I (18f) confronted my mom on her spending habits and she’s completely stopped talking to me.
I’m using fake names.
A little back story to show how much money my moms had and has used. My mom and dad used to earn $200,000+ each year for many years and were so used to spending thousands and thousands of dollars on anything and everything. They bought lavish cars and jewelry, they wanted the could get easily. All because they had a huge farm they harvested grapes from and worked at the factory that harvested them. They worked out a contract with the company and they earned good money doing this for so long.
They tried having a kid and no luck, but after about 15 years of trying the most effective method money could buy, they had my brother and shortly after they had me. But he was born with immune system problems and was hospitalized, they tried again and had me.
My immune system isn’t the best but I don’t need to be hospitalized like my brother was, I get sick very easily.
I have two other siblings Tom(20M) and Kyle (26M) but they’re not actually my sibling they’re my cousins but my mom adopted them after their mother passed, they have two different fathers but the same mother.
My brother Kyle had a fund set up for him when he was a child by his mother since she didn’t want his father getting the money (from what I can gather) she set this account up before she passed I believe it was around $20,000
When I was four my father passed and my mom sold everything and couldn’t keep the farm going by herself. So she sold everything and moved into a subdivision and we still currently live there. Selling everything and after buying a house she had $700,000 left it was good for her and three kids to live off of without needing a job. But she spent it in only two years, she and my dad had a friend at work and the friend Ray, had promised my dad he’d help take care of us if anything happened to my dad. He did too well.. he and mom shacked up together not too long after my dad passed. My mom wanting to seem cool for him bought his daughter a car and him one as well. She was throwing money around thinking it would just replenish itself. They moved into our house in the basement, he was divorced and had his kids over too.
They planned on getting together for real , but his kids got jealous and did everything they could to mess with us. But she spend around $100,000 on them in total, she had the entire basement renovated for them as-well as rooms of their own.
Meanwhile me and my siblings had to share a room while each one of his kids got their own. Eventually had gotten back with his ex wife and left my mom and never payed back what he owed her.
So not too long after she had managed to spend all of that money she got from selling the farm and everything. Then she began spending the money my dad and her had planned on giving me for collage $50,000 and when that was gone she spent the money my brothers mom had saved for him. This all happened when I was around 12 years old.
Cut to the future, now I’m 18 years old and her spending has gotten worse, she took loans out on our house and her car. Were living pay check to paycheck on my social security and my mom’s social security, my brother (26M) moved out and in with our other cousin awhile ago and my other brother Tom, works and relies on my mom to drive him to work. I am on my final year of high school, my mom has been telling my to fail my classes so I can go another year to get more social security money.
She keeps telling me we’re going to be homeless if I don’t do this but the moneys going to run out eventually. (I’m not allowed to work at all.)
But two months ago she started sending money to a guy who claimed he was Jonny depp on some knock off facebook she bought him Apple gift cards and steam gift cards around $300.
I said it was fake and she said to f*ck off and “Your just a child and you wouldn’t understand.”
(At the time I was the only one who knew what was going on)
He sent her a check worth $20,000 and rubbed it in my face showing it off to me and saying how “see? you don’t understand anything do you?” I have no idea if the check was fake or not. She’s planning a trip out of the country to go see him. She begged my aunt for money and told her she needed it for going on a trip, my aunt said no.
I kept telling her to save money since my moneys going to run out soon. She also started taking money out of my siblings accounts $2,000 from Tom and $300 from Kyle without telling or asking them and asking for money from everyone else she knows. She begged my grandma (87F) for money to pay bills with. But she’s actually been sending ‘Jonny Depp’ money, how much in total I have no idea.
On Sunday I looked and found an Apple gift card worth $500 in my moms purse and she had given it to him. I yelled and bitched my mom out, she’s $200,000 in debt and the house could be taken away for unpaid debt and it almost happened before but my grandma stepped in when we got a letter saying the house would be taken for unpaid debt.
Yet instead of paying for her debts she’s spending that money on some guy who’s obviously scamming her?
She said I was delusional and I was mental, when she had admitted before she had given him the gift cards.
She said I’m a child and I don’t understand her or anything, at that point I just snapped. I screamed and cried about the situation she put us in. She’s taking out loans she can’t pay for, started begging for money only to use in on him.
