Co-Dependent All Around?
My husband and I need advice about our 28 year old daughter. She has lived in our home (rent-free) for the last 3-1/2 years, along with her two boys, 8 and 5. We are very sad about the choices our daughter has recently made.
The father of her children is a petty thief and heroin/opiate addict. When our daughter and this guy were together, he was verbally and physically abusive. The police were called on one occasion. He left her when she was pregnant with her youngest son. Ever since he left our pregnant daughter and she moved in with us, we have supported and stood by her. We want her to succeed. We have helped her with school, loaned her money and co-signed loans to help her get ahead. We even loaned her money, at her request, to hire a good family attorney to successfully fight the father's right to see his children. (During this time he was facing criminal charges in multiple jurisdictions, as well as actively using drugs). He has spent months in jail off and on. Our daughter has paid back roughly half the money to us; she currently owes us $7000 for a second-hand car.
Finally, as a result of his addiction and criminal behavior, he has not held steady employment and not paid any child support for years. He owes our daughter over $10,000 in back child support. This is why we have helped her financially and helped protect them legally from him. We love our grandsons, love having them in the house, and have had difficulty letting them grow up in poverty. Having said this, these unplanned financial outlays over the years have led to my husband and I delaying our retirement for five years.
So...we pretty much hate this guy and want him as far away from our daughter and grandsons as possible. He is currently in some intense sobriety program as an alternative to prison. Unbelievably, our daughter has decided to begin a relationship with him again and let him see the children. They have been going out for roughly 3 months. She wants to believe he is on the road to recovery, although he has only been sober 3 months and it is court-ordered.
We need our daughter to stand on her own financial feet sooner rather than later, and allow us the retirement we deserve. She needs to be able to support her children.
We know that our daughter is an adult, and that letting this guy back into her and the kids' live is her choice. But we cannot support that choice. How do we stand this emotionally? Do we kick our daughter and grandkids out of the house? How do we protect the grandkids and ourselves?
Distraught Parents/Grandparents
PS On top of everything else, our daughter is a hoarder. Her hoarding began after she was abandoned by this guy. The finished basement of our house, where she lives with the kids, is a wreck.