Here's a bit of background information first. My OH and I live in a large house in an expensive part of the country and the house is divided in two, one part for OH and me and the other part for DD ,SiL and family of grown-up children. OH is going downhill, especially in the memory department and I am beginning to have to take over more and more administration responsibilities. While finding out about the finances, which my OH has previously dealt with, I was horrified to discover that OH has, for the several years that DD and family have lived here, paid all the household bills for the entire house i.e. council tax, electricity, water and sewage bills, heating oil and building insurance. The only contribution from them has been that they pay the telephone bill. We gave them the half of the house legally ( foolishly), they both work, albeit in not highly paid jobs, and they spent the proceeds of the sale of their previous house on a holiday home in France. I feel that we are subsidising their way of life and that, in effect, they are using us and sponging off us. I want to stop this and ensure that they start to pay their rightful share of the bills but know that this is almost sure to cause an almighty row. OH is of the " Anything for a quiet life" brigade but I resent the thought that we (I) scrimped and scraped and went without all our working lives and , although we live comfortably, there is little spare . I shan't say anything to them yet (too angry) but would welcome any advice as to how to tackle this situation. Remember, we are living in the same house, and OH and I are both over 80.
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