anonymous]

I’m one of four kids and the only one who is financially secure. I have 2 brothers who never attended college and 1 sister that struggles financially despite having a Masters degree. One brother has learning disabilities, lots of kids, and has never maintained any kind of long term employment. He lives with my parents. Older brother is married, owns a home, but has had long term health issues that have prevented him from working the past few years. His wife has been unemployed for over a year. She is trying to find work, gets interviewed, but never gets the job. I think there are too many red flags on her resume.
I have helped all siblings financially in some capacity over the years. In the past two years, I have given older brother and wife around $12K. My parents have been paying their mortgage for months and can’t afford to pay anymore.

I do pretty well but my husband makes a lot of money. I feel bad to see all of my siblings struggling and the burden it places on my parents. I want to help my siblings but all of them struggle and the situation is not going to change with short infusions of cash. Giving them money is always a temporary band aid. If I substantially help one of them, then the others will want help. I can’t take care of all of them forever and I don’t think it’s fair to my husband to give his money to my siblings. I feel bad that we live such a comfortable life without financial worries and they struggle with the most basic aspects of life.

In what ways would you feel obligated to help? At what point do you say no more? I’m truly torn at where our generosity ends and tough love begins.

[Anonymous]

Tough love should begin today.

Do you have kids? Do you have fully funded college for them? Do you have robust savings in case of job loss? Do you have fully maxed out 401k? What about long term care for you and your spouse?
I could go on but you get the idea.

You have to stop enabling them.

[Anonymous]

I don’t feel OBLIGATED at all. But I do help them a ton. My reasons are, first, they’re much younger than me, and I feel maternally toward them. Second, we grew up poor and I managed to lift myself out. I am giving them the same rope they would get if we were raised UMC. Third, I like to help. I love tyenF and I have optimism this is going somewhere great for them.

But like you I don’t want to do bandaids. I am paying for one sibling’s living expenses in nursing school, for example. I paid moving expenses for a new (lucrative) job for the other. Only structural stuff I believe is the right direction.

All this to say I wouldn’t help your siblings if I were you.

[Anonymous]

It doesn't seem like your brothers have incentives to be fully financially independent, as your parents so far and also you to some extent have acted as enablers.

My first worry is that your parents deplete their funds for your brothers and they end up not having enough to cover their own retirement or medical costs should any health issues arise.

What you and your parents have been doing is not a long term solution. I'm sorry.

[Anonymous]

I can relate to this. Both my brother and partner’s brother ask us for financial help quite often. With my brother it started when he needed help with some legal fees that I was very happy to assist with, though we did overextend ourselves. After that urgency passed, it became clear that we were just enabling his bad financial habits and he had no idea where the money was going. Our answer is “no” to everything at this point.

[Anonymous]

Brother with illness yes.

[Anonymous]

Do not enable them and say no.They are adults. Turn off the $$$. They will move on to their next target and write you off once they know they can’t get $$$ from you.

[Anonymous]

If I have the wherewithal to help without suffering (or having my kids suffer) from the expense, I help. Depending of course on the overall circumstances. A ne'er do well brother, maybe not. My innocent neice, sure. Other sister likes to smoke cr#ck, no way.

[Anonymous]

That is very hard, OP. I'm so sorry. My friend is in your situation, but what helps is that they live and work abroad, and only visit those siblings once a year, if that. The distance reduces the guilt. I don't think she helps them much (SIX siblings and their children and grandchildren!), but she feels guilty when she spends on herself and her own kids in their upper middle class lifestyle.

[Anonymous]

I've been in your situation, OP, with trhee of my four brothers. For the mentally ill brother, I helped him, his kids, and, for a while, his wife.

For addition brother, I helped for years until I realized I was being used and stopped.

One brother occasionally needed helped for very specific things like dental work. I helped him and always got paid back.

I suggest helping the brother who is ill and that's it. If you want to help, focus on building relationships with your nieces and nephews and support them.

[Anonymous]

My general approach is that everyone needs to be on a sustainable path where they don’t need long-term help. So I will help with one-off stuff if I know it won’t be repeated- medical, educational etc. But not things like mortgage which can go on forever. They need to downsize to a small apartment.

[Anonymous]

I would say my obligation to help is relatively minimal, because for most of my adolescence and all of my adulthood, I have been left largely to fend for myself while my parents focused on what they viewed as the more immediate needs of my siblings. Starting from when I was about 7 years old and my eldest brother developed a drinking problem and had major behavioral issues. I have always been "the good kid" -- good grades, no behavioral issues, went to the inexpensive in-state school because it was easier financially for the family (despite being accepted to several much more competitive colleges), self-funded grad school, totally financially independent, paid for own wedding and home (none of our siblings did this), and have received zero help from parents for kids (not financial, no childcare, not even emotional support really as we both had siblings going through major upheavals when our kids were born and family focus was on that).

So I feel that I have made my contribution. I've been in therapy (that I found and paid for -- my parents have paid for therapy and even in-treatment mental health care for my siblings, my ILs have done the same for my BIL) since I was in my 20s to deal with issues from parental neglect, major people pleaser tendencies, and just kind of learning from scratch that it is okay for me to have needs and to ask loved ones to help meet them. I had kids late in life specifically because I felt I needed to address those issues before I had them (all my siblings had their kids young, not one of them thought "maybe I should deal with my mental health or addiction issues before making myself responsible for someone else's well being). I also got married later for the same reason (two of my siblings are divorced and my parents have helped them financially and with things like therapy and moral support through those events).

So I have a mentally healthy and financially stable life because I figured out how to make that happen, with very little help from my family. Certainly zero help from siblings, though I am grateful to my parents for paying for college at least. That was my contribution -- to have no needs within my family. But no, I am not going to take money away from my kid's future, or from my retirement, to throw down the bottomless pit of assistance that my siblings, and my BIL, have established with our parents. They will need to figure it out. I wish them the very best of luck (not sarcasm, I really do).

[Anonymous]

At some point, people need to learn to take care of themselves.
Your parents' "burden" is their own- they chose it. It is not your burden- don't let it become that. It will do more harm than good to your siblings and their kids (who will then never develop a real work ethic)

The best thing you can do is give them the gift of your time, invite them over, host nice family dinners, and outings (instead of continuing to support their bad habits/lifestyles). Let your nieces and nephews see what the product of hard work looks like. That is the only thing that will give the next generation a chance at success.

[Anonymous]

Zero obligation.

I -might- feel differently if my sister was even remotely easy to be around and took responsibility for her own actions/consequences. But she doesn't.

[Anonymous]

My older brother has had mental health challenges his entire life but refuses to get help for them. At his age, now a senior, he never will.

I've provided him with certain levels of assistance over many years (utilities, car insurance, non-covered medical items) but I am becoming weary of it.

As he's aged, he's become much more acerbic and nasty. He NEVER initiates contact with me unless it is to let me know he has a bill I need to pay. He never asks how me and DH/our family are doing, his focus is entirely on himself and his woes. He is hyper-focused on every move his neighbors make and literally screams at me about what they do. Yet he will not leave his house and try to focus on other things. He has essentially become a recluse.

I have gotten to the point where I question why I continue to support someone who cares nothing for me other than my checkbook. I think I do it because I remember how he used to be and how we had a special bond as siblings. Which we have no more. I know that his mental issues are not his fault, but refusing to get help for them is.

As my own retirement issues/finances loom, I have decided that when supporting him becomes a financial strain for me, I will have to stop supporting him.