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Okay,a few years ago, my mum's neice rented a shop from grandfather in Mauritius. Her mum (on my mum's side) died a few years ago. She left Mauritius to go to Australia where she married and has a child on the way.
But the rent hasn't been paid since Febuary, and my family really want the key back but all she and her father says is "It'll be back in two weeks" but nothing happened. Now, the father wants us to pay him off and nobody wants to. We could've broken the locks open yes, but grandad (who was brought up in tradition)cannot belive that family would treat each other like this.
The daughther 'pretends' not to know anything and the family has agreed not to speak to her again (my mum is thinking about crossing her out of her will) along with not sending any card when the baby is born.
I feel as if i should do something to ease it all but i don't know what. Do i call her? Do i send her the congratulations card? Do i make the family see reason and forgive her (i'm a big fan of second chances)? I simply can't stand the fact that their going to blank her even though she's pregnant. As for the father, they want nothing to do with him.
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Maybe give some free advice about: Families?
The worst thing ever in my mind is when family is at odds with each other.
My first suggestion was to ask someone from your local police department to accompany you (or your grandad, or someone in your family) to the niece's home... but that's a little difficult since we are talking about Austrailia. My second suggestion would be to have the police accompany you to the shop to break the locks and just take back over. The police suggestion is so that you can all rest assured that legal action will probably not occur due to the fact that the law was already informed and was with you to assure you did everything you were allowed and supposed to do. Unfortunately, you mentioned your grandad is uncomfortable with this situation.
I am not sure where you fit into all of this. What I mean by this is I don't know if you have anything to do with the shop, if you are an adult or teen, if you are being asked to resolve the situation. My suggestion to you, and ONLY you is that you basically stay out of the legal aspect of the shop. The owner of the shop needs to be the one to decide how best to handle the situation. I THINK I got from the beginning that your grandad owns the place... if this is incorrect I apologize for my misunderstanding. But basically, it sounds as if this is an extremely difficult and emotional situation, but one that you can safely just keep your distance from.
Now, as far as your cousin(?) who moved away and is having a baby, and is disliked greatly by the rest of the family... I have two responses that are fairly similar, you can read over both and see which one you prefer to go with and which one to ignore.
One: She may have issues preventing her from paying the rent from back in February. I have no knowledge of her personal situation and you probably don't have a 100% accurate assessment of her situation either as you likely have been getting second or third hand informatino from members of your family. The fact is, you are presumably going to step back from the shop ordeal. Now all you have is a pregnant cousin to worry about. It is a shame that she has presumably skipped out on her responsibilities. If I was in your situation though, I would let her know she still has you as a member of the family she can talk to. Congratulate her on the baby. Call her, send a card, whatever. She is family and family is #1. You never know what may happen. When she discovers you two can still be close, she may end up confiding in you about things you never knew or understand. You may even eventually be able to convince her to help mend the familial split by compensating for her wrong doings. It may have to happen slowly, but perhaps one day she may be able to send some money to help repay the rent money. But what she does NOT need, and what NEVER resolves a situation is to be ostracized, especially from one's own family. Nothing feels worse than that.
TWO: I am a christian so the rest of this is a bit biblical. I made this one second so if you want to skip over this (I never like to empose my religious beliefs on anyone who does't specifically ask for it), this is the only paragraph with religious information so just skip to the next paragraph. Your story reminds me of a few parables told in the New Testament. You may or may not be familiar with them so I will give you the general overview. The prodigal son: A man had two sons. He was going to leave the two of them his "estate", money and farm to them when he died. One son worked hard on the family farm, the other asked Dad if he could have all of his inheritance BEFORE dad died so he could go ahead and live his life. He received it, left, and squandered it over time on frivilous things. Eventually he came home. His brother (your family) was irate. The son who just came home begged to live on the farm as a slave just so he could have a place to stay and food to eat. But dad said "you are my son. I love you. I have missed you. Come home". // Jesus said if a person slaps your left cheek, turn your face and allow them to slap your right. // The bible also says that no matter how many times you do wrong, if you ask for forgiveness you will always be forgiven. If you sin the same sin 70 times, then 70 times you can be forgiven. You don't have to take all this literally, but, I guess what I am trying to say is the Christian thing to do is to love your cousin. You don't know what she is feeling or thinking on the inside and she may be having a really tough time.
Golly, this is longer than War and Peace!!! I am really glad you wrote to me about this and I hope even more that I was able to give you good advice you can use. If you are concerned about your family treating your cousin badly, you don't necessarily have to be aggressive about it, but you can "share" your feelings if asked. If someone starts to talk bad about her, you MAY feel comfortable enough to "play devil's advocate". You may not though!!! Don't get yourself put in the proverbial dog house. But if the situation calls for it, you may suggest that your cousin's new baby doesn't deserve to be banished from the family just because the baby's mom has done wrong. You may also feel comfortable enough to remind everyone that the more they push her away, the less positive response they are going to get from her! One needs motivation to do what they are supposed to do.
Best of luck with this. I hope your family can come to a resolution and join together once again.
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