u/Advanced-Gap-6028

This employee had struggled almost from the beginning. I was his first manager, and I spent an enormous amount of time trying to figure out what would make him successful. More training. More one-on-ones. Different assignments. Written expectations. Reviewing his work. Pulling in other resources. Trying to understand whether I was missing something.

And I kept thinking there had to be something I wasn’t seeing.

The problem was that the issues were so strange and so inconsistent that I genuinely started questioning my own perception. He would understand something one week and not remember it weeks later. He would confidently explain things that weren’t correct. He would spend hours on things that weren’t important while critical work was incomplete. Every time I met with him there seemed to be another mistake—sometimes small, sometimes significant. The amount of time and management attention he required was completely disproportionate to the value he was adding to the team.

And because there were also personal circumstances and a disclosed disability involved, I spent even more time trying to understand what was happening and how much of it I should be accommodating versus what was simply an inability to perform the job.

I talked about this employee constantly. With HR. With leadership. With colleagues. With people I trusted. I spent time thinking about it after work, on weekends, driving home, lying in bed. What am I missing? What else can I do? Is there another way to explain this? Is this a management problem? Is there something going on that I don’t understand?

I’d never had a relationship in my life that felt this psychologically confusing. And I’d certainly never experienced one like it at work.

Eventually we were moving toward formal performance management when he resigned.

Then came the letter.

He accused me of harassment, discrimination and creating a hostile work environment. He distributed it to nearly 100 people in our organization and HIGH level leaders.

And I just sat there and thought: Thank God.

I was relieved because I suddenly realized how much of my own life I had spent trying to solve this one person’s problems. It was over and I felt free!

I’ve been thinking about how much energy managers can pour into one struggling employee—especially when you’re trying to be compassionate, trying to understand the person behind the performance problems, and genuinely trying to give them every chance to succeed.

At some point, though, I think you have to ask whether all that effort is actually helping the employee—or whether you’re just trying to solve a problem that isn’t yours to solