Woman Asks if She’s Wrong for Not Letting Her Daughter Use Her College Fund for a Wedding or a House

If a parent is fronting the bill for college for one of their kids, they have the right to refuse to spend that money elsewhere, right?

Well, I guess that’s up for debate, according to the story this mom shared.

Read on to get all the details and let us know what you think.

AITA for not letting my daughter use her college fund for a wedding or house?

“Backstory: I (43f) have 4 kids. El (22f) Katie (17f) cam(15m) isla (5f) and I’m also currently pregnant.

Me and my husband (50m) started adding to college funds every month for each of our kids pretty much as soon as we found out we were pregnant. I won’t say the exact amount but my husband has an excellent job so it’s more than most.

We never told our kids because it just didn’t feel necessary.

El got pregnant when she was 16 and ended up dropping out of school. I was very disappointed but I understood. However I was under the impression she would return later, but she has no plans to.

The dad stuck around and now they have 1 more kid (3) and one on the way. They are engaged but don’t plan to marry until they can afford it.

They were doing okay financially for a while but due to the market right now they’ve been struggling because El can’t get a job since she doesn’t have a diploma so we’ve been loaning them money.

Katie is a senior and just got accepted into college, we’ve been setting everything up and obviously she knows about the fund now.

Katie and El were talking and she was telling El about the school and El asked how she was planning on paying for it, Katie responded “my college fund” I was in the room while they were talking and this made me panic. We had just planned on splitting it between the remaining four since we knew they were going to college.

El asked me if they all had one and I wasn’t going to lie, so I said yes. She got really excited and went to call her fiance and tell him the good news. I was confused and told her she couldn’t have the money, she asked why and I said it’s for school. She got upset and left my house.

The next day I get a call from El, she was crying and begging me to let her have the funds so she could finally afford a down payment and maybe even a wedding. I told her she could have the money if she went back to school and whatever money was left over she could use for whatever she wanted. She got super mad and started yelling at me and saying it’s her money. I told her that it was MY money and those were my conditions and she hung up.

Now we are being harassed by her fiance’s family (they aren’t as fortunate as us) calling us a**holes and a lot of other names. Saying it’s all gonna go to waste if she doesn’t use it, were setting her up for failure, etc..

Now I’m wondering if I’m the a**hole because my dad said we should give her the money as we “saved it for her after all”.

So am I the a**hole?”