'AITA for refusing to help the family of the girl I was going to marry?'
When a loved one passes away, the people they left behind often fight over who really deserves their assets. Things can get messy especially when people are grieving.
Reddit user u/Unable_Sandwich9545 tragically lost his fiancée in a horrific accident 10 years ago. Her family blamed him for the accident and refused to let him even attend the funeral. Now, a decade later they are asking him to fork over her life insurance money so they can pay for their other child's college tuition.
"AITA for refusing to help the family of the girl I was going to marry?"
He writes:
I (M40) was going to put refusing to help my ex fiancee's family. It's been ten years and my head is still not okay. When I was 30 and my girlfriend, MG, was 24 she was hit by a car. She had moved across the country to be with me after she finished university.
She took a long time to die. Long enough for her parents to come and forbid me from going to the hospital to be with her. When she died they took the body back to Maine and told me not to come to the funeral. They said that they would have me removed. I respected their wishes I had to find out where her grave was from one of her old roommates.
I only went to see it once because her mom was there with her little brother when I went. She lost it on me. It was my fault that she was in city far from her family and it would not have happened if I hadn't dragged her to California.
He told me he hated me like only a seven year old can. So I left. And never went back. I was broken for a long time. I eventually met my wife and we have been married for almost a year now.
I was working for a FAANG company when MG died. I was the beneficiary to her life insurance. I was having trouble concentrating at work so I took a leave of absence. After a couple of months of trying to join her I realized she would hate what I was doing to myself. So I resigned my job and used the insurance money to fund my own little start-up.
I'm not Oprah rich but I do okay. MG's little brother was recently accepted to an Ivy League school. I know this because him and his parents all reached out to see if I would give them the insurance money to help with his tuition.
'These are people who I thought would be in my life forever and they abandoned me at the lowest point in my life. I had friends but I have no other family. They didn't just abandon me. They made it worse.'
Now they need my help. They say that if I don't give them the money they will have to take out a mortgage on their house to pay for his education. They said I was in the wrong to even keep the money and that it should have gone to them to begin with.
I loved these people once but they destroyed me. The money they want is negligible to me. I could give it to them without in any way compromising my lifestyle. I want to brag about how little it will affect me but I feel petty. It's just not much to me but it is life changing to them.
My wife says it's my choice. I want to punish them for how they treated me. But I know MG would want me to help her family. AITA if I don't give them the money.
Reddit users agreed that this grieving man is 'Not The A**hole' for refusing to give his ex-fiancée's life insurance money to her family. They not only unfairly blamed him for MG's tragic death, they also completely excluded him from the grieving process. They still haven't apologized and are only turning to him now because they want a payday.
Many have commented that if MG had wanted them to have her life insurance money, she would have made them the beneficiaries. Do you think the family is entitled to the money?
·NTA and the truth is, that money is gone. You spent it when you needed it, that was her gift to you and her choice that she made. What money you have now, you earned yourself. There is no debt to be repaid, no obligation to fulfill, nothing they are entitled to. What you can afford is irrelevant.
If she wanted them to have the money, they would have been the beneficiaries.
OP, did the parents or brother even bother to apologize for the way they treated you? Or for the awful things they said? For not allowing you to come to the funeral? For not allowing you into the hospital?
You don't owe them anything. If they threaten to bad mouth you...well, they are already doing that now. They'll never stop. And if you give them money, that won't be the end of it. They will continue to ask for more. Her death is not your fault. NTA
NTA, MG would have also wanted you at the hospital and funeral. MG would have also wanted her family to support you as well as you support them. But that didn’t happen. If they have to take out a mortgage that’s their problem.
They made it very clear they did not went you as part of the family. You have no obligation to them. These are essentially strangers asking you to help with their son's tuition. NTA
NTA. If they’re going to talk about what their daughter would have wanted: She chose to have a life insurance benefiting you, not them. And she wanted to marry you so she certainly wouldn’t have wanted her family to blame you and ban you from their lives. They’re massive AHs.
NTA. Another case of they reap what they sow. If they cared about you (as opposed to the money) they wouldn't have barred you from the funeral and cut you off completely until you had something they wanted.