HeavyHeart, EmptyPurse

Lucifer

I have a thought... At the end of day these people are Pete's parents. Love them or hate them - no matter what anyone says, they are still his parents. No matter what they did to me - I couldn't forget that they are my parents (even tho they are behaving like complete scum!!!).

I think it would help Pete's conscience (no matter what he says) for you to release the equity in your house first, then sell the flat (with them as sitting tennants - so the agreement hasn't been broken). Clear all your debts and rent a small place nearer Pete's work (but as a retirement home too - as it is only 5 years away). You have no children to worry about for the future - just yourselves. The equity fund from the flat sale can be invested and then used to supplement the income once your beloved retires.

A life assurance policy would also be an expenditure requirement. As you are alot younger and need to provide for your future too!! My hubby is 12 years older than me, and you have to be reasonable and think of this. If you have £160K in your house, £120K in the flat and he earns a good income - even if you clear all debts yo still have £135 - £140K left to invest (depending on where you live could you buy a ground floor 1 bed flat in your area for that??).

If you could buy outright a small pad, or invest £140K for retirement plus 5 years of hefty savings from the flat mortgage. You will be sorted. You will be together, financially secure, and depending on your health issues - you will probably see an improvement once the stress is removed.

Hope you are feeling better today - Love to you both.

elona

I love the idea of the house the parents are in being sold with them as sitting tenants - or else not paying the mortgage and having the bank repossess it!

Big hug and good luck.

I think a lot of the trouble is that they see Pete as their "possession" and not as a son that should be helped to grow and live their own life.

To "parent" actually means to care for and help grow not just give birth to!

niceshoes_2

Just wanted to post and say that I too have read your post from start to finish this morning and wanted to say that I am thinking of you too. Your first post literally bought a tear to my eye.

I can not believe that parents would treat their children like that and I am also mortified that Petes siblings are standing by and allowing it to happen, assuming they know the full circumstances. Do you know if they subsidise the parents at all - could they be giving them cash each month to live?

Do you pay all the bills on the flat too - such as gas, electric, TV, council tax etc. If the answer is yes, get your names off the bills, cancel the payments and notify them by letter that you will no longer be responsible for paying them and that they will need to pay them in the future.

The selling of your house sounds like a good idea as it seems to have the largest amount of equity in it. Renting or buying a small mobile home also sounds like it could solve your debt problem.

In terms of the flat that the parents live in, I would be loathe to keep it. Although many say look at it as a pension investment, the parents could live for another 30 years, by which time, you will have gone past the point where you actually need it (you would be 70? and Pete 85?) You need the money/flat now, not in 30 years time, and besides the thought of another 30 years of paying to let them live in my flat would finish me off.

Another thought is do you have an up to date will. If anything happened to either of you, it sounds like the parents would look to get everything that they could out of the situation. Might be worth getting something drawn up to state that they get absoulutly nothing if anything did happen.

Like others have said, think positive. Although you have a substantial amount of debt, you do have assets that you can sell and use to pay off some/all of the debt, its just a case of sorting out those inlaws first and getting them out of the house.

You don't really mention how Pete feels towards his parents thorough your thread - do you think that he is strong enough to cut the ties and start to get tough with them?

Please post back and look at this thread as a start to your road to debt free and happiness. The support that you will get on these boards is invaluable and it never amazes me how much people genuinly care xx

niceshoes_2

scheming_gypsy wrote:

i've not read all 10 pages to see if anybody has asked this, but what would happen to that contract if you and Pete got divorced?

I don't think that Pete and Heavy Heart are married - apologies if I am wrong though!

Ember999

Hester wrote:

Ember, I know you write from a good heart and with the very best of intentions but i do think you're lucky to be able to inhabit such a clear-cut, black and white world. A lot of people live in a mind-set coloured with a lot more shades of grey. For example, I love my husband dearly; I've learnt to accept that part of the complicated human package that is my life partner, is a person deeply guilt ridden about his parents, for all sorts of complex historical reasons. So that we regularly send a considerable chunk of our income to help buy his parents, who inhabit a large, comfy house, a new sofa, or get their roof done, etc. etc. We're not in debt (now) but we have a young family in a one bed flat and struggle there. However, I accept the staus quo for all sorts of reasons that probably wouldn't make much sense to others, not because I'm weak, but because I'm acutely senstive to the long term emotional muddle my OH is in. Jen sounds very bright and competent and I'm sure she has the bottle to have walked away from Pete and his parents years ago if she so wanted to, but obviously she loves him very deeply, in a truly loving way, that encompasses all the most awkward parts of a person's pysche as well as the more amenable charateristics. Thank goodness for that, or poor Pete would still be single and living under his mother's thumb, and what a truly impoverished life that would be, on a different scale altogether from financial impoverishment.

