Not to be mean, but I see lots of excuses and very little responsibility being taken in this thread.

Im not we can offer much help to someone who isnt yet ready to listen.

Don't open the flood gates....

Did you even read the rest of this thread? We had an apartment and he had a MUCH better job and was paying the bills just fine before we had to move in with his parents 3 hours away to take care of THEM because they can't take care of themselves or hire a maid and an in-home nurse and a personal chef. He doesn't live rent-free, trust me. If you had to deal with the shit (literally) he deals with every day, you'd consider it rent too.


I think most parents would be willing to lend a hand when it's their situation that caused the financial burden to begin with. I don't think it's right for him to have let them continue living in squalor which would only get worse as his dad's health continues to fail, but neither do I think it's fair for him to get punished for his income dropping when he's the one who dropped everything to be there for them in their time of need. We knew it would be a tough financial situation for a while and cut back drastically right away, but we didn't expect some of the expenses we encountered and we certainly didn't expect him to have so much trouble landing a good job down here (or for the bussing system to be quite as screwed up as it is where we are living--it used to take 45 minutes to go the same distance as it takes 4 hours in this system). We knew we had made some mistakes in the past and were making great strides at fixing those mistakes before we suddenly had to move on short notice. The rent was also not an expected expense, that got sprung on me after I moved in, and they still refuse to sign a lease. Which really only helps me the day they refuse to give the money back to him for groceries, because I'll be interested in seeing them enforce a supposed rental agreement with no paper trail. For now the arrangement keeps the peace.

Thanks to everyone for the suggestions. It's good to know I'm on the right track with where we are focusing our energies: biking more = less gas costs; getting the house cleaned up and organized = no/smaller storage unit; reducing or putting off payments in a way that won't cause late fees to snowball as much as possible; work on getting a better job with more hours, food stamps, unemployment and disability; check into bankruptcy for my specific situation. On the one hand it's good to know I was already on the right track. On the other hand it's kind of disheartening to see how the right track isn't getting us where we need to be, and seeing the whole state assistance system this closely is putting into sharp relief how badly we treat our poor and sick people in this country. The only thing I can do now is keep trying to get out of it as quickly as possible.

Well... the storage locker just pushed me over the edge. Here is someone who cannot pay the bills, and yet still continues to justify the existence of a storage locker because there is too much stuff in the house?

Find a place or get rid of it. That is pure waste.

Typically unemployment requires not just filing the initial paperwork, but also a weekly filing certifying continued eligibility, and often tracking and occasionally submitting proof on an ongoing job search. It's less work than the initial filing, but it's not like that initial filing (which takes less than an hour in my experience) just causes money to roll in. If the partner can't get around to filing the initial claim, it seems unlikely to me that he's going to get around to filing his weekly paperwork either. Even if he's "earning" the equivalent of $1200 per hour ($100 for 5 minutes of work - assuming he's already doing the minimum required job hunting, if such is required for the "can only get part time work" situation he's in).

I think you guys are being really harsh on brigitte. It's obvious from her posts that she's resentful of the fact that her partner has chosen to make a lifestyle-altering decision to move back in with his folks to care for them during his dad's final days. She'd be more content her partner's parents would have hired outside help and left her and their son alone. She's now feeling trapped by her financial circumstances since she's unable to work but has to pay rent out of her meager resources to her partner's packrat parents.

She fired the first shot. Sounds like she just came here to whine & find validation to file bankruptcy.


Please tell me this isn't your "disability".

I agree with you, but do you think that's an overnight process? And would you then also be chastising me if I told you that he had quit his job and took a week or a month to devote entirely to cleaning up the house and the yard before looking for work again, just to suit your timeline of finding a place or getting rid of it? You do realize when they spend an entire week doing this on TV, they have a crew of about 20 people cleaning out a house, complete with psycho-therapists around for helping the packrats/hoarders cope with their stuff getting thrown away. Doing this with one and a half people with two people thwarting us every step of the way is not an instantaneous process.

Would you instead recommend that we spend $500 or more a month on rent for an apartment, thereby giving us room for our own belongings in our own home and not a storage locker, plus our own utilities, and perhaps in this case the $60 of gas per trip to drive 6 hours weekly to help them a few days at a time to take care of this mess, having not moved in?

Neither of those seem like fiscally responsible alternatives.
* Lose all income while still having bills to pay,
* an additional $700-940 a month in expenses, or
* $80 a month for a less-than-infinite time-frame.
If those were your options, which would you choose?

I came here because I remembered this forum being a place where people came for help, when I was a regular here before. I remember this forum being full of people who were kind and helpful, people who read the entire post before responding to it, people who didn't call others names, people who had good advice, and others who had bad advice but could be called on that bad advice without resorting to name calling but instead would simply learn something new. I see now that it has been populated by a bunch of temporarily able-bodied folks who would prefer to break people down rather than build them up or help them find some light at the end of what is assuredly a long, dark tunnel for most folks who come here seeking help.

I was sad to find the GRS blog had become elitist and back-biting (and I'm not just talking about the comments), but I had been hoping the forums here were still a haven for folks in need. Apparently I was wrong. I wish I had the time and energy to devote to frequenting here and making this a better place, but with my situation right now that's simply not possible, so I'll have to stick to occasionally stopping in. I can only hope that the next time someone asks me for help, I can keep this experience in mind, and be gracious and kind to them instead of giving someone else the treatment I've found here.

Sincerely thank you to those who were helpful and gave me things to think about. If in the future anyone has any further suggestions or clarifying questions that could help, please feel free to contribute. As soon as we have gotten ourselves out of this mess, I'll try to remember to come back and post a success story outlining what we did.

As much as I don't like handouts in general, and, consistent with my claim of being a fiscal conservative, am opposed to welfare in favor of some sort of "workfare" system, I do like that we have a safety net in this country. While I might question some of the choices/decisions made in this whole situation, I think he should be taking advantage of the support available to him both initially and ongoing.

We will all be old and dependent on someone one day. I can see where if the partner was not doing his part then the same resources would be going to support his parents in other ways.