Helping each other out financially

[someguy69]

I'll try to keep this short and to the point, but there is a lot of history to fill in, so bear with me I'm in my late 30s, my mother is almost 60, my brother is a teenager. My parents divorced long ago.

 

When my grandfather was dying (my grandmother had already passed away a few years earlier), my mother did not want her childhood home to be sold, so she convinced me to buy out my aunt's half of the house (against the better judgment of my dying grandfather who warned me that it was going to be a burden). So we signed onto a mortgage to pay off the sister (my mother had to co-sign as she was the co-owner), but the mortgage and utility payments were my responsibility. She said that I could afford it, and that she needed my help.

 

Over the next couple years, my mother then spent a considerable amount of money (about equal to the mortgage) renovating the basement and garage of this house, and she turned the home into a rental property to help pay for all of this. For the first few years, she collected all the rent, and would give some to me to help cover "my" mortgage payments, and "my" utility payments. She was paying the taxes.

 

Next, she decided that she needed to renovate her own house, which had suddenly become "way too small" for her and my brother, even though it seemed fine when I was a kid. She wanted to put a massive addition onto her house, but before she did, she had to move some debt over onto "our" house, which of course included the money she spent renovating the basement and garage, as well as an additional $20,000. I was now responsible for a mortgage of about $135,000 for a home I did not get to enjoy (it was rented out, and in another town 2 hours away), and while I was receiving some rents to help pay for these mortgages and utilities, etc, they didn't cover the expenses. I was still "helping her out".

 

Once the addition was complete, I did manage to get her to equalize things with the rents a bit. The result was that I had to also pay the taxes, but now the rents went directly to me (most of the time), although sometimes she would request a rent to two to "help her out". The rents rarely covered the expenses, and any time when there was some extra rent coming in was when she needed to take extra.

 

After I paid down the mortgage a bit, she had us take out a line of credit on the house to "help her out" some more. She said it would come in handy in the future should I ever need it.

 

Fast-forward a few years, I got married, and now I am trying to build my own house (I found an amazing property with a tear-down house on it). Unfortunately for me, banks do not like lending money without significant house equity, so I had to do tremendous hoop-jumping and sell some assets and investments to purchase it. My mother showed no interest in helping me out, but I managed to buy the property myself.

 

Now beings a long process of preparing to get rid of the old shack and build a new home, and the bank isn't helping out any. So after a year of work, planning, preparation, coming into some helpful money, my wife and I start on this worrisome venture of building a new custom house. The line of credit I shared with my mother did come in handy, but not without my mother scrutinizing every bit of money that went on it.

 

Fast-forward a year of dream-crushing road blocks and hurdles to get the house to about 50% complete (foundation, framing and roof), and finally the bank seems willing to lend some money to help complete things. We got approval, but two months of red tape later, we're still waiting for the money (any day now), and contractors are getting steamed.

 

I finally break down and tell my mother of our bank troubles, hoping that now that she has her dream home built, and piles of spare equity, and since I "helped her out" so many times, that maybe she'd lend us some to help us tide things over until the bank finally releases the funds...

 

So for the first couple days she helps me out by suggesting that I contact all these various credit card banks (MBNA, etc) to see if they'll lend me some, because that's apparently how she did it when the bank didn't give her enough. So every day she'd call me to ask me if I called this credit card company, or that credit card company, and what happened.

 

Next, she decided she could help me out more by taking on a more personal financial advisory role by telling me I needed to stop wasting my money so much, and complaining that I haven't been paying off our line of credit. I was making regular payments, but she was displeased I wasn't paying it down with large payments.

 

Today, after I told her that best I could hope for was (if approved) a credit card company would take at least a month to process everything to do a balance transfer, was the first time my mother considered actually helping me out financially, although it was with much reservation as she's saving up her lines of credit to pay for my brother's college/university tuition.

 

It came with all sorts of preconditions, of which I'm sure I haven't yet heard all of. It seems that one of them is to first pay down the line of credit -- though I'm not quite sure how paying out $1000 from my next paycheque onto our line of credit (as opposed to paying it to a contractor who's waiting to get paid) is supposed to display a sense of responsibility -- and she also wants me to promise (and somehow display) to stop being wasteful with money, and that I need to grow up and be more sensible, and of course make regular payments.

 

Any advice?

[catfeeder]

Ask Mom to buy out your half of the house?