Reply to Shared family beach house - how to handle politely?

Forum Index » Family Relationships

Reply to "Shared family beach house - how to handle politely?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Here's the thing about summer homes that are misrepresented by the owner as "everyone's" - owner likes the idea of family time spent there, but as title holder does not want to share control.  
I get it - I've helped do physical labor and maintain my Ex-DH's family summer home that was constantly being represented as a shared retreat for all of us.  That's the only way they can get their guests (i.e. kids and grandkids) to pitch in and rake, caulk, open/close the pool, deal with the failing septic, etc... But, at the end of the day, nobody but his parents could invite guests and if anybody dared to invite a friend, the parents made sure to park themselves there on the couch and let everyone know who was boss.  
Dear OP, it's not truly a shared home and your DD's sentimentality is misplaced.  She's at a good age to understand the social power dynamics of holding /not-holding landed gentry status.  And so she should never get roped into cleaning gutters that does not belong to her.

[/quote]

We have a similar situation on my stepmother's side. Her parents owned a bay house that while rundown and ramshackle, is very sentimental to stepmom, as she grew up spending long weekends and summer there. Her parents died and the house passed to stepmom and her 2 siblings. Equal shares to to 3 children. Stepmom and her siblings each have 3 children. So soon, there will be 9 owners of this house. Some don't live in the states, there is always drama about paying for the maintenance of the house. Stepmom's siblings were very controlling about decision making and use of the house - so my siblings and I rarely went, even when invited as we did not want to be seen as moochers once we hit late teens and realized this dynamic.  As the 9 kids have become adults, it is pretty clear that they were not happy with their parents' iron grip on the house and increasing demands for money for repairs and maintenance, but then no quid pro quo with use. My dad has put a lot of his money toward the upkeep of this house, as stepmom's spouse, and my siblings and I still rarely go, as we never liked dealing with the stepmom siblings playing couch commando exactly as PP mentioned. They would actually sit on the couch and control the one television in the house, refusing to put on a show that others would enjoy, just to flex their power.  As a teen, I was required to do a lot of work to help keep this house up. I have cleaned gutters, cut grass, weeded, helped rebuild a crumbling shed, laid a paver patio, laid a gravel driveway, scrubbed pool tiles, in the algae filled pool, cleaned bathrooms, cleaned the kitchen endlessly and the list goes on. Far more than my fair share for the few weekends of shared use and sleeping on the floor in a sleeping bag in the kids room that I received in return each year.  Now both of stepmoms siblings have passed and there is even more drama as the 6 adult children (all with spouses and kids) are now co-owners with stepmom.  this house has 3 bedrooms and 1 bathroom btw.

[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics