Reply to AITA for not wanting DH to give MIL 4K to clear a debt

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]OP, I don't think you should lend her the money because it's harming your marriage.

You and your husband need to be a united front on this. Your MIL's financial woes do not come before your marital happiness.

And I agree, if MIL is not asking for the money (do you even know if she would accept it?) I would say she should pull from her own savings to pay off her debt before her kids have to pay it for her.[/quote]

They aren’t united, and DH has just as much a say as she does.  What about his marital happiness?[/quote]

How happy will they be when MIL moves in because she's bankrupt? DH is being delusional about his own happiness.[/quote]

I don’t see signs of this.  She isn’t pulling from her retirement, she is paying off the loan without missing payments, it was a needed renovation not a splurge, and she is close to a fully paid off house which she can downsize from.  This doesn’t strike me as an out of control spender.[/quote]

We don't know if she's an out of control spender-- OP's DH didn't even know about the HELOC. But we do know that she doesn't understand money and makes bad decisions, and she's not getting any younger. This isn't about the spending. And she is NOT paying off the loan, she is merely paying the interest i.e. making zero progress on the loan, and it has a variable rate so her payment could increase at any time.

There is a lot we don't know here. She is not that close to a fully paid off house, she's got a variable rate HELOC which OP's DH wants to bail her out of, but we don't know the precise amount but probably around like $40K. We don't know what other debts she has-- credit card, MLM, medical, who knows. We don't know her Social Security income, we don't know how much SIL plans to pay her for babysitting or how long that will last. We don't know how long she'll be able to work at all even for SIL, for her health. We don't know if she has long-term care insurance or any other insurance that can be utilized. We don't know the value of the home. There are a lot of unknowns here. She could have a costly medical problem, she could have her health prevent her from babysitting, the house could develop a costly problem, who knows. This situation is NOT good. $200K plus a normal house is nowhere near enough savings for a 69-year-old.  The cold hard facts are that unless she dies pretty young, she's going to zero out her assets and OP/DH and SIL are going to have to cover everything that Medicaid and Social Security don't.[/quote]

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