My Entitled Sisters Demanded That I Let Them Rent Out My Vacation Home for Profit. When I Refused…

This story has already been uploaded to my channel months ago, but recently there have been new updates that might interest you. I will leave the timestamp in the description for you to skip the old bits.

My entitled sisters demanded that I let them rent out my vacation home for profit. When I refused, their husbands broke in and are now facing charges. Happened today.
My folks decided to host a barbecue, because I guess that’s what older people do. I declined because I really don’t like my two sisters, their husbands, or their kids. Wife and I are child-free. Mom then pressured the wife. Long story short, we went.

By the time we arrived, there were about 20 people there. My sisters and their husbands were already solidly buzzed—drunk, really. My mom was spending 100% of her time trying to keep the nieces and nephews, ages 7 to 11, more or less under control. My dad had strategically retreated to the whirlpool part of the pool with a small cooler full of beers. Wife and I made small talk with miscellaneous people, ate food, and had a frozen margarita.

Sisters SL bills took turns criticizing us for being late, not being in our swimsuits, and screwing up the vibe. Whatever. Typical suburban summer get-together.

About 45 minutes in, two of the kids ran at one of the neighbor guests who was standing next to the pool and pushed her in. She was at the pool steps, stumbled in, but didn’t fall, so only got half wet. She was clearly very unhappy about it, but she didn’t make a scene—just went over to where the parents were, grabbed their towels, dried herself off, and left. Sisters and bills thought it was all great fun.

A bit later, I was standing a few feet away from the pool, chatting away with someone. I saw three of the kids running full tilt at me from the corner of my eye. Obviously I was next. Not that it’s terribly difficult to outwit young kids, but I just jumped out of their way at the last second. All three of them ran straight into the pool at full speed.

Most of the other guests, including my wife and me, started laughing, but their moms, who—as I mentioned—were pretty shitfaced, absolutely freaked out. Apparently two of the kids couldn’t swim even though they were in swimsuits. Since I wasn’t in swim gear, I stepped back from the pool and let other people fish the kids out. The kids were balling their heads off like they lost a limb.

At that point all hell broke loose. The four drunk parents were yelling at everyone in general and me in particular for nearly letting their kids drown, and also because two of the kids had been videoing the trick using their parents’ iPhones, which were now at the bottom of the pool. One of my bills got into the pool to try to retrieve the phones, but his BMI and BAC made that impossible. No one else volunteered to help, unsurprising given that my sisters were still bitching at everyone.

I told my sisters it was their job to watch their kids and that if anything had happened to them it would have been their responsibility, not mine. There were some pretty strong words on both sides. Wife and I left after the other bill fell over and face-planted while yelling at us. Now they’re saying I should have let the little shits knock me into the pool and have their fun and ruin my phone, so Ida.

Side note: Dad, of course, never got out of the whirlpool.

Relevant comments / thoughts from OOP:

I realized they’re just kids and they were just having fun. The fact that they thought this was okay is more of a reflection on their parents than them. Just wish we hadn’t gone. It’s nice to see my folks and their neighbors, but I really, really don’t like my sisters or their husbands. They don’t hide their envy of us, and they’re just exhausting to be around.

More about why OOP doesn’t care for some of his family:

It’s more of an oil and water sort of thing. I’ve never been close to my sisters—they’re eight and ten years older than me. I also don’t have much in common with their husbands. They’re okay guys, but I just don’t give a crap about the things that are important to them, and vice versa. I do know that the four of them are somewhat envious of our lifestyle. Both the sisters are stay-at-home moms. Both the husbands make good money—one makes noticeably more than I do—but both my wife and I have professional careers. We don’t have kids and we’re way more responsible with money. As a result, we have a lot more investments, etc., and we don’t have to drive cars full of kid debris, and we take nice trips once or twice a year. It definitely GRS on both sisters and, by extension, their husbands. So we get some petty behavior from them on an ongoing basis.

Overall, neither my wife nor I enjoy their company, which is why I wanted to skip the get-together. Just not worth it to me. But my wife is a positive person and is usually happy to see them.

“Hopefully next time your wife won’t feel guilted into going.”