That's a very good point, I can't argue with you at all. Life isn't always so simple when you love someone. But I suppose I expect when I am loved to be put first and I guess I have a sucessful marriage because my husband accepts that about me. I have been puzzling about the emotional traumas this situation has caused the original poster to the point of even dreaming about it last night. I get upset with injustice and wish there was an easy solution for the poor lass stuck in this horrendous situation. No one solution is perfect and I felt that sometimes people have to be advised to put themselves first and forget everyone else as others seem to be doing with her. When you love someone deeply it's hard to do what you should do sometimes, I appreciate that, but when all other avenues are exhausted? What then? Pete in my opinion must realise what it is doing to her, to them and their relationship. I'd like to know what he intends to do about it as it is his parents causing all the bother. I just know what my husband would do and what I would do if faced with a 'no win' situation like this. We'd remove them from the equation and remove the problem. Simplistic I know, but it is a final solution if nothing more can be done.

Ember xx

beer2006

I think by the sound of it, they haven't spoken to petes parents for several years and have been through legal proceedings to try and sort it out.

Therefore I would say pete has choosen Jen over his parents.

What he has done out of misplaced loyalty in the past shouldn't be held against him.

halloweenqueen_2

Hi,
What I imagine you signed as a contract for the inlaws was a deed of trust - meaning you cannot borrow money against the flat (except for the mortgage you have on it) sell it or basically interfere in anyway. I have one myself on a property, but not in the same situation as you are. However, when you are back on your feet as you will be - you must inspect the property once a year, even if you pay someone for an hour to go an do it for you. If it has gas central heating you are liable to get the heating chekced once a year - but don't tell them yet until you can afford to do it.
Anyway, go to your local estate agents 1st thing tomorrow and get a price for your property you are in, haggle with them for the fees, see your solicitor and get a set price for the selling of your house, explain to him the muddle you are in and you are shopping around for conveyancing costs.
Look at rental properties tomorrow as well, if you are staying in the same area. Is it worth both your health and your sanity to move away to a cheaper area, Pete maybe able to work part time somewhere else?
Join freecycle, you maybe able to pick up a few pieces for you house that you have sold off to make ends meet.
Sell your story to a magazine for a few hundred pounds!
Forget aboout the inlaws - easier said than done, but it will only make you ill, there is nothing you can change about them and their stinking attitudes, i know how you feel for Pete effectively losing his family but maybe they were users all along, they were always quite happy for him to pay their way and when he stopped, suddenly they weren't as happy bunnies as before.
Stop giving to charity - I know its hard, but for you charity beigns at home, I was once collecting for charity and a woman came to the door and said i'm really sorry, we are having a bad time making ends meet - I'd like to give but at the moment every penny counts.
Look at the freebies board, you may be able to send off for some grocery money off coupons, freebies for mini shampoos etc, won't cost you anything.
Look at www.hillbillyhousewife.com or black saturns menu planner.
Contact every person you owe money to - if you decide to sell and i really see no other option explain the situation and tell them you are seling you home to pay off all your creditors - they may give you some breathing space.
Maybe you could help at a charity shop instead of donating, would get you company for an hour or two a week and you would have first pick of any jeans without holes in!
Yes you have spent the money and you regret it now, you must have some good memories of those weekends and stop beating yourself over the head with it - its done and you are working your way out of it.
Good luck to you, hope it all goes well. incidentally if anything did happen to his parents how would you know? Nobody is speaking to you, would they see the flat empty and still costing you?
Take care and keep in touch.:grouphug:

jobbingmusician

Can I try to summarise this situation, in the hope that it might throw some different light on it?

You have 3 problems.

1. Your PIL - this problem is in 2 bits, their behaviour (lots of hugs about this!) and their living situation, which is contributing to your financial problems.

