Man Asks If It’s ‘Selfish’ To Not Use His Inheritance To Pay For His Fiancée’s Dad’s Life-Saving Surgery
His concerns may be valid, but they're also relationship dealbreakers.
Norbert Kundrak | Pexels Marriage is supposed to be about uniting not just a couple, but their families (barring the obvious exceptions, like when the in-laws are monsters). But what are the limits, if any, of this loyalty? That's the question being raised by a groom-to-be's dilemma that, for most people, is pretty straightforward to the point of being a full-on, wedding-canceling dealbreaker. If you had the means to save your soon-to-be father-in-law, would you do it?
The groom refuses to use his inheritance for his father-in-law's life-saving surgery.
In his since-deleted Reddit post, the groom shared that his grandfather recently passed and left him a chunk of money totaling about $140,000. "I was extremely close to him growing up, and he made it clear over the years that he wanted the money to help me start a family, buy a house, or build something of my own," he wrote.
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His fiancée, however, has other ideas, mainly because her father is in a life-or-death battle with a heart condition. It requires a major surgery, and he doesn't have adequate insurance to cover it, which will cost him around $70,000.
His fiancée did what most people in her situation would do: She asked her soon-to-be husband for help. The answer she got was surely not at all what she expected.
The man insists on using the money to build their future as a couple, as his grandfather asked.
"I told her I was really sorry, but I couldn't," he said in response to her request, explaining that his grandfather "worked his whole life for that money, and I don't think he'd be okay with it going to something outside the family like this."
He's also worried that using so much of it would risk their future, as he was planning to use the money to buy a house and start a business. But his fiancée saw it differently. "She told me l 'put a dead man's wishes over a living person's life,'" and was shocked he'd said no.
"I said it wasn't that simple, this was money meant to give us a future, not fix an emergency we had no control over," he replied. As you might guess, that did little to assuage his fiancée's feelings, and now her family and many of their friends are calling him "selfish," even if they understand his hesitance.
His feelings are understandable, but the couple's views on family are deeply misaligned.
It's understandable to want to respect the wishes of the dead, and perhaps especially to want to carry out the financial plans you've made. There's so little certainty these days when it comes to money that it's not hard to understand why disrupting a windfall like this inspires a bit of panic.
But the real issue here is one of misalignment, and profound misalignment at that. Classifying a life-or-death situation with his own wife-to-be's father as an "outside the family" situation says a lot about what his values are and how he views both marriage and family.
Since when is a father-in-law "outside" a person's own family? Toxic situations aside, that's not how marriage is supposed to work when it comes to in-laws, and it's not how it's supposed to work with your spouse either. You're supposed to have each other's backs, no matter what.
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If this is the response he has to something so life-changing for his soon-to-be wife, it speaks volumes, and "selfish" is putting it kindly. For their part, most commenters were all on the same page: His misgivings are understandable, but this is a relationship-ending choice.
As one put it, "Your relationship is over. You chose your money. She wants her father's life or at least his financial safety." Another added, "I don't think there is any coming back from this, especially if the father doesn't make it. But even if he does, [he] will never live this down with his fiancée or in-laws." And if his grandfather was as wonderful a man as he says, he surely wouldn't approve either.
John Sundholm is a writer, editor, and video personality with 20 years of experience in media and entertainment. He covers culture, mental health, and human interest topics.