That’s probably the one positive thing that will come out of this. Wife is much more tolerant and forgiving than I am towards my siblings, but based on what she was saying on the way home, I think she’s had it with them as well.

“Your dad sounds awesome.”

Yeah, my dad’s very chill. He loves being around groups of people. Used to be in sales. Likes people to enjoy themselves and is definitely enjoying life as a retiree. He and two other guys with him just sat there and watched the show. Mom’s cool too, but the situation upset her.

“Kids okay?”

The kids are fine. By the time I left they were inside watching TV. I think they’re seven, nine, ten, ten, and eleven. It was the middle three who played kamakazi with me. I’m guessing the eleven-year-old egged them on—she’s usually the ringleader.

“You phrased the part about your parents hosting a barbecue oddly.”

I had to shorten the post to fit in the character limit. My folks are gregarious and like to have people over. They have the classic “great for entertaining” house and are always coming up with a reason to get together. They’d wanted everyone to be at their place for the Fourth of July, but one of my sisters and her family were on a vacation, so this was a fake Fourth of July party, complete with flags, red, white and blue decorations, barbecue, a margarita machine, etc. Sparklers were promised to the kids. My nieces and nephews were the only kids there. All of the neighbors are older, like my parents.

OOP is voted Not The A-Hole.

First off, my folks tell me that my nieces and nephews are all good swimmers and that they use the pool all the time. The seven-year-old is still a beginner, but he loves the water. My sister just said they couldn’t swim so look bad. To be fair, none of the kids are allowed in the deep end, which is where they fell in. It was the two ten-year-olds and the nine-year-old who tried to push me into the pool.

After we left, the party ended on a pretty sour note. My drunk brother-in-law, who face-planted while yelling at me, had to go to an urgent care place and get his face stitched up. He was too toasted to drive, so Dad took him. Dad was very not happy about this.

Late that evening, my sister started a group text and said some really nasty crap. Their husbands threw in a few comments as well. Wife and I blocked the four of them. My mom called me—she was pretty upset about what they said. She and Dad were in the chat, and I don’t blame her.

Because of the texts, my folks insisted my sisters and bills come over the next day, Sunday, without their kids, to get some things straight and lay down some ground rules—Mom’s wording. The result was a contrite, if unenthusiastic, apology from the siblings via my mom’s phone. I’m glad my wife was with me when they called—her hard stares kept me from saying what I wanted to. I just told them thanks and that we felt no need to discuss it further since I thought things were settled. I unblocked them.

That evening I got a text from one of the bills telling me the phones cost doll forx and asking when I’d be paying for them. WTF. I replied, “Never,” took a screenshot of his text, and forwarded it to my folks with a note that we were done with this nonsense. We’re going no contact with sisters and spouses and not to invite us to any more holidays or get-togethers if they’ll be present. Then I blocked the sisters and their spouses again.

At that point the really hit the fan. Dad called them and ripped them a new one. Among other things, he told them the grandkids were not welcome at his place indefinitely, since my mom regularly provides free babysitting. That got them pretty rattled. He also banned them from using the vacation house and told them my wife and I actually own it, not he and Mom. This completely freaked them out. Both of my sisters’ families use the place a lot, including having their friends up for weekend getaways. This was very much out of character for my folks—they’d clearly had it.

And for reference, I never wanted my sisters to know we own the place. We bought it for my folks. They’d always wanted a place in the mountains. Keeping the ownership quiet was just a way to avoid drama with my siblings.

A couple of days later, my sister and their husbands came to our place unannounced to apologize in person. We were out to dinner, and they left a note. One sister also called me at work too. I sent her to voicemail. We’ve decided being no contact is the best thing for the indefinite future and haven’t interacted with them for the last three plus weeks. Personally, I’m done. They can go pound sand.

Relevant comments:

“How life has been?”

It’s been less than a month, but I have to say that blocking them has actually made our lives noticeably more peaceful. I hadn’t realized how much ongoing low-level drama they create. It’s not tough toxic; they’re not bad people. They’re just tiresome and petty. And I personally don’t care about them using the weekend place. It’s ours technically, but we bought it for them and gave them day-to-day control over it. They’re good people and they always wanted a getaway place for the family, but there’s no way they could have ever bought it themselves. I could afford to buy it for them because I’ve been fortunate financially—save, invest like a demon—plus I got a massive bonus the same year I sold my home and moved in with my now wife.

