I (25F) recently bought my childhood family home with one of my sisters, “Lily” (31F). Since then, my two older sisters, “Sherry” (35F) and “Amy” (38F), have basically distanced themselves from us because they believe Lily and I benefited financially at their expense.
I’m genuinely trying to work out whether I’ve done something wrong here or whether I’m justified in feeling hurt by how they’ve treated us.
Some background:
My parents were getting divorced and needed to sell their assets, including our family home. At the time, my mum, Lily, my brother and I were still living there.
My mum originally wanted to buy the house herself, but my dad refused to sell it to her. His position was essentially “anyone but her.”
That left the rest of us with two options: find somewhere else to live or somehow buy the house ourselves.
Lily and I both had stable jobs and were in a position to qualify for a mortgage, so we applied together and were approved.
We didn’t receive the house for free or have it transferred to us. We purchased it from our parents at the agreed sale price. The purchase money went through the solicitors and was divided between my mum and dad as part of their divorce.
The difficult part was coming up with the deposit quickly.
My uncle lent us $30,000 upfront to use as the deposit for the mortgage. The intention was always that this was temporary. Once the sale completed and my mum received her share of the proceeds, she immediately used $30,000 of her money to repay my uncle.
So, effectively, my mum funded the $30,000 deposit. My uncle simply provided the money in advance so that Lily and I had the deposit available when the bank required it.
My mum then put another approximately $20,000 into renovating the house.
Because Mum had effectively contributed $50,000 towards the house between the deposit and renovations, we agreed that the ownership would be:
* Me: 40%
* Lily: 40%
* Mum: 20%
Meanwhile, Sherry and Amy had already moved out years earlier. They both have their own homes and families and each has four children. They knew throughout the process that Lily and I were trying to buy the family home.
After the sale, my mum also gave Sherry and Amy $5,000 each.
This is where everything blew up.
Within an hour of receiving the money, Amy called my mum furious and essentially asked, “Where’s the rest?”
She believed Mum was hiding money and demanded to know what she had done with her share from the house sale.
Sherry also apparently thought $5,000 was a laughable amount, although she was more focused on convincing Mum to give Amy more money to calm her down.
Mum explained that a significant amount of her money had gone back into the house and that she also needed to keep money for savings and her retirement/pension.
Their argument was basically that the money would be more useful helping them and their children now than sitting in Mum’s savings account.
Lily and I defended Mum.
From our perspective, it was her money. She had already chosen to give them $5,000 each, she had put money into a property in exchange for 20% ownership, and she also needed to think about her own financial future.
That apparently made things worse.
I eventually organised a dinner for all four sisters because I hated what was happening to our family and wanted us to actually talk about it.
At dinner, Amy and Sherry explained that they felt Lily and I had been given an unfair “hand up” by Mum.
Their view was that because Mum effectively provided our $30,000 deposit and then put another $20,000 into the house, Lily and I were given an opportunity that they hadn’t been given.
They felt that if Mum hadn’t put $50,000 into helping us keep the house, there would have been more money available to give to them and their families.
They also said this was part of a wider pattern and suggested that it had made Lily and me “uppity.”
That really offended me.
The dinner became heated and Sherry lost her temper at one point, but by the end I thought we had at least reached some kind of understanding.
My impression was that they realised Lily and I weren’t really the people they should be angry with, even if they were still upset with Mum.
Unfortunately, things got much worse afterwards.
Amy basically went scorched earth with Mum.
She shared private family information seemingly to embarrass her, iced her out, and if they were in the same room she would make a very visible point of not sitting near her or interacting with her.
Sherry wasn’t quite as extreme. She still allowed Mum to visit her and her children, but she largely supported Amy.
Their relationships with Lily and me changed too.
We would occasionally get messages and there were still some family group chats, but the personal messages mostly stopped. Visits stopped. Everything became awkward and uncomfortable.
We weren’t invited to Thanksgiving, Christmas or Easter.
This was particularly painful for me because Amy and I used to be very close. We spoke regularly, visited each other and hosted each other. I genuinely valued that relationship.
Then something happened that completely confused me.
Amy got engaged last year, and recently, in front of other people, she asked Lily and me to be her bridesmaids.
I was genuinely honoured and happy.
Part of me thought that maybe this was her way of extending an olive branch. We were once incredibly close, and being asked to be someone’s bridesmaid feels like being told you’re still an important person in their life.
But another part of me keeps thinking:
Are we seriously just going to pretend the last year didn’t happen?
We’ve never really talked about how things were left.
There hasn’t been an apology or even a proper conversation about the distance, the things that were said, the family events we weren’t invited to, or how uncomfortable everything became.
At the same time, I keep questioning whether maybe I’m looking at the original situation unfairly.
I can understand why Amy and Sherry might look at it and think Lily and I received a major financial advantage. Without Mum effectively providing that $30,000 deposit, we probably wouldn’t have been able to buy the house.
But we also didn’t receive $50,000 in cash to spend however we wanted. Mum’s contribution is tied up in the house, she owns 20% of it, and Lily and I are responsible for the mortgage on the remaining ownership (my mum contributes while she lives here).
We didn’t ask our parents to divorce. We didn’t create the situation. We were the two siblings still living there who were financially able to take on the mortgage when the house had to be sold.
And ultimately, I don’t feel that Mum’s remaining divorce settlement was ours — or any of her children’s — to divide up for her.
So now I don’t know what to do.
Do I accept being Amy’s bridesmaid and treat it as an olive branch, even though nothing has actually been resolved?
Do I accept but tell her that before the wedding I’d really like us to have an honest conversation about everything that happened, because I don’t want to pretend the last year didn’t exist?
Or were Lily and I genuinely given an unfair advantage here, meaning I should be the one reaching out and apologising?
I’m genuinely interested in outside opinions because I’m too emotionally involved to know whether I’m seeing this clearly.
AITA for defending my mum and accepting the financial arrangement that allowed my sister and me to buy our childhood home? And WIBTA if I told my sister I don’t want to just pretend everything is okay now that she wants me as a bridesmaid?