Asking my brother to pay $30,000 for my engagement ring?
I hosted a family dinner over the weekend. My brother brought my nephews (4 and 8) over as well.
I used to wear my engagement ring all the time, but lately I keep it in my walk in closet and mainly wear it for special occasions. While I was cleaning up the dinner table, my nephews went to go play while the adults were still in the kitchen area. My brother was not supervising his kids.
During this time, my nephews went into the master bedroom without anyone knowing and started playing with everything. Including my engagement ring. When we came to look for them, they panicked because they know they aren’t supposed to be there, ran into the toilet and flushed my ring.
We called a plumber in case it was somehow in the u trap of the toilet and not actually gone. But nope. Unfortunately it was gone for good.
We still had the original receipt, so I called my brother. I emailed him a scanned copy as proof of the cost and asked him to reimburse me for the ring my nephew flushed. Immediately he started calling me names because we were family and his kid was just a child. He has refused to repay the cost of my ring.
I told him I will be taking him to court for this and now my entire family is blowing up my phone saying family shouldn’t sue each other and just let it go.
My brother says he does not have the money to repay even $100 per month and has refused any kind of repayment plan. He said I live in a nice enough house and if I want a replacement, I should just sell my car.
My brother, to this day, has not truly apologized. He said kids will do what is normal for kids, and they shouldn’t be held responsible for a ring. They were supposed to supervise their kids with the rest of the family while I was busy cleaning up.