In-Laws Offer 'Free' House as a Wedding Gift, But Only If SIL Can Move In
It's an exciting time as a parent when the kids are old enough to get married. There's a lot of change, but hopefully, it's good, and planning a wedding can be fun. One family was excited when their son got engaged so they offered to buy him and fiancée a wedding gift that's far grander than most can afford. However, after they accepted, the parents added a condition to their offer.
A bride-to-be (OP) took to Reddit to get some advice about a wedding gift her in-laws were offering.
Posting to Reddit's AITA forum, the OP shared that she and her fiancé have been thinking about buying a house.
"We’ve been saving for this for years and have enough saved up to buy something small (our city’s housing market is pretty insane, so even with a good combined income, most things are out of our range). We don’t need a lot of space and aren’t planning to have kids anytime soon, if ever, so small works just fine," she wrote.
"However, as a wedding gift, his parents recently offered to buy us a nice 3-4 bedroom home in their neighborhood," she said. "It’s a bit bigger than we need and a little far from work, but it is an amazing home with a giant yard for our dogs."
That's huge for a wedding gift, but the OP said the offer was in her in-laws' range.
"We were shocked and grateful and didn’t think we could accept," she explained. "His parents are quite wealthy (own about 7-8 investment properties of their own) and have always really welcomed me as family, but it just felt like too much."
The OP said her in-laws kept insisting and said it would help out a few people if they would accept the gift. She explained, "the property was owned by an older friend that had lost his wife and was looking to downsize and didn’t want the hassle of putting it on the market. This way, they could buy the home from with cash (and he’d give them a slight discount on it), and help us get started in life."
Eventually, she agreed "on the condition that they accept all the money we saved for a down payment and that the remaining amount is an interest free loan that we would pay back monthly."
The details were all worked out on the gift and how the engaged couple would eventually pay them back for it.
"Everything seemed great, until this weekend," she explained, "when they sprung on us their other condition: namely, they also want us to agree to let my fiancé’s younger sister live with us indefinitely."
"To be clear, I have no issue with his younger sister, Claire. Claire (26F) and I have always got along really well, which I think is one of the reasons his parents like me so much."
According to the OP, her sister-in-law "has very high functioning autism" but she struggles with "reading social clues. She still lives at home, and they have mentioned they worry about her ever being able to live independently."
They both love Claire, but she can be challenging at times. And that's not always the best when starting off a marriage.
"My fiancé and I love his sister, but she can be difficult to live with, as she has trouble dealing with situations if she doesn’t get her way," she wrote. "When we explained this wouldn’t work for us, it started a giant argument. First, they tried to offer it for free again, i.e, we don’t pay them back for it. We said no. His parents ultimately said they wouldn’t help us buy the house unless we agreed, so we said we don’t want the house then."
Their refusal of the gift didn't go over well. "Now they are calling us selfish for refusing a 'free' house and putting their friend in a tough spot by pulling out last minute, just because we don’t want to share a giant house with his sister," she wrote.
"It’s pretty stressful, and his sister is apparently upset too, as she was looking forward to moving in with us. I can see how it seems a little entitled, especially when we don’t need all that space and would have extra bedrooms," she said.
She asked the Reddit community if she and her fiancé are in the wrong , and commenters let their opinions be known.
"NTA," one Redditor wrote, adding "they are essentially setting you up as her caretakers without ever asking you to take over that role. The house is supposed to be a gift — it shouldn't come with strings."
Another user replied to that response, adding, "This. A gift doesn't have conditions, a contract does."
"NTA," agreed another commenter. "What your in-laws did is really pretty awful. Rather than asking you to do them the enormous favor of taking their adult daughter into your household, they dangled a free house, then sprung a condition and told their adult daughter about it before you accepted."
"NTA," wrote a different user. "You want a home that's yours. You don't want to share it. Say thanks but no thanks and buy something in your budget. They can buy the house for the sister and let her sub-let it or something."
Many in the comments said OP "dodged a bullet" and that might be right. Who knows what else they may "spring" on them?
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