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[quote=Anonymous]My mother is in her early 70s and does not live nearby. My parents divorced when I was young, and while I was and remain very close to my father, my relationship with my mother has always been distant. Without going into too many details, she made a lot of bad and selfish choices during my youth, which have taken me decades of therapy to sort through. We've never been completely estranged, but it is a real chore to spend more than an hour with her.

Among my mother's bad choices was financial management, and a second husband who got away with most of their money and property in their divorce five years ago. She cashed out most of her modest pension to help his son buy a house, and started taking social security early so now her monthly payments are far lower than they otherwise would be. She also has had a compulsive spending problem and racked up a ton of credit card debt.

Her financial situation has gotten to a point where she will either need to declare bankruptcy and scrape by on a very modest remaining pension and reduced social security, or I (the only child) will need to help support her. She barely ever calls, but last week she asked if we're able to help her out so she doesn't need to file bankruptcy. DH and I do pretty well by national standards (probably middle class by DC suburbs standards), and have fairly aggressively built our 401k's and other savings. We have a son in elementary school who, for a variety of reasons, we had been planning to put into private school next year. If I have to start supporting my mom on a monthly basis, private school will be out of the question. I hate the thought of my mother being in poverty toward the end of her life, but I get angry thinking about our son getting a worse education because my mother has made some pretty bad life choices.

DH is amazing and said he'll support whatever I choose, but I'm really torn. I'm wondering if others have been in a similar situation and what they have done. [/quote]

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