Dear Pay Dirt,

My father was very, very wealthy. He died when I was 10, in a car wreck with his mistress. My mother remarried one of his business partners within the year.

I was obviously distraught and acting out. My stepfather wanted to send me to boarding school, but my maternal grandparents put their foot down. My mother loved me enough to listen and my stepfather just wanted me gone. I ended up having a comfortable middle-class life with my grandparents, where I occasionally rubbed elbows with the elites where I was trotted out like a trained pony when visiting my mother and her family. I had Mandarin, math, and music tutors while I attended public school. I was able to attend an Ivy League school but basically it wasn’t anything I earned. I got in because I had the name, the money, and acceptable grades.

I know I live a charmed life, but after my grandparents died I find it hard to trust. I have full control over my inheritance, but I live in a bungalow and drive a Honda. I have had two romantic relationships and one best friendship crash and burn because the minute I told the truth, they changed.

I have gotten closer to my mother and my younger half-siblings. My stepfather has had money issues for years. My mother has consistently approached me for “loans” to keep my siblings in their favorite private school. I have set money aside for their college education. I was fine with all that. But recently, my mother told me my stepfather was facing bankruptcy and needed a “private loan” from me. Nothing I’ve loaned them has ever been paid back and I didn’t expect it to be. But there are lines.

I told my mother that my financial adviser and lawyer need to be involved. She protested this was a family matter. I told her my siblings’ education was a family matter, and this was business. She told me my grandparents would be ashamed of me. I told her they were ashamed of her because she sent me away rather than give up her lifestyle. Her outfit cost more than my car and furniture were worth. Maybe downsize?

I think it would have hurt her less if I slapped her across the face. She left. And I feel my last bridge burning. What do I do?

—Just Trying to Do What’s Right

Dear Trying,

Your mother is putting you in an awkward position you don’t deserve. Likely she cares about your stepfather, even though it sounds like he was awful to you. It would be perfectly reasonable for you to ask that your financial adviser and a lawyer be involved even if you didn’t have the justifiable feelings you have toward your stepfather. In fact, making a loan official generally reduces conflict in the long run, because it ensures that everyone has the same expectations regarding what is being offered, and whether and how it is expected to be paid back. It sounds as if what your mother is trying to avoid here is accountability, or any limits on what you might be providing.

You should also acknowledge, at least to yourself, that this is business and a family matter. If you had a good relationship with your stepfather, your approach would likely be similar to the way you’re approaching your half-siblings. You feel the need to protect yourself more because he did not protect you growing up, and actively did things that harmed you. You have a right to be angry at him, and you do not owe him anything. You already know what your relationship with your grandparents was like and what they would think. Don’t let her use self-serving hypotheticals about what they would think about this situation to score points on behalf of your stepfather. And if your mother is telling you your relationship is over if you don’t bail out your stepfather, she is in the wrong, not you.

I am sorry that these things happened to you during your childhood—losing a parent is traumatic and hard, and it sounds like the circumstances of your father’s death made it more painful. To be rejected by a stepparent on top of that compounds the trauma. I hope you are seeing a good therapist because those are not things that are easy to cope with and the damage can have long-lasting effects. It’s no wonder that you have trouble trusting people; you’ve been abandoned in the past by people who were supposed to care for you.

I think it’s important to be upfront about all of these things in any serious relationship, by the way: your trauma, the way money affects your life, and so on. Anyone who rejects you upon learning about those things is not someone you could have a healthy, long-term relationship with in any case, but you also don’t want someone to feel deceived if you have been hiding these parts of yourself and your history out of fear. It erodes the thing you think is missing in your life: trust. Almost everyone has some kind of trauma, and in my experience writing this column, “my partner has too much money” is not exactly a common relationship problem. (“My partner does not have enough money” is.) You will find someone who’s right for you; just be honest with them.

https://slate.com/business/2022/02/advice-to-a-landlord-who-wants-to-stop-being-a-landlord-how-to-help-a-tenant-move-on.html