Anyone in a family where one sibling received a lot more help?

[Anonymous]

feel blessed that you dont need to ask for help from others

[Anonymous]

I think parents do the best they can to help all their kids, but as others have said many times one kid need more help than the other. In my experience, my partner and I both have siblings that have needed a lot more help than we have - they also live closer to our parents. We look at it as just owning the fact that we are making it on our own - and are happy with where we are; we don't begrudge our parents, but they also don't tell us how to live (which they are more likely to comment on with our siblings).

[Anonymous]

I assume the inheritance will even it out - he just got his early.

[Anonymous]

I feel like my siblings would say this about me, but "help" happened differently. For example, all of them had at least 6+ years of private school education and wedding that parents paid for. I was an all public school kid, and didn't have a wedding.

I'm grateful for any financial assistance, but it's important to acknowledge that if you really want to count pennies, it may not be different in the end when you count a sum of life costs.

[Anonymous]

Yes. My brother has a very spotty job history with 2 firings and 2 layoffs plus 1 short sale (lost all his equity). He was also arrested once over unpaid parking/traffic tickets and crashed a couple cars.

My parents have given him hundreds of thousands (most lost in the short sale). He was just fired again so I guess they’ll have to start paying his rent and stuff again.

He’s married with 3 kids and his wife refuses to work, which drives my parents nuts. But they don’t want the kids to suffer.

I p haven’t taken money from them since college and have a much better relationship with them.

[Anonymous]

Wow that is a big difference in how you were treated!

I find it odd that PPs are trying to come up with an explanation for it. It’s possible there is an explanation but it’s likely it was just unfair. And I do think that parents should try to be as fair as they can to kids. This would bum me out not because of the money but because of being treated differently.

But of course life isn’t fair and parents make mistakes and that’s okay. I would do some CBT exercises about this and I’m sure I’d get over it.

Once when I was a teenager I asked my dad why he spend so much more time with my siblings and so much more money on them. He said “well have you heard the phrase ‘the squeaky wheel gets the grease?’”

I don’t think that was okay of him to do, much less tell me that he wasn’t giving me attention because I was doing okay in life, but I do know that his heart was in the right place and that he loves me. And that’s what really matters.

[Anonymous]

My parents hate me so my sister and my mom's boyfriends kids/grandkids get lots of gifts and stuff and we get nothing. I don't care. But, when it comes to them needing something, I'll remind them of their favorites. My Dad keeps threatening to disown me as I don't agree with his lifestyle choices. He's done it one to many times so I consider myself disowned. He's very generous with his multiple girlfriends and my sibling.

[Anonymous]

Not me but DH is a bit disappointed in the lack of physical help from his parents compared to what they've provided to his sister. Some of it is just that she had kids a lot earlier and lives closer to their parents. They would drive two hours each way to watch the grandkids so SIL/BIL could go out to dinner and watched them a number of times when SIL/BIL travelled too. When DH broached the topic of flying them up here to stay with OUR kids while we went on a milestone anniversary trip, they laughed and asked why we wouldn't just take the kids with us?!

[Anonymous]

My parents were big on giving money with strings attached (i.e. we will pay for private school but only if it's a Catholic school, etc. ) Some of my siblings took the deal while some of us decided that the price was too high. I hate the idea of having to negotiate everything with someone else because they're paying for it (i.e. you have to stay 10 days at Christmas because I'm buying the plane tickets). Also, DH and I are not all that trusting. What happens if not very stable parents decide they're not paying for private school anymore when your kid is halfway through her junior year, etc. Better to have the pride and autonomy that you get through paying your own way.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think treating kids unequally is a great way to sow resentment. Not sure why a parent would ever do this. It's asking for trouble.

+1. It's wildly unbalanced/unfair in my family where my sibling gets all sorts of financial help (a car! mortgage payments! etc.) Am I resentful? You betcha.

[Anonymous]

I'm a single woman in my mid forties and have chronic health issues. My sister is a doctor married to another doctor (who comes from immense wealth) and they have two kids.
My parents are able to help me out, which I greatly appreciate. Their assistance has kept me fed and housed some months.
My parents are of the view that my sister should get the same, dollar for dollar. I think it's a bit silly that they'll give her a thousand bucks when she has tens of millions in the bank, just because I needed a thousand bucks to pay my rent one month, but it's their money and their decision.

I do sometimes feel like pointing out that they didn't have to spend a quarter million bucks on a wedding for me...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think treating kids unequally is a great way to sow resentment. Not sure why a parent would ever do this. It's asking for trouble.

+1. It's wildly unbalanced/unfair in my family where my sibling gets all sorts of financial help (a car! mortgage payments! etc.) Am I resentful? You betcha.

Same in my H's family and it also created a very unhealthy codependency, both financial and also emotional. We are determined to treat ours the same and to make sure they are independent.

[Anonymous]

Fairness is not the same as equal amounts. You can be fair by providing for your kids when they need it, not dolling out extra cash in even piles. If your kids don't understand that it's not their money to count and cannot empathize with their own family of origin, then a lot of other things went wrong along the way.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Fairness is not the same as equal amounts. You can be fair by providing for your kids when they need it, not dolling out extra cash in even piles. If your kids don't understand that it's not their money to count and cannot empathize with their own family of origin, then a lot of other things went wrong along the way.

Its situational IMO. If one sibling gets a house BOUGHT for them with the parents calling it an "investment property" and the sibling paying 2/3 market rate rent and the other siblings get no money towards housing/DPA/etc. its pretty blatant. Especially when the "family" is a combined family and the house sibling is from one parent and the other siblings from another. 3k towards a car twice. Other siblings had to take a loan out and parent co-signed but supplied no money towards car. Weekly babysitting is provided to same sibling so they can have date nights and party because they were so young when they had kids. No babysitting availability for other sibling with kid.

Parents paid for school for youngest 3 siblings (including house sibling) but oldest sibling has 70k in loans. Mom did pay off a student loan that had 100 left though and was like look at what I did for you!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I assume the inheritance will even it out - he just got his early.

If the inheritance is split equally, and the pot is smaller because it was spent unequally on the heirs, then it does affect what you get.