Your daughter married wrong!!??
You are a middle class middle aged person. Ok let us say you have a house worth about Rs. 65 lakhs (you bought it for Rs. 20L) and your age is 57 years. You work for a big company and your retirement age is 58 years.
You have 2 daughters – one aged 24 and one aged 27. Your older daughter has married a man who, well, is good for nothing. She is a graduate earning about Rs. 20,000 a month and married to an unemployed guy who kept telling you he is an IFA. You were impressed and thought that he would earn about Rs. 300,000 a year – and that was fine by you.
Well, later on you realised that he does not earn anything, is dependent on his parents, and has a debt of Rs. 50,00,000.
Your older daughter is an MBA earning about Rs. 600,000 and married to a class mate from her MBA class – and he also earns about Rs. 700,000.
Your personal net worth is Rs. 28,00,000 in savings – like NSC, PPF, etc. Your PF, Gratuity, etc. will add up to another Rs. 12,00,000 – so Rs. 40 L is what you have. You keep wondering what you can do to help your daughter.
However your great daughter has tied your hands with the following:
a. She will not leave him PERMANENTLY -but will keep fobbing you off Rs. 5k-10K with a sob story.
b. She stays with you – and then goes and stays with her inlaws for 3-4 months at a time.
c. Needless to say your ‘sambhandhi’ has little respect for you or your daughter.
d. Your son in law’s father has a net worth of about Rs. 1.5 crores – including the house in which they live. He has no intention of paying off his son’s debts.
e. Your son in law has a brother who is well qualified, earning, married and all the 6 of them stay in the same house.
Now let us look at what solutions the readers of Subramoney.com have to give?
Sunil K
I have 2 daughters 15 and 14. Hope to provide a solution after a few years (Inshalla/ Rama/ Jesus and blessings of from rest of the Gods).
Regards
Sunil
Mayank
Not exactly, but my father is in a situation which is somewhat close to that given above. So I am eagerly looking for a solution here !!
Khushnood Viccaji
This may sound idealistic, but in the absence of any other workable options (leaving the husband, making the father pay-off whole or part of the debt, etc.), these are the options I can think of.
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You and your daughter should sit with her in-laws (if possible, in the husband’s absence), and chalk out an action plan for –
> son-in-law to get some gainful employment – maybe try and pull a few strings to find him a job.
> clearing the 50L debts, in descending order of *interest burden* (and not the principal amount)
> ensuring that he stays on track, by having regular discussions about it.
umesh mishra
you forgot one important aspect. does she love him and wants to stay together?
Srini
Some ideas :
a. parents should not feel responsible for his elder daughter’s plight …. however her marriage happened, whether they arranged it or she fell in love and got married.
b. I wonder how the SIL created his 50L debt ? If it happened due to foolishness, fine … if it happened due to some vices ( I know of a family that had to sell their house to fund their son’s straying away from a stable marriage – poor guy had fallen for a dance-bar girl, thought she would marry him 🙂 ! ), then advise daughter to leave the marriage and try to reboot her life …
c. Otherwise, provide a dharamsala to the daughter and SIL – where food and shelter is available all the time, clothes are provided on need basis, money is provided on for basic health issues and for grand children’s basic education. If the grandchildren aspire to do a BCOM from Australia, tell them to top their board in 12th !
subra
Mayank there is problem giving a solution to fit everybody. Hence the need for counselling – the girl has to be kept away from depression and suicide (medical counselling), the girl’s siblings have to be taught to be sympathetic (we all make mistakes), the girl’s father has to be told not to pay without creating a supervisory group (financial counselling). To expect all this from one blogger subra is tooooooooo muccccccchhhhhh
Shweta
Put some sense in the daughter, refuse to help her further for her to realize that she needs to get her husband to work. If she loves him that is.
If she has no love for him. She should dump him and move on, build her career and find someone whom she can love and respect.
akshat
Is there a typo ? At one place you have said elder daughter married to unemployed guy, in other place you said older daughter’s husband is earning 7L.
Dhivya
Fathers always have a BIGGGGGGGGGG heart….
It should be the daughter who should take the decision..
There should be clarity on
1. why she is still clinging to her husband, if the clinging has to do with that guy being a very good fellow, then its her responsibility to make him work.
2.She should give a chance to her husband to prove himself. If he succeeds she can go with him forever instaed of just staying in his place for 3-4 months.
3. It s not right on the daughter’s part to feed her husband with her father’s money. atleast the guy shud have some self respect to deny this help.
From the parent side, the parents can talk to the girl and find out what she s really thinking on her mind and let her know whats right and what can be a life long affair.She should be given some counselling to have such clarity of thoughts. May be she would ahve the confidence to take the decision after that.