2. Your debts on your CC, which as far as I can see are pretty big - in fact it looks to me as if your CC debts are FAR bigger than your repayments on the PIL mortgage (impossible to tell totally until you post your SOA)

3. Your health, and Pete's health.

Now so far this post might come across as a bit unsympathetic, but that isn't true. I think your PIL are behaving atrociously and I think that sounds right, that they are devastated by the fact that Pete has had the brilliant good sense to find himself a pretty wonderful woman (who obviously loves him deeply and vv) to share his life with him.

1. So you need to deal with the PIL problem. Now comes the harsh bit. It is your RESPONSIBILITY, and Pete's responsibility, to make life as happy for each other as you can. I think that by thinking about your PIL and how unfair they are being, the whole time, you are making yourselves unhappy. I think it is the hatred you have for the parents/the sense of unfairness you feel that is contributing to you feeling so awful. (That and the fact you are terrified about your debt - but I will come on to that).

Remember I am writing this trying to help - truly - and because I have been through a similar situation with DH's ex-partner. It doesn't help to dwell on it. And I think you need to forget about any more legal action. I think you've probably had bad legal advice in the past, but there is plenty more bad legal advice out there which solicitors will happily take a lot more money to provide. Forget lawyers unless you ever get to the stage where you qualify for legal aid - then they are likely to start being more sensible (they stop seeing you as a cash cow in quite the same way!)

Let's take a hypothetical situation. The mortgage you are paying for the PIL is, I would guess, costing you in the region of £500 a month, isn't it? Your anger and despair over what they have done to you has led you to post on this board. If the advice you get when you post your SOA ends up saving you £600 a month (which is quite likely! There are some extremely good moneysavers on this board!) then you could even think of the PIL as having contributed £100 a month to the coffers!

Yes, I know this is stupid. I'm just trying to think of ways to help you break out of the terrible cycle of hatred towards them which is eating you up inside and must be making Pete feel awful as well - almost doubly so, in his case, because of all the tangled guilt he'll be feeling.

I do feel (and here I am coming on to 2.) that if you can brace yourself (perhaps together with Pete, when he gets back) to post a SOA, you will feel miles better and the PIL problem will shrink into more proportion.

I also have another suggestion about the CC - I don't think this one has been put forward before. Most people have suggested ways to pay off all your debt in one go, by selling your house. However, if we have a SOA to work with, we can think about ways of paying off debts gradually. There are people on this board who have paid off bigger debts than your total, with less income (AFAIK - you say Pete earns quite well), so I am confident we'll get there (more hugs). Could you RENT OUT your current house and use that money to rent somewhere closer to Pete's work?

3. The final thing is to try and sort out your health. Do work on trying to address your big problem, which is debt, rather than thinking about the PIL. We all know that the mortgage each month is just awful - but if you can reframe it in your own mind as a long-term investment property which they are caretaking for you, keeping heated etc, it might help you not to feel so depressed and awful. (Been there, got the t-shirt). And if you can rent somewhere closer to Pete's work, it should help his health.

One final thing - you have each other and that's wonderful. Remember to take time to enjoy each other's love.

I hope none of this sounds too awful. I am just trying to encourage you to re-frame things mentally so that you are less eaten up inside with distress and horrible feelings for these ghastly PIL. Let them stew in their own juices while you try to be positive!

mitthoy

Hi,
It sounds a terrible story and I am really sorry for you.
However, I wonder how this story looks from his parents side of things, they had a son who had lived with them for longer than most children, they sold him the house, possibly at a discount to help avoid inheritance tax? and then later on his new girlfriend asks for them to start paying rent.
They may have never thought he would find a partner and so the orignal arrangement suited both him and his parents?
I'm not so sure they are as evil as they are being painted and we dont know the other side of the story.
Sorry - not trying to enflame things, but theres always two sides and to get resolution, it can help to try and look at where they are coming from, especially as the law is on their side...wonder if thats for a reason?
Hope it all works out for you though.

aliasojo

Can I just ask...are Pete's parents of the same or different culture to you HH?

I know many cultures have long standing family traditions that I myself find difficult to understand as they go against good common sense (imo) and since Pete's parents were acting in such a way, I wondered if there was any cultural aspect in play here which would make them so unbending?