Things came to a head. She is now in our home. Thank you @twig93 for the reminder because when she said she was moving out, the father immediately sat her down and listed all the things she’s cut off from, and included health insurance. (And yes, another child is still on the insurance). The car is in her name, thankfully.
They have offered that if she moves back home they will pay for her again.
The mother was intensely manipulative and we gave her nothing to bite from. “I agree, we do all want what is best for her.” “Thank you for telling us that you’re not angry at us.”
Laying in bed and unwinding on mobile. We took her to grab fast food because she hadn’t eaten.
She had a few things packed in her room and was intending to sit down with parents. We already had semi-definite plans for her to move here in a couple of weeks after her school job concluded. She wanted to explain she needed her space, etc. and that she was going to visit us over the weekend. Mom immediately melted down. I got a small treat of it through the windows at one point while we were packing - “You leaving me is like dying, dying would be easier”. And just wailing.
Mother had made goddaughter work at the school with her as an aide to special needs kids, and tried to guilt her with abandoning the kids who love her and will be crying to know she’s gone. Mother asked both me and spouse if we would abandon our parents. (I didn’t want to engage and tell her my sister bought a house at 19 and my brother moved to the opposite side of the country at 18.)
Mother said “she just needs to get well, she needs to stay here while she gets well rather than quitting and running away from everything, you don’t just run from your problems, do you?”
While we were eating, she told us whatever rent we wanted and whatever chores she could do, just let her know. We aren’t charging her rent unless this somehow becomes longer than the summer. Chores, we will get to.
She has as clear a head as you could expect right now. We already have discussed applying for jobs. We’ve discussed moving her cash from accounts with her dad to her own. She has some cash. I don’t have a sense if that’s $3,000 or $25,000. Her acceptable car was bought out of a grandparent’s inheritance.
We have not broached going back to college yet. She dropped out for health reasons related to long COVID, dysautonomia (autodysnomia maybe?) causing blood pressure issues, fainting, etc. Being around mother didn’t help. I need to get a better handle on her plans. She took like 6 credits online this past semester so I think she intends to finish. These are later topics, I was surprised she was prepared to discuss these so practically. But this has been loosely planned in case needed. Just didn’t expect it suddenly.
Oh, through all of this situation of mom wailing and guilt-tripping and occasionally dipping into anger (which I could feel our presence tear through that emotion), father wasn’t even present. He was in the backyard doing something.
His only involvement in the entire move-out process was to sit her down and tell her that she won’t receive any further financial support from the family until she moves back in. Definitely no hug, no last mention that she’s welcome back, etc.
You remind me of my parents. Throughout my entire childhood we were always taking people in who were less fortunate, or who needed a place to stay. It continued after I moved out of the house. Sometimes it didn’t end so well (you can only lead a horse to water, they have to decide to drink), but they do it out of the kindness of their hearts. Right now they have a woman living with them who is mostly blind, and has lost both legs due to diabetes, and has to have dialysis 2-3 times a week. This lady’s two adult sons don’t help her out very much for whatever reason, so my parents are literally the reason she’s still alive.
Anyway, I’m glad that there are people like you in the world, and hope that if the opportunity came to me I would step up and act the same.
That’s a really tough situation. At least my case is just somebody who needs stability and assistance, not true care. Good on your parents.
We’ve had 3/4 quite good outcomes of homing people in the past, the remaining 1/4 is dependent which of the two of us you ask, but either way it’s behind us.
I would move her money out of those accounts ASAP before the mom gets the dad to take it out and it’s gone. You don’t want her to go to get it down the road thinking it will be there and it’s not, for whatever reason.
Where you put it from there is a question you can answer with her, but I would make sure it’s not in the same banking institution. The more obstacles you can put up to them getting back at her, financially and otherwise, the better.
It’s not something I felt necessary on day 1, because dad seemed cold but not like he wanted to scorch the earth. However, I am discussing with her tonight that she should get it handled by this weekend at least.
Bit more detail, I believe she has in the vicinity of $20k saved.
She plans to complete her degree online and can afford another 3 semesters right now. Her schedule hasn’t been all full-time but I believe she has around 3 average semesters completed, so she’s short on paying for about 2 and doesn’t need to handle loans for that right now.
I mean, this is pretty low-hanging fruit for Dad to go after. I would put a pretty high priority on protecting her college money. If it were my goddaughter I’d probably be driving her to the bank when they open in the morning.
You’re right. I’ll have a talk with her about getting it handled tomorrow. You’d think father would be smart enough to know if he does this, it guarantees she’s not going back, but they don’t strike me as logical.
Easy way to think about that: would he rather have the relationship with his daughter, or would he rather have the cash?
Or: would he rather have the relationship with his daughter and catch neverending hell from his wife, or would he rather have the cash just so his wife is a harpy at him?
She is taking off in a few hours to handle the banks. Parents went on vacation immediately after their daughter left them, so unless they already took the money yesterday, it shouldn’t be urgent enough to pressure her to leave right this damn second. But it’s being handled by midday.
She mentioned some packages she’d bought delivered to her parents and she assumed they’ll throw them in the trash. I’m getting her set up with mail rerouting for the next year, it’s close to free.
$1.10 for mail forwarding up to, I believe it was 6 months. There was a larger fee for longer. Perhaps I could have gone to the Post Office and had it free, may have been just for credit card processing.
The bulk of her money is safe. She went to one bank and opened a separate account, explaining she wanted her father to have nothing to do with it. She also has a second bank account where apparently her mom can access her savings but not her checking, and that only represents maybe $1,000 versus my guess is $15k that we just kept safe. I know, I know, different institutions would be better and she should close the second account, but let’s not overwhelm her. I don’t think father will try to illicitly engineer access to her new account. We will handle cleanup of the small details as we go, and hey, if parents do steal $1,000 then they’ve really turned the final screw on trying to harm their daughter to regain control.
Father texted the morning after goddaughter left to tell her that she was removed from their auto insurance, and she didn’t respond, we just moved to get her insured.
He called this afternoon to say, “Were you ever going to respond to my text?”
“I have the insurance handled.”
“OK, click”
I learned from her that she actually has three older siblings who parents have cut out of their life. One for converting to Islam, one for getting pregnant, one for deciding not to become a doctor like dad after they began paying for medical school. I have the feeling that Mom wanted that because those 3 kids were from a prior marriage. With this one, I think Mom is mostly sad, but I don’t believe sad enough to change her ways for long, and Dad is ready to remove his fourth child from his life (with #5 expressing jealousy that she has to wait to move across the country.)