A 41-year-old mother raised her two kids entirely on her own while their father stayed out of the picture for years. Now he’s asking her to forgive the $11,000 in child support he still owes, and she’s not willing to let it go. Her children are now 18 and 21. Their father, who’s 52, recently…
A couple with a 2-year-old is trying to set a limit on how long the in-laws stay when they visit. The grandparents live across the country and want at least 10 days in the couple’s home, but past visits have shown that stretching things that long usually ends in a blowup. The couple loves the…
A man in his 30s headed off on a long weekend with his wife and three other couples, all friends since high school. By the end of the trip, he’d been called rude for cleaning up and making his own breakfast, and he and his wife left a day early. The group had rented a…
A woman who’s engaged to be married got news from her fiancé that stopped her in her tracks. He told her he wants everything they own to be in his name, and the reason he gave was simple, he’s the one paying for it all. She knows he isn’t wrong about the money. But the…
A favor that started in August has come to an abrupt end. One employee had been driving a coworker to work every day, and it all fell apart after she offered a seat in the car to someone else without asking first. What began as a short-term fix while her car was out of commission…
Here are 4 title options: A 29-year-old woman came home from a work trip a day early and found her younger sister and her sister’s boyfriend settled into her apartment. By 11:30 that night, she’d sent them both packing, and now her sister isn’t speaking to her. She travels for work about two weeks out…
A bride-to-be thought keeping her wedding-night hotel private would be a small, simple request. Instead, it’s turned into a family standoff with her sister, who’s also her maid of honor, and now their mom has taken a side too. Her sister has been deeply involved in the wedding planning from the start. Most of the…
A father of three has been working hard to raise his kids with a healthy respect for money. The trouble is that both sets of grandparents live nearby, and every visit seems to undo the lessons he and his wife are trying to teach at home. He works as an office administrator, and with three…
Years ago, a young couple in their first home decided to replace the aging fence around their backyard. They covered nearly the entire bill themselves, and the only neighbor who complained about the result was the one who’d never bothered to answer the door. The fence was shared, the way most fences are in neighborhoods…
A serious hobby woodworker was blindsided at a family lunch when an aunt thanked them for building a big farmhouse dining table for their cousin. The problem was that nobody had ever asked them to build it. The cousin is moving into her first house next month, and she’d been telling relatives the table was…