Dad recently passed away, and mom feels very sad and lonely. To ease her pain, I suggested that she lives with us to be with her grandkids.

After a few tense moments of fierce negotiations, my husband finally agreed to let her move in, but with one preposterous condition: she must pay rent. Can you believe it? I was beyond furious since we own the house outright. We don’t have a dime of mortgage debt, and the idea was infuriatingly absurd to me.

With a smirk, he declared, “Your mother is a leech. Once she moves in with us, she will never leave.” As if he was some modern-day Nostradamus predicting an eternal freeloading prophecy. “She will eat our food, use our electricity, and it just doesn’t make sense for her to take advantage of it all for free. She needs to know that this house is not a hotel!”

Isn’t he just charming? Here I am, trying to be a decent human being and provide a sanctuary for my grieving mother, and he turns our home into a capitalistic institution. Sure, maybe the supposed ‘leech’ might nibble on some of his precious snacks, but does that warrant turning her into a tenant?

I let him have it, full on verbal onslaught. This house, our home, was a joint effort, both of us investing time, energy, and finances. Equal rights, equal input. But God forbid my mother, his mother-in-law, gets to rest her weary head in one of our guest rooms without putting in some monetary contribution.

Here’s the kicker, though: my husband isn’t a bad person. Admittedly, he never saw eye-to-eye with my mom. It’s been awkward dinners and strained conversations for years. He told me, “Your mother hated me ever since I met her. I wouldn’t be comfortable with her living with me now.”

Well, isn’t that cozy? Now I’m stuck between a rock and a miserly hard place. My mom, with all her grief, needs her family around her. But I’m caught in this emotional tug-of-war between her needs and my husband’s bizarre need for monetary compensation from family.

What’s a daughter to do when her heartstrings are twisted into knots, while her household is being transformed into an episode from a late-night dark comedy show?

I don’t have the answers. But I do know one thing: empathy seems rarer than ever in our home these days.