28-year-old son refuses to take on $250k debt from his parents’ two unstable family businesses, but might end up to selling their family home to make ends meet: ‘If I co-sign for this debt, I'm legally responsible for it’

Author image for Lana DeGaetano
Lana DeGaetano • "Show me to me please."
Aug 18, 2025 3:00 PM EDT

Seeing a parent financially struggle, especially while simultaneously grieving their late partner, is hard for any child to witness. Our parents are supposed to be our rocks, the guiding light when we feel lost in the dark. Parents are human, too, so it's only right that once in a while, we need to pick them up from a dark place and guide them toward the sun again. The 28-year-old son in this next story tries to make ends meet for his mother and his late father's two family businesses, but is flailing as her expectations for him to take on their $250k business debt begin to suffocate him. If he doesn't co-sign on this debt, then they have to sell the family home.

This is a complex situation for many reasons. If the son refuses to resign to a life of debt in his name, then his mother is displaced from the last location her late husband lived. If he takes on the debt, he is giving up financial freedom. Either way, it seems like there's no winning. Scroll to read.

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  • hands on a table holding a pen and paper calculating money and debt
    via Kateryna Hliznitsova For Unsplash+

    The image does not depict the actual subjects of the story. Subjects are models.

  • "My mom asked me to take on $250k of debt, and my refusal might mean we have to sell the family home."

    Hi Reddit, I'm feeling completely lost and need to know if I'm thinking about this correctly.
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  • My father passed away last. December, and since then, my mom and I have been navigating our new reality. He and my mom were the one who handled all the
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  • finances for their two businesses. I was never involved in the financial decisions of both businesses. For my moms business I worked from the age
    via Careful-Calendar8407
  • of 21-24 without pay. And for my dads business I worked without pay for the first 5 years of the business. Just to give perspective
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  • My dads business is the one I do now. I have fully taken over. Without my dads provision I have made several changes to basically everything and since
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  • the summer is almost over I can comfortably say, this has been the most successful summer in the past 10 years. I have changed inherently everything that for years i suggested to my dad but never got any feedback on.
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  • Some of the changes I have made are to lay off pretty much 80 percent of my employees, slowing everything down. Make sure that every single job is done
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  • perfectly, which I feel was a great move as I had no big problems this year. Where last year under my dads guidance we had to redo 2 projects.. And I am moving to a much smaller shop in January.
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  • Since I figured I do not need a shop in the middle of my city and paying such a massive premium for it. I have maybe 5 customers a year that actually come and visit. It's totally unnecessary.
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  • My dad had a vision of the business being a massive scale production pumping out numerous projects every month with a lot of employees.
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  • Where I want to scale it down to do most of the work myself. Since I enjoy it. I also don't see that big of a need for my business. What I do is niche, and since running everything I don't think I will see more than 15 projects a year.
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  • Even with great SEO and advertising. I just don't get that many calls. This strategy would give me around 10k of profit a month. With very little overhead.
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  • Which I am very happy with. A few days ago, my mom told me that the two business lines of credit are maxed out at nearly $250,000. She now needs a co- signer to keep them active, and she's asked me.
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  • I'm 28 years old. I'm about to propose to my girlfriend, and we dream of getting married and buying a house. If I co-sign for this debt, I'm legally responsible for it. It would effectively mean
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  • putting my own future on hold indefinitely, and I can't bring my future wife into a situation with a quarter-million dollars of debt that isn't ours.
    via Careful_Calendar8407
  • hand holding a miniature figurine of a house
    via Getty Images For Unsplash+

    The image does not depict the actual subjects of the story. Subjects are models.

  • I feel that my only option is to propose a hard reset for both of us. The family home we have is worth about $1.3M. My idea is that we sell it, and from the proceeds, we first pay off the
    via Careful_Calendar8407
  • $250k debt to free her from that burden. With the rest, she could find a great place in Toronto, where she loves to go, and I could finally get a down payment for a house ($500k) and capital to grow my business ($200k).
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  • I feel like this is a fair solution that gives us both a fresh start, but I'm terrified to bring it up to her. Not to sound harsh or mean, I wish I could say she was still grieving. But the truth is my mom
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  • goes out to Toronto nearly every day, comes home at 3 am and proceeds to sleep a portion of the day away. She's also a big spender, with new brand name bags every time I see her. And
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  • this is the house we've lived in for years. I feel like I am taking something from her but I also feel like signing this would be extremely unfair to me. How do I even start this conversation? Is what I'm proposing fair, or am I being selfish?
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  • TL;DR: My mom wants me to co- sign for $250k in debt left by my late father. I can't, as it would destroy my own financial future with my soon-to-be fiancée. I think the only way out is to sell the family home, pay the debt, and split the equity so we can both start over. Need advice on how to approach this.
    via Careful-Calendar8407
  • lidder444 DO NOT CO SIGN ANYTHING. YOU WILL BE LIABLE TO REPAY THE ENTIRE DEBT IF YOUR NAME IS ON IT. I'm so sorry for your loss OP. Please please don't get wrapped up taking in debt because you feel sorry for your mom or you feel you 'owe her' because she raised you.
    via lidder444
  • I truly feel that when you are grieving you don't see clearly. You mention yourself your mom is wasting money, shopping and staying out late. Take care of yourself. DO NOT have any part of this business/ loans or debt. It is not your problem.
    via lidder444
  • Edit: However I'm not sure if you're really entitled to have half the value of the family home. What you should do is buy her out of the business when the debt has been paid off
    via lidder444
  • yrnkween Do not co sign anything with your mom for her business. She's already checked out and how do you know these are legitimate business debts and not just her attempt to off-load her new lifestyle debts. You already know that your dad's business plan was a bit overblown for reality. What do you know of her business plan and future goals?
    via yrnkween

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family dynamics family drama entitled parents entitlement reddit story family feud parenting entitled family reddit thread parent Reddit Parenting Fail parents entitled people Parenting FAILS
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