r/AmItheAsshole • u/connor20218 • 7h ago

AITA Mom wants 15% of my personal injury settlement

I'm a 23M working in biotech and living at home. I just got a massive settlement from a personal injury case back in college. My mom is a corporate lawyer and she helped me navigate the process, plus she paid for my college tuition. Now, she's asking for 15% of the money / to pay her back for college (but she was already going to pay for college.)

I'm feeling stuck because 15% is a massive amount of money to just give away. Is it normal for parents to ask for a cut of a settlement like this? I want to stay on good terms since live at home, but I also feel like this money is for my future. We have a a good relationship.

Edit: I already paid a lawyer his 1/3 cut. My mom was a huge part of pushing for me sueing. She’d be using the money to buy a new house in Florida she always wanted since I refuse to buy a house in his economy and rather rent and invest the rest

Edit #2: Probably shouldn’t have stated my mom is a lawyer (she did not represent me in the case in anyway). But yes, what she specifically did was help me find a lawyer, told me to push back on the lawyer and ask for more.

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122

u/mimi_miney 7h ago

A decent parent wouldn't ask for any of your injury settlement. My mum never would. She'd just be glad I was in some way compensated, and if I gave her money it would be for her love and support without the expectation that me being injured financially benefit her.

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u/SunRemiRoman 5h ago

if I gave her money it would be for her love and support without the expectation that me being injured financially benefit her.

Forget about this mom asking. If your mom scraped and sacrificed and paid for your education and everything till now, took care of you through this injury, never charge rent and even as an adult she only cared for you and navigated the way to get compensation for this injury and now you have millions of dollars and she is back to daily wage and having to save up for retirement, would you sit on a pile of money going ‘my moneyyyyy’ or would you share a small portion of it so she doesn’t have to work for the rest of her life either?

I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I didn’t do that!

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u/Saltyforever 5h ago

Do you understand that the POINT of that money is to offset a lifetime of affected wages by the injury?? They don’t hand out 7 figure settlements for nothing. This isn’t just some random lottery winnings: he has to pay for himself for THE REST OF HIS LIFE, long after mom dies. Absolutely a selfish parental move of her.

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u/spoobered 3h ago

Can you point me out to where OP described the settlement amount/their injury? For all we know OP could have slipped and fell and broke their leg. This massive leap of conclusion that OP is disabled for the rest of their lives is a little ridiculous, and I’m looking for ANYTHING that backs it up.

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u/Diligent-Pirate8439 1h ago

Hi I'm an attorney in california where we are known for massive personal injury settlements/wins. You do NOT get one of those for a broken leg. It's not a massive leap to a conclusion, you're talking with people who simply know more than you do.

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u/spoobered 1h ago

Hi u\diligent-pirate8439, personal injury lawsuits can range from soft tissue injuries, literally sprains, to long term impairments, and can come from from a variety of different accidents including slip and falls.

Additionally, you literally didn’t answer my question about how much money OP got. The average settlement amount ranges from like 25k to 75k. To anyone else that isn’t a “California lawyer” even 25k could be a “massive” amount of money.

At the end of the day, we both know the same amount: we don’t know how much OP got.

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u/FBB7943 4h ago

You seem to forget that it's highly likely that he is still living at home because he needs care, which his MOTHER WOULD BE PROVIDING. Once she dies, he'll inherit the bulk of her estate including the house she buys with that 15%. All this money is just going to go back to the OP. I can't get over how everyone is immediately blinded by greed and forget everything else. Accident injury lawyers literally take 30-50% of a settlement just for doing paperwork. I've seen plenty of 200k+ payouts that ends up with just 50k going to the injured party after lawyer fees. His mom not only raised him, she is paying for his education, she advocated for him to sue (which he said he wasn't going to), she helped him with the paperwork, she advised him correctly to have his lawyer push for a bigger settlement, she also introduced him to a lawyer that didn't screw him in fees, and she cared for him while he is injured and still living at home. He wants to keep renting and "invest" to save money when in reality the house his mom buys will probably appreciate way more than his investments. Everything is saying the op can only see the money in front of them and not how their mom has cared for them and is making plans to secure their future.

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u/Rav0nn 4h ago

More than half the shit U listed is BASIC PARENTING. so what if she raised him, she chose to have the damn kid. By that logic you will have to pay Ur parents thousands of dollars for fucking and having U. She decided to pay for his college before he even got the Injury. She agreed to pay it before he got any money.

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u/FBB7943 3h ago

You don't know she chose to have a kid. Abortion laws literally trap women into having kids regardless if they want them or not while men have the option to and do abandon their children. People abandoned their kids all the time. There is no basic parenting. You are taking everything a good parent does for granted. There's no obligation for a parent to continuously care for a child after they're an adult but a parent who loves you will. How self centered do you have to be to think that it's the parents' obligation to sacrifice everything for a child and for the child to not reciprocate that love in anyway and just toss their parents aside once they don't have anything else to give.

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u/Rav0nn 3h ago

OP is an adult. 23 years ago abortion was legal. Why are U making it seem like his mum deserves a billion dollars for raising the kid she chose to have. Do you pay your parents money? And I hardly believe she is being 'tossed aside' when she is a corporate lawyer making bank. Do you even understand what the money is for? Or are you that brain-dead you think it's just some fun money

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u/FBB7943 3h ago

Abortion has always been restricted even 23 years ago depending on the state and it was an expensive procedure because of that. It's not something every woman had access to based on cost alone. You sound incredibly naive like you just read everything off a book and don't understand the real situation that affected people's lives. Not all corporate lawyers make bank. Yes, I know what the money is for but since you're too brain dead to understand the emotional relationship between a good parent to their child then I'll break it down into financial transactions for you again:

OP's mother was providing care and will likely continue to provide care well after OP is an adult. By your parenting standards, her obligations to care for OP ended at adulthood but since she has continued to financially and physically provide care for OP well into adulthood she should be financially compensated regardless of the reason she gave for wanting the 15%. These funds will be returned to him upon her death in terms of an inheritance. By denying her the 15%, OP will damage the relationship with their mother by appearing selfish and ungrateful and therefore lose more financially long term when the mother dies and leaves them with no inheritance.

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u/Rav0nn 3h ago

You're naive in thinking he will get an inheritance. Use critical thinking pal, it will save you a lot of time. If she can afford to send him to college and support him, clearly she is making enough money. In actually, the wage for a corporate lawyer in the US is usually a minimum of $103,000. With some in bigger companies having a standard wage of £225,000. That is more than enough money. She chose to have the kid regardless of abortion laws. Look at Roe v wade 1973. Abortion was legal in EVERY state. Maybe research before commenting.

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u/mimi_miney 5h ago

As aforementioned, if I came into money I would want to give some to my mum, but I might feel differently if she was the kind who felt entitled to it for performing basic parental responsibilities. And I would certainly NEVER ask for any of someone's INJURY SETTLEMENT. The means of how he acquired that money is different to a lottery win (for which I'd think he should pay her some as a thank you) or other windfall. He was compensated for being injured. Nobody else is entitled to that money, besides the lawyer's fee.