Dear Prudence,
My husband and I are struggling with whether to send money to his half-sister, who just reached out asking for money to cover a life-saving surgery. My husband immigrated to the U.S. from an African country, and he routinely sends money to his parents and siblings, and pays for his nieces’ schooling, all of which I support (and some of it is our joint money).
Lately, he’s been receiving more requests for money for various things, like renovating a culturally significant structure that he personally doesn’t care about. Now his half-sister, whom he’s never met or spoken with, is asking for money for surgery. I want the decision to be mostly his, but he’s struggling with what to do because he feels the requests for money will be endless as long as he fulfills them. He’s even worried our infant daughter will inherit these requests for money when she’s older. How do we go about this?
I know I haven’t said how much money my husband’s half-sister is asking for, because she hasn’t said, and we haven’t asked (yet). We’re lucky to both have relatively good-paying jobs, but we have a very high mortgage, and our costs are about to skyrocket when our daughter starts daycare. We also want to be able to afford another child. My husband sending money to his family has never been a problem in our marriage, but it is something we talked a lot about before getting married. This latest request, on top of other pending requests, has him struggling with how to proceed with this specific request and going forward. I suggested he establish a budget of money to send home and be clear about that with his family and enforce that boundary, but we also wouldn’t know how to handle it if a request like this came after the annual budget was spent. My husband will probably just send her the money, because he would feel awful if we hear that she’s died, as would I. But what is the right way to go about this?