I am so undecided about this, and don’t know if I’m going to make things worse. Sorry, it’s quite long.
My husband has one sister/brother-in-law, and they have two adult children in their 20s.
We have three adult children in their 30s.
We live about 200 miles apart and what with work/children/busy lives, we never really spent a lot of time together (suspect it’s because brother in law doesn’t like us, although he’s perfectly pleasant when we have seen them) so we're not very close with them.
Mother in law died in April, and the cousins spent most of their time at the wake together, and all got along very well.
Nephew and his partner have just had a baby last month. They have been together a little over a year.
I didn’t have any contact details for nephew, so I asked my sister-in-law to ask if there was anything they would like for the baby, or would they prefer cash/voucher to choose something themselves or to put towards a big ticket item. She got nephew to message me about this.
He messaged me on Thursday morning. We had a chat, he sent some photographs of the baby, and agreed that cash would be preferable, as they were going to open a savings account for baby. All fine by me, and I transferred the cash to his bank account.
On Thursday lunchtime, my son messaged me asking if his cousin had messaged anyone recently. I told him that I had been messaging him that morning, and my son asked if he had been asking for money, as my son had received a message from his cousin asking to borrow some money until he gets paid next at the end of week. Nephew said that they had had some unexpected expenses and he needed to put petrol in his car and didn’t want to ask his folks as they would only worry. That message was sent to my son at 11pm on Wednesday night, and my son felt it was “a bit sus, mum”. After a bit of a chat, we felt it was genuine (nephew had messaged me via WhatsApp, but messaged my son via Facebook). My son went back to him, saying he could help, but nephew then said he would be ok, and not to send anything. The timing is a bit coincidental as he said this right after I’d sent the money for the baby. We're not talking large sums of money - under £100.
Should I say anything to my sister-in-law? Nephew didn’t ask my son not to tell anyone. My worry is that he has approached a cousin who, frankly, he barely knows, to ask for a loan, rather than go to his parents (who, to my knowledge are not struggling financially in any way), his sister, his paternal uncle or paternal grandparents for help. They have always struck me as a very close family.
I worry that my son was his last option before maybe approaching a loan shark. I know I’m probably over-thinking it, but I know that if the position were reversed, and any of mine had approached that side of the family, I would be very sad, and I would hope that the in-laws would tell us. We’re not overly flush, but would never leave our children struggling if there was any way we could help them, and I’m pretty sure that the same would go for my husband’s sister/brother-in-law.
WWYD? Would you say nothing? I don’t want to seem to be running and telling tales, and I would hate it if he really felt in future he couldn’t approach his parents AND now couldn’t come to us either. I don’t mean tell sister-in-law so she could tell him off for approaching our side of the family, but more so they can support their son.
Good Morning Monday 20th April 2026
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