"For Love & Money" answers your relationship and money questions. This week, a reader's brother wants to get out of paying child support.
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Dear For Love & Money,
My brother is going through an ugly divorce. He and his ex have never had a great relationship — I begged him not to propose. I don't think my brother is bad, but he is within their relationship. He ignored my advice, however, and married her.
Now they seem to be splitting up for real, though, and he expects us all to take his side 100%. He wants to move in with me so he can afford to quit his job and dodge child support.
I am not OK with this. It's irresponsible of him to try to get out of paying child support, and I don't want to get involved in his messy divorce. But they have a long history of breaking up and getting together, and this is the first time he has ever been serious enough about it to find an attorney and plan on moving out.
I don't want my unwillingness to let him live with me to be the reason he stays in this awful marriage. What should I do?
Sincerely,
Stressed Sibling
Dear Stressed,
Most of us have been where you are at some point — stuck on the periphery of someone else's nightmarish relationship, discreetly trying to pull away even as they grab our collars to yank us into the middle of things. It's even harder when you have to factor in how your budget will be affected by someone else's choices.
Many years ago, I babysat a toddler from my home full time. It was just the one kid for extra income, and he was a sweet, laidback two-year-old. It probably would have been the easiest side hustle I've ever done — except for his parents. They broke up within weeks of hiring me, and before I knew it, not a pick-up went by where I didn't have to tell the dad he couldn't take his kid per a custody agreement the mother had left me to enforce.
The police would get called. The parents accused one another of attempted abduction; the dad threatened me with everything in the book to get me to let him take his son. I worked so hard to stay out of it, but the stress of the whole arrangement still left me with a raging case of shingles at 24 years old. I had to quit.
Of course, you can't really quit a beloved brother unless you are willing to go no-contact over his broken romantic relationship, which seems like a disproportionate and unlikely solution. That doesn't mean you are obligated to help, though.
Beyond the fact that your efforts to keep your brother out of this mess in the first place were unappreciated and ignored, maintaining healthy boundaries means recognizing where your business ends and someone else's begins. Crossing that line into your brother's business means entering his disaster zone.
And make no mistake, once you're in it, you're in it. Even if you manage to stay neutral, you may still be expected to carry secondhand messages, give depositions, talk to police, answer your niece or nephew's awkward questions, and walk the tightrope of diplomacy with your brother and his ex again and again. That said, he's your brother, and unless some distance geographically separates you, you may find yourself in any or all of these dilemmas, even if you're practicing strong boundaries.
How can you avoid being pulled into his drama against your will? Think through exactly how you are and aren't willing to be involved. For instance, you disagree with his choice to dodge child support. Tell him so, and explain why. You could say something like, "I understand that your ex hurt you deeply, so you don't want to finance her life. However, I love your kids very much, and they deserve your support. I won't participate in you finding a way to get out of caring for them financially."
Follow this up with something you are willing to do. Maybe you can pick the kids up from his ex's place on the days he gets them so he doesn't have to see her. Or, if you don't want to be in the middle of any ugly pick-up and drop-off disputes like the ones that gave me shingles, you can offer to help him find an attorney to help him fight for custody.
The key here is being intentional and insistent on your boundaries with your brother. His presence in your life, and therefore his problems in your life, are a foregone conclusion, but you get to choose how to interact with that presence in a way that is comfortable for you.
I know you are worried about his ability to follow through on this divorce without you letting him live with you, but remember — toxic relationships tend to involve as many breakups as they do reconciliations. Whether you let him move in with you or not won't change the outcome. They can fall back into one another's arms as easily at their daughter's birthday party as they can living under the same roof.
Not having enough money to pay rent would be a choice he made to avoid paying child support — and it's a poor decision you don't think he should make. Whether he listens to your wisdom is up to him.
Rooting for you,
For Love & Money
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