I don’t care if my folks let my siblings use the house, but I will admit I’m enjoying my sister’s discomfort over finding out that I could afford to buy the place and let my folks use it while never mentioning it to them. Dad changed the lock code when they went up last week, so now only he, Mom, my wife, and I have it.

With regards to Mom babysitting the kids: she tells me that once a week she—and sometimes Dad—have been going over to each sister’s place and spending the day with the kids. When school started, she’s going to pick each set up from school once a week on separate days and take them home, spend the evening with them. She says the five of them together stress her out, but separately they’re fine. Mom and Dad have both told me they don’t plan on having my sisters and their families back to their place in the foreseeable future and that they’re enjoying the quiet. My guess is that they were already tired of the old dynamic and used the pool party nonsense as an excuse to make some changes to the relationships.

One fun note on why’s post was removed from Ida: according to the message I just read from the other sub’s moderator, the violence was property damage. I still don’t get it—the phones being ruined, I guess. Ridiculous.

Update to the update — August 26th, 2023 (nine days from previous post):

Well, it’s been an interesting last few days. I thought the had hit the fan before, but it was more of a fart compared to what’s happened this week. For this to make sense, I need to provide some financial context.

My folks haven’t ever been any good at saving money. I’ve been doing their taxes for years, so I know pretty much everything about them moneywise. Their house is paid for and they have minimal debt, but they didn’t save much for retirement. Both of them get Social Security, Dad gets a solid pension, and they have a bit of savings, but there’s no treasure chest in the basement. I bought their current car for them after they retired—a retirement present—so they could have something nice to drive. It was the first car in probably 20 years they didn’t lease.

My sisters are convinced the folks are dripping with money and that our parents will be leaving the two of them everything, since I don’t need more money, so they’ve never cared about saving either.

Turns out my oldest sister and her husband (they have three kids) have been living beyond their means for some time and are in financial straits. They’ve maxed out their credit card and are behind on their car leases to the point that one is about to get repossessed. He bragged in the past about making x per year, but it turns out to be about half that. She confessed all this to Mom on Tuesday because they need a loan and because—and this was a WTF moment for Mom and Dad—that for the last three years, instead of staying at the vacation house regularly, she’s actually been renting it out once a month or so and pocketing the cash.

We’re talking doll 2,000 plus for a weekend and at least $4,000 for a week. With her being cut off from using the place, she’s had to cancel one group already. She’s now worried they’ll lose everything. My folks aren’t in any position to give them a loan.

My other sister was aware of her renting out the place, but of course hasn’t ever said anything. I suspect she’s done the same thing as well, because I went up there once to drop off an ATV I had worked on and there was a family there who claimed to be staying there with my sister, her family, and that they’d gone to town for something. At the time I let it go. I figured she’d loaned out the house to some friends, but I’ve always wondered.

I found all this out through my folks, who are pretty stressed out about it—Mom more than Dad. He’s mainly just pissed off about it all. I know Dad feels betay, and I imagine he’s embarrassed that he’s in no position to help his daughter out. He did reiterate that, as long as it’s up to him, the girls won’t be using the vacation home anytime soon.

Wrote most of this yesterday but decided to wait to post it until I wasn’t so wound up. Waiting didn’t work. I’m still wound up. Sorry if this rambles. So much has happened—hard to write coherently. Then have gone to hell. I really, truly did not think anything like this would happen.

Short version: my brothers-in-law broke into my vacation home and were arrested. They’ve been charged with breaking and entering, destruction of property, and communicating threats—all Class One misdemeanors. I’ve refused to drop the charges. I might do so if I’m fully paid for the damage they caused. They were still in jail as of Saturday evening. I assume they’re out by now.