Muthu
Why the unemployed guy should be characterized as an IFA? You too sir:-)
Mira D
The girl is working, even @20 K pm. Good, so atleast she has an idea of the world outside.
Important not to discriminate against the girl who made sensible decisions when it comes to division of assets.
Can they give some lumpsum investable money to both– the sensible girl can invest as she wants, for the other one cash flow to be created such that the corpus cannot be liquidated easily.
Indian Thoughts
What i see here is corpus of the father is not too huge given today’s cost of living.
Both the daughters have made their own choice and hence upto them to live their life now.
IMO, father should not help elder daughter because what if tomorrow they need money, person (SIL in this case) who can’t take care of himself and his family, will ever help them back.
Hari
In my opinion, Girl’s Father should create a family trust to protect the money. Other wise in-laws or future scenarios may force the girl to borrow more money in future and the second daughter will not get any thing. Also the retirement corpus that he [father] has now will be wiped out. This is from the personal finance perspective.
The relationship is not productive hence girl should opt for divorce. This is full stop to the drama.
Payal
If the daughter who is going through a bad marriage with an unemployed, full of debt husband doesn’t have kids yet, the best solution will be walk out/ divorce.
Ram
1. The father cannot help the daughter financially. As is, I believe he is underfunded for retirement considering that he has no pension and has only one more year of current employment. By helping the daughter he will only be making his bad situation worse.
The rest of the following assumes that the daughter and sil want to live with each other.
2. Find out if the SIL wants to work and earn real money? If yes, Help him get a job. Otherwise, nothing else will work.
3. Bring down the loan: Even just paying interest on a 50L (even @ 5%) is impossible – more than what the daughter earns -. Who would extend an unsecured loan for 50L (even assuming a lower loan got compounded into this). In my opinion, people who can give this type of loan (unsecured) can also afford lose some part of it. So, the father and/or sil’s father with the help of a professional (lawyer/finance person) should restructure this debt to be more meaningful (haircut of 50-70%?). How much to trim? – The debt servicing should not be more than 100% of the take home salary of sil’s job. In time, the % should shrink as the sil gets raise, etc. Make it clear to sil, that it is his responsbility to repay the trimmed loan.
4. Make it clear to the daughter that she should live within a means of no more than 50% of her salary. Considering that she has a house to live in, financial expectations of her from fil, bil will be low. So, with some personal discipline this should be possible. The other 50% of her salary should be saved for her future kids and retirement.
5. Make it clear to the daughter that her father does not have money of 5K or 10K every other time and the only thing that he can do financially is bequeath 50% of his house post his (and his wife’s) time.
shaq
time to cut the umbilical cord.
Shankar
Hi Subra,
Since the Father is going to get retired (assuming it is a private company), he may not get required pension(or medical expenses) to lead his life at old age. Definitely cannot get help from their daughters.
Assumption: Father also has his wife alive living with him
1) Create a will saying after, both he and his wife dies, House and other properties will be divided equally to both of his daughter.
2) Place the retirement money in a fixed deposit(40%) and equities(60% — To beat inflation) and get the monthly income. If want to help daughters, help them from the monthly income if possible, but never touch the principal.
3) If one of them(Father or Mother) dies then take all the equity money and register(living person) into a good old age home with all facilities. Use the fixed deposit money’s interest for own use and to help daughters. DON’T FALL INTO TRAP OF LIVING WITH DAUGHTERS.
Are there any caveats in my solution?
suresh
the girl should go and stay at in laws house and never turn to father for financial needs and make the husband feel his responsibility. this is possible since they are in joint family where his brother earning nice
LuckyOye
My humble opinions:
1. The father is in no position to financially assist the older daughter in any way, regardless of what he may think, Rs. 40 Lacs is in no way sufficient to support himself/wife a retired life for the next 20 years, atleast another 20L is required. SO, as someone else above said, ‘its time to cut the umbilical cord’.
2. Older daughter should be taken to counseling with a clear intention to get her out of this useless marriage. Humans do make mistakes, we should be humble enough to admit them when we see them, correct ourselves and move on. Past sunk costs are already gone, what matters is the future. Must make absolutely sure there are no children arising out of this current marriage.
3. Relying on younger daughter for support in later years is possible only with a clear written understanding in which he names his younger daughter as beneficiary of his house property in return for financial/medical/emotional support in old age. Alternatively, if any bank agrees to a reverse mortgage on the house next year (on retirement), he could enter into it. My suggestion is to stay away from such hard legal agreements with financial entities as far as possible.
4. Older daughter could eventually remarry. I would even hazard saying if she needs company now, she should try out live-in relationships (after her divorce of course) till she finds the right guy to settle down. Indian moral values are rapidly adapting; no point in clinging to old notions of morality if they only bring misery/loneliness in the present.