ADULT SON TAKES ADVANTAGE OF US

Dear Coleen

My son’s wife left him last year and she ended up getting the house and they have shared custody of their children, who are 14 and 16.

My husband and I offered for him to come and live with us, which he did. I wanted to help him to begin with, but now we’re in a situation where we have our 48-year-old living with us, and his teenage children staying every other weekend and sometimes during the week.

Like most teenagers, they’re hard work and they often argue and slam doors and invite their friends over.

Our son goes out drinking several times a week with his friends and will come home late or make a mess in the kitchen when he gets home and makes himself a late-night snack.

He doesn’t pay rent because his ex wife took him to the cleaners, but he still has money for drinking and taking his new girlfriend out for dinner. We’re in our late sixties and we just want to enjoy our retirement. But we don’t want to kick our son out because he’s been through enough in the last year. What can we do?

Coleen says

I don’t think it’s a case of kicking him out, but rather making him realise how lucky he is to be getting so well looked after. Lots of people without much money go through a divorce and don’t get put up by their parents. So yes, he’s been through a hard time, but I still think he’s taking advantage of you both. At the end of the day, it’s your house and he’s staying there rent-free.

Explain to him what you’ve explained to me – that you’re in your late sixties and you don’t want to be clearing up after him when he gets home late and makes a mess in the kitchen. If he has money for drinking and dinners out, he can pay you a little bit of rent, more as a gesture than anything else.

And he needs to control his kids and explain to them that when they’re staying at your house they have to limit the arguing, not slam doors and not have friends round if you’d rather they didn’t.

Tell him you love helping him out but that he’s not to take advantage of that.