In-Laws from Hell·
THE DEED DILEMMA
A man buys a $1 million home with his girlfriend, but family pressure to add her to the deed tests their trust and threatens their future.
Who's wrong about the deed?
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When a house becomes a relationship test, the paperwork gets personal fast.
"I'm so conflicted on this," the 32-year-old poster wrote, laying out a story that started with a shared dream and ended with family pressure. They said they had been with their longtime girlfriend for three years and had "saved up my entire life to purchase a house for my long time girlfriend and I."
The result was a $1 million home, a major buy, and one the poster said they had been working toward for years. But when it came time to make the purchase, the girlfriend did not want to help with the down payment. "I've recently purchased a $1m home that she did not want to put a down payment together on, so I put down the down payment by myself and took out a mortgage," the poster explained.
Because they were not married, the poster decided to keep the house in their own name for now. "The house is under my name because I felt that since we weren't married yet it was natural that I keep it under my name for now but have no problem adding her when we get married," they wrote.
That arrangement, though, became the center of the problem.
According to the poster, the girlfriend's sister and mother took issue with the deed and made their position clear: "Her sister and mom said if I don't add her on the deed, then I don't trust her and we can't continue our relationship without trust..."
The poster said that wasn't how they saw it. "I'm torn because I do trust her," they wrote, adding that the relationship had already been strained. "Our relationship has been rocky lately because I feel her family and I don't see eye to eye on a lot of issues and it's causing a lot of tension..."
What had begun as a practical decision about ownership was now tangled up in feelings, family, and expectations. The poster said the girlfriend herself never brought up the deed when the home was purchased. "It's starting to impact how she thinks as well because when we bought the house she never mentioned anything about the deed..." they said.
Now the question is whether to change the title of the house to calm the situation, or keep things as they are until marriage. "Should I just add her on the deed to satisfy her family's demands?" the poster asked.