I (34f) moved my family (3f, 42m, 2 dogs) to North carolina from Virginia in August to be closer to my twin and her kids (7m,6f,1f) after their father passed away of cancer in April. She promised me she would provide childcare for us as we knew we would need it given the duplicate cost of living.
We had to stay with them for 7 weeks while trying to find a house. It was brutal. We had 1 room to stuff ourselves in(25% of the rooms available and no common space) were traveling back and forth to storage units to grab Essentials. Couldn’t put any food in her fridge due to it being stuffed with rotting food. Did every bit of cleaning and maintenance of the home. Paid for almost every meal and did almost all of the cooking while we were there.
Her children were horrible to our daughter. Cruel, violent, selfish, accusatory. You name it. Refused to share but insisted she let them play with her belongings. Refused to respect boundaries around the room we had to our 5 bodies.
My sister complained about providing childcare constantly and was so inconsistent I lost hours and had to switch jobs. Now my fiance and I get even less time together and with our daughter which was the entire appeal of coming down here outside of being closer to them to support them in this first year of grief. She also decided she wanted to be paid for that despite commiting to free childcare prior to us moving down here.
She says I failed to fulfill my commitment to help her get her house in order, but refused to allow me to help. She is a hoarder. She refused to prioritize the time we had to work on getting her items downsized and organized. I can’t help a person who doesn’t want to be helped or won’t let the help.. help.
Fast forward to now, she and her children have been staying with us for almost 3 weeks. This happened with exactly 36 hours notice due to rhe discovery of mold in her home. They are staying inside my daughter’s room and have assumed over 50% of our office. She has filled my fridge with food of theirs such that we have had to minimize what we buy to accommodate snacks and Misc items they do not and have not used since being here. Her children have assumed full range of our home and are again, exclusive cruel violent and accusatory. We are still doing almost all of the cleaning and cooking and management of children.
Things have, again been tumultuous.
It’s worth mentioning that she an her children are entirely dependent on government assistance, bereavement pay, payments from her 3rd baby daddy.. you get the idea. They have no scope for what it means to actually pay for everything and get no assistance at all.
She is volatile and aggressive with her children. So much so that she will not engage them the way she normally does when we are around.
For all of these and more reasons, we have enrolled our daughter into daycare to get positive socialization and are urgently looking for gap childcare in the evenings while I’m on my way to work and dad is on the way home from work.
The final straw that prompted this post happened this morning while I was cleaning the entire house (mind you, I’m 12 weeks pregnant) and she started in on me about how I’m “nasty” towards her and her children. How I’m just like our mother (whom she hates with everything). And self centered. THEN she went on to threaten to expose secrets I told her in confidence almost a year ago in order to sabotage my 12 year relationship with my fiance and father of my child.
I told her she I will not be threatened in my house and she can leave and not return if she thinks that will fly. So she doubles down and threatens to expose secrets I told her in confidence again with a smirk like, how could you stop me, i see him more than you do.
I do feel bad things have devolved to this degree. We did come here to help her and the kids but i guess I didn’t realize house difficult they are to be around and with. I do not stand on the ‘grieving people deserve complete grace and support without expectation of reciprocity or boundary enforcement’.
AITAH? For being willing to pay profession caregivers to be with my child but not her? Being curt and dry with her and her children? Telling her she needs to find somewhere else immediately, after she threatened me via exposing secrets I told her? Refusing to pay for groceries she purchased without consulting either of us or our needs on the assumption that we and our daughter would want some of what they were having? Being disinterested in doing any sort of group activity or experience with them at this point?
EDIT:
For those assuming I cheated on my fiance: we opened our relationship up after I discovered another woman’s earring in my daughter’s bedroom following a three day trip to NC with my daughter as well as me discovering him obscuring kratom use. The relationship was ruptured entirely and we wanted to find a way back to each other. I was intimate with that person one time and never again due to seeming intentional intimate harm being caused to me.
Yall really on that assumption train.
EDIT 2 (because I have a toddler to care for):
Sister and kids have been given until the end of the week to get into the new house (1 of 2) they have available to them. We have offered to help cover the cost of a 20 ft truck to help them since we both work full time and i can’t do any lifting safely.
Re: secret
If my fiance is awake when I’m back from work tonight I plan to discuss what happened during the opening of our relationship (despite that being outside the explicit agreements we set at that time) to try and remove any felt power from my sister.
I appreciate the compassionate responses as well as the blunt responses. I feel like a real AH for allowing myself to be convinced this would work out and uprooting my family. I trust we will get through this and am grateful for the feedback, even the feedback that is negative towards me and my family