She’s destroyed my chance of getting into collage debt free as-well as stealing money from my brother before he was even old enough to understand what she was doing.
I called my boyfriend (20M) and I guess at some point I had forgotten I was in a call with him and I screamed at her and just broke down. She had also tried taking my dads wedding ring I had found in a random box to go off and sell it for money. Literally one of the only things I have left of him she tired selling it for money for a TRIP TO SEE ‘JONNY DEPP’.
(There’s even more stuff I haven’t even talked about in this post because it would just be too long to even read.)
I started hyperventilating and my mom had gotten bored of my crying and went to go to bed. And so I sat and cried and I didn’t know, but my boyfriend contacted my brother Kyle, who already knows the situation about my mom what was happening, about what was going on.
(We didn’t have the heart to tell Tom at the time, but he knows now though.)
So my boyfriend, my boyfriends brother, and their roommate who’s also my friend and who was sitting next to him when I first called him and who had heard me crying (and also knows the family situation) rushed over all together to see me and calm me down. When they got there they came to my room and my brother was the first one to say anything and just gave me a hug. My mom started screaming and denying everything and screamed that I was mental and delusional and I had made it all up.
My brother told her to shut up and told me to get dressed and meet him upstairs.
I did and packed a bag with my dads ring, my mom also snatched the receipt for the gift cards out of my hands, but I had already taken a picture of it so it didn’t matter that she took it.
After a bit of harsh words with my mom we all left and went to my boyfriends house where I told my brother a bit more that he didn’t know about, like the ring and he was so angry with her.
After two days I’m back home and I’m currently not on speaking terms with my mom and I plan on having her taken off all our accounts.
(She has to sign herself off since we made it when we were to young at the time)
My boyfriend is supportive of me as-well as everyone else, if I want to move out or not, it’s up to me. I’m currently trying to save money from the little bit of money I’m getting from twitch revenue and art commissions, but it’s hard while she still has access to my account and I need my information like my Social Security card that my mom won’t give me to start up a new one.
We haven’t spoken since the incident and I don’t know if I can even repair this damaged relationship with my mom, I don’t know what to say anymore. I can’t talk to her without getting mad or crying.
What do I even do? I’m so tired and I’m not sure if I can even look at my own situation without clouded judgement.
I need advice right now, thank you for reading.
TLDR: I had a huge argument with my mom and now we’re not on speaking terms.
7 comments
Move your money to a completely different bank so she can’t convince them to give her access. You shouldn’t need her to agree because you aren’t closing them – just withdraw your money and make new accounts elsewhere. Make sure you have all of your important papers (passport, birth records, etc) somewhere safe, preferably out of the house. Check your credit to make sure she hasn’t taken out any loans I’m your name then lock it down so she can’t. As soon as you can, get the heck out of there. Do NOT let her make you feel guilty for “abandoning“ her or making her homeless. She made her own bed. I wish you the best!
This is beyond relationship advice, you need legal advice.
Do you know where your legal papers and social security card are in the house, and can you retrieve them?
Please find someone to guide you through how to block her from both your and your siblings accounts now, ask at your school for free legal advice or make some calls to the local social services to find out what is there. You seem to have a healthy support system around, ask them for help as well.
After you have protected yourself you can think about how to have a good relationship with your mom.
Open a new bank account asap. Start putting your earnings in it. If you have a driver’s license, hang onto it for dear life. You can get a new copy of your birth certificate, either from your local health department, especially if you still live in the state you were born in, or you can usually request a copy online through a vital records site. Go to the Social Security office and request a new copy of your Social Security card, they’re dead easy to get. Have it mailed to your boyfriend’s house or someone else you can trust so she can’t intercept it. Start applying for scholarships and grants now if you haven’t, and fill out the FAFSA.
((HUGS)) New bank account!! Time to get all important documents and a go bag!!
You need to check your credit and that of your siblings. We’ve seen too many awful cases where a parent has taken out credit in their child’s name. Your mother sounds desperate enough and clearly isn’t capable of thinking rationally.
I’d recommend reporting the scammer. It’s fraud and access using your money and that of your siblings, so you are being scammed
Your mother had you at 50? Did she use a surrogate? I mean it’s not impossible but that’s very difficult, my mother had me at 39 and that was already extremely difficult for her
You need to get a real job for starters and have that deposited to a brand new account.