My (19F) family has been taking care of my cousin (7M) for about 6 months now. His mom, who was my mom’s younger sister, was a single mom who passed away from lymphoma and nobody knows who his father is so my parents became his legal guardians. His mom had some savings so they were given to my parents since they were going to be taking care of him.
Now as she had around 10 grand saved up, the plan was to use that money for his future school fees and give him whatever was left of it when he graduates. However, we didn’t tell him about the money his mom left him as we didn’t want him to just hear that he had 10 grand lying around and start demanding things and will just tell him about it when he starts learning the value of money. So until then, the money is in an account joint with my mom.
So a couple of days ago, he was being a kid and kept annoying me when I was playing video games with my friends and when I told him not to test me, he threw my hair tie into the bin. So I decided that since he was being so uncooperative, he wouldn’t be allowed to go on my laptop while I went to work (he didn’t have his own device and mostly just use mine when im not using it)
So I left for work and when I came back, my mom revealed that he had a tantrum when I was gone and when she wasn’t looking, he knocked my laptop off the desk and broke it. As my warranty expired, it just wasn’t worth it to repair it.
Since I’m a student, it meant I’m basically handicapped and needed it to be replaced ASAP and because my major requires a high-end laptop, it’ll cost at least 3 grand for a brand new one.
My parents and I didn’t see that it was reasonable for us to fork out 3 grand for a new laptop so we decided to use the funds that were meant for my cousin since he was responsible for breaking it. However, we didn’t tell him that we would be taking money from the joint account since we didn’t want him to know he had the joint account.
My mom then told my grandmother about this incident after we bought the laptop today and she ended up getting an earful from her.
My grandmother thinks we were too harsh considering my cousin is 7 and what we did was considered stealing and thinks we should give him back the 3 grand.
Here are what netizens think:
- He’s 7, and his dead mothers dying wish was to use that hard earned money on her son when the time comes. It’s not a piggy bank, and it certainly isn’t a pile of money that gets smaller every time he does something bad.
- This is ridiculous. It’s she same concept is the cousins mother was alive. You’d ask the mom to pay for a new laptop which would’ve come out if her 10k. Using the 3k to replace the laptop is no different. Why would OP go in debt for something her cousin did?
- if his mum was alive she would have been financially responsible for it. So guess what your mum as his legal guardian is responsible for replacing it. You should have put your laptop away. Your mum should have been watching him. She wasn’t doung her job and it cost the kid 3 grand. Poor kid