Things had settled down—or at least I thought so. Haven’t seen or heard from my sisters in over six weeks. My parents went up to the house for a week and had a good time. David, the property manager I hired, has worked out great. He’s done a couple of repairs I asked him to do, and I’ve given him a list that he’s going to work on. He usually sends a photo or two of wildlife or a sunset to his clients every week—was kind of making me want to get up there.

Friday after Thanksgiving, my bills went to my vacation home. They used an angle grinder to cut through the chain on the driveway gate and damaged the gate in the process. They tried to get in through the front door, ruined the lock set and gouged the door badly. They finally got in through the utility floor door and a locked internal door. They also broke into the barn—I’m not sure why.

When they went out through the front door, they were met by sheriff’s deputies and David. David gets notifications from the camera system when there’s activity. He saw what was going on and called the sheriff’s department. According to David, the bills tried to weasel their way out of it, but the deputies didn’t buy it. Breaking into an empty house is a pretty serious thing up there—usually it’s meth heads who ransack the place and hawk everything. When the bills were arrested, they freaked out big time—were saying how they were going to beat the hell out of me, etc. Not smart to do in front of cops.

David and the sheriff’s office tried calling my wife and me to see what we wanted to do, but we were spending the day with her parents and had left our phones in the car so we could be in vacation mode. So they booked the bills on everything, which is what I would have asked them to do anyway.

Bills called their wives from jail, who of course freaked out. They called my folks, tried to call me (they’re blocked), tried to find a lawyer up there to arrange bail—not easy to do given that it’s a rural area and was a holiday weekend. Older sister has zero cash and her cards are maxed out, so if they made bail my middle sister would have had to pay for both husbands.

I know they were still in jail as of Saturday afternoon. We didn’t check our phones until late Friday on the way home from the in-laws. There were a ton of calls and messages from my mom, dad, David, and the sheriff’s department. Talk about ruining a great day. I was in such a good mood till I looked at my phone. My wife read through the texts and listened to messages, read them out to me, and by the time we got home I had some idea of what was going on. I put my brain back into thinking mode, tried to get past my anger—failed—called David and got the rundown on what had happened and how bad the damage was, resulting in more anger. I ended Friday by calling the sheriff’s department and telling them there was no misunderstanding: the bills had absolutely no right to be on my property and I wanted to press charges.

I didn’t call my folks back. Barely slept.

I waited until Saturday afternoon to call my folks. They were both pretty rattled about it all—my mom in particular. My sisters had brow-beaten them into telling me I should tell the cops it was all a mistake and that I wanted the charges dropped. I refused flat out. Told them there was no way I’d do that until I spoke with an attorney and also not until I was paid in full for whatever it will cost to fix everything—100%.

My mom was crying hard by the time we got off the phone, which of course made me feel like— My dad suggested it was time for a complete start over, but also said he thought they needed to pay for the damage.

I haven’t gone up to the property yet. There’s nothing I can do, and I’ll probably go nuts when I see the damage in person—the photos are bad enough. I’m hoping to tomorrow or Wednesday, but my job isn’t one I can just wander off from for non-emergencies. I’ve left messages with two attorney friends asking them to recommend the right lawyers to go after my sisters and bills. I don’t know what I can do exactly, but I’m hoping to get restraining orders. I have all the texts they’ve sent me—that might help. I’m strongly considering suing them for the money they made renting the place. I don’t care about the cash, but it will help make them as miserable as possible. The gloves are definitely off at this point.

A couple of side notes:

One: Bills had no idea I’d hired someone to keep an eye on things or that there are cameras there now. My parents knew but hadn’t told them, because they knew it would just give my sisters a reason to drama up. There are signs on the property stating it’s being monitored with cameras and “No Trespassing” signs, though.

Two: My wife has completely had it at this point. I don’t blame her. She’s been more than patient about it all, but she reached her limit and was not shy about letting me know. She told me it’s up to me how I deal with this, but that she thought they all needed to be taught a hard lesson.

Three: Older bill likely won’t face any repercussions at his job over this, but middle bill has a security clearance, so he might. I’m hoping that will be motivation for middle bill to pay for the damages himself immediately.

