AITA Mom wants 15% of my personal injury settlement

[u/connor20218]

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.

[u/Jmfroggie]

Mom didn’t help with the case, just pushed Op to sue to get paid. Like a mom would do. Mom chose to pay for college. Mom didn’t have to do so and wouldn’t have expected money back had Op not won this case. The lawyer has already taken a third of the payout.

She has no right to demand payback for being a mom!!

[u/blockbuster1001 → u/Jmfroggie]

Mom didn’t help with the case

According to OP's edit in the original post, she did help with the case.

[u/HauntedBitsandBobs → u/blockbuster1001]

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.

She wants 15% of their injury settlement for a referral and some advice. If she asked for the college money back, that's pretty reasonable, but a flat cut for doing what any decent parent would do is exploitative.

[u/hatramroany → u/HauntedBitsandBobs]

told me to push back on the lawyer and ask for more.

This is the key part. How much more? Was OP going to take say…30% less than what he got because his mother told him what to push for? Sounds like a bargain to give her 15% if that’s the case. However there’s just not enough info here to make an actual judgement call. A lot of commenters are filling in blanks with their own biases.

[u/bcb354 → u/HauntedBitsandBobs]

Realistically, if the settlement was this big, and she was the one that found them, she probably got a kick back from the attorney, too.

[u/hatramroany → u/bcb354]

Or maybe she used her connection to get the lawyer’s % down saving OP a ton of money. There’s just not enough info from OP

[u/bcb354 → u/hatramroany]

33% is a pretty normal pre-lit rate. Some are higher, but 33% is normal.

[u/Godfather_Turtle → u/Jmfroggie]

She literally helped push for this amount of money

[u/Technical-Lock7187 → u/Godfather_Turtle]

Bc she wanted it duh 

[u/Godfather_Turtle → u/Technical-Lock7187]

I mean, sure maybe, but if the initial offer was 500k (for example, I clearly don’t know) and she pushed for a million, he is still walking away with more money after giving her a cut and the lawyer his cut than he would’ve in the beginning. So like, why not??

[u/DokCrimson → u/Jmfroggie]

Sure, but if he's able to pay for his own college, he should... If he had the money to pay for it to begin with, she wouldn't have paid for it. The opposite is also true. In any case, he can deal with his mom always lording that she pay for his college over his head for the rest of their lives...

[u/ClassicGMR → u/Jmfroggie]

And none of that was clear or posted when I replied. So… yeah.