I’ve been meaning to post about this for a while because it just becomes more and more ridiculous all the time. Long set-up to give context to the hilariously dumbfounding conclusion of this saga:

OSD turned 16 in early 2020. At that time, we handed down our oldest vehicle to her. It's a reliable European SUV that we drove for many years and kept in very good condition and never had any issues. She was delighted to have it and we felt good knowing that she would be safe (or as safe as a teen driver can be) in it. 

It was close to needing new tires, so BM said that would be her gift. She also agreed to cover insurance since we were giving OSD the car and also had another of the exact same model that was two years newer that we plan to give to YSD when she turns 16 in 2022.

Fast forward three months later and H discovers that not only had the tires not been replaced, but BM had also dropped her insurance. Apparently she "wasn't aware" of how much tires for that vehicle would cost when she agreed, nor did she know that insuring a teenage driver was so expensive. 

After a lot of discussion, H and I agreed that we had to resolve the situation with the tires because it simply wasn't safe. Then we added OSD to our insurance and worked it out with her to pay a portion of that every month (she has a part-time job). Through all of this, BM was either completely disengaged or she was super hostile whenever the suggestion of her contributing was brought up. OSD was genuinely very thankful and gracious towards us for helping her.

Then a couple of months ago, the vehicle started having some issues. We have a long standing relationship with a mechanic who specializes in European cars, so we took it to him. The urgent issue was going to cost about $3k to resolve, but he strongly recommended a list of other repairs and replacements that he said would allow us to get another 100k miles at least out of it. The total for everything was $6k. It sounds like a lot but remember that we’d never had to do anything other than routine maintenance on this vehicle and it was at 125k miles. 

H contacted BM and she initially agreed to contribute $2500. That same day she and OSD got into a huge fight about something unrelated and suddenly BM washed her hands of the car situation and refused to pay for anything. So again, we decided that with the used car market being what it is, we’d never be able to buy anything as safe or as nice for $6k and went forward with the repairs. We worked out a payment plan with OSD to repay us for half. All was well.

Two weeks later, OSD had a little fender bender that broke one of her headlights. There wasn’t any other damage. H was in middle of a month-long trip and I was swamped with my own stuff. So he told OSD that she needed to get the headlight fixed before she drove anywhere at night. BM said her husband would handle it.  It turned out that no one handled it and to this day the headlight has still not been replaced. H is livid, both with BM for her flakiness, and with OSD because it’s just a dang headlight and she is capable of getting that fixed on her own if she made it a priority. As a matter of principle, he forbade OSD to drive it at all until it was dealt with and he absolutely refused to get involved.

And this is even longer than I thought lol. I'll make a part 2 later with the details on how BM "doesn't need" us to do anything for OSD because she is her MOTHER.