Four: David the caretaker has an interesting background. I knew he was friends with some of the deputies—figured it was because they were all locals. I was wrong. He was a cop in a big city for years, was shot on duty, and afterwards decided to quit and moved to where his parents had retired. He has some PTSD over it all. His dog is a certified service animal and is usually with him. I know law enforcement people tend to hang together—I guess that’s how they became his friend group.

Five: I don’t want to see or speak with these a-holes for the rest of my life. I know this is in direct conflict with my overwhelming urge to make their lives as miserable as possible.

Final Update — December 7th, 2023 (five days later):

Tuesday morning I met with my attorney, went over the agreement, changed a couple of minor things, and he sent it to my sisters and brothers-in-law. It included a requirement that they pay my attorney’s fee—about $3,000. They weren’t happy about that and tried to negotiate it away, but he told them they either accept it as is or there would be no deal at all and we’d proceed with suing them for the money they got from renting out the place, wear and tear from renting it, repair costs from their break-in, emotional distress, lost income from having to deal with this, attorney fees, and whatever else we could. He also told them I would push hard with the DA’s office to prosecute every charge.

Short version: they came in and signed. I wasn’t there. I’m told it was a pretty tense environment and that the middle bill appeared to have taken charge and that at one point he told both of my sisters to shut the hell up or he was walking away from the whole thing, making his own deal with us, and the rest of them could all go to hell. They provided another cashier check for $500—claimed that’s all they had. It’s close enough that we’re going to accept it as the final payment.

Attorney also told me that everyone was very cold and curt towards one another, but that they all managed to keep it together long enough to sign and left without making too big of a scene.

I drove up to the vacation house early yesterday to check out the damage and meet with the DA’s office. Seeing the damage made my blood boil—it was so senseless. I was so pissed that I was ready to eat the cost of repairs and do everything I could to ruin their lives. Tried walking it off—failed utterly. Ended up calling a good friend who was kind enough to stay on the phone for over an hour, letting me spew and vent. He eventually got me back to focusing on the bigger picture of putting this behind me and getting on with my life.

Honestly, I’m still not sure that’s what I want to do, but I settled down enough to get some food in me, and I felt better after lunch. I went ahead to the DA’s office—hadn’t made an appointment and had to wait a while, but got to meet with the assistant DA who’s got the case. Short version is that since I don’t want to prosecute and the bills have already paid for the damages, they are willing to drop all the charges except trespassing, which in this case will be a Class Two misdemeanor. The bill will have to plead guilty and pay whatever fine the judge sets. I’m also told that if they fight the trespassing charge or ever so much as fart in public up there, that it would go very poorly for them. It helped that the bills didn’t resist arrest—if they had, none of the charges would have been dropped.

I also went by the Sheriff’s Office to thank them for getting there so quickly and everything—wanted to thank the deputies personally, but only spoke to the dispatch person. And I tried to meet up with David the property manager, but couldn’t get hold of him.

A couple of notes: the agreement includes a no contact clause—basically, if any of them show up where my wife or I are (or the other way around), whoever got their last has to leave immediately. No contact except through attorneys or other mutually agreed upon third parties. They get to keep whatever they made from renting the vacation house—my big give—unless I have tax consequences, which they will be responsible for, and we release each other from all other liabilities up through the present. There’s more to it than that, but those are the high points.

Wife and I will sign the agreement later today. After that I can’t talk about most of this, but I can talk around it, I think. This is my final update regarding all this nonsense, but I’ll respond to comments if I can. As I’ve said before, posting about all of this and reading folks’ thoughts and responses has been really helpful and has probably been key in my being able to handle this in a relatively healthy way, so thank you all again.

Relevant comment:

I had a hard time not being vindictive, but right now I’m glad I wasn’t. If they cause more drama down the road, I’ll probably regret it, but if they follow the agreement, it won’t happen. The family dynamics are, like you said, pretty much effed.

I’ve only told my parents that we’re trying to work things out—nothing more. They may or may not be okay with the way things will be moving forward, but I had to do what was best for my wife and I. I’m guessing that my sisters have told them a very slanted version. That’s just one more turd I’ll have to swim around. Really, the agreement is more a formalization of how things have been for the last few months. I know it’s not how my folks wanted things to go, but I’m pretty happy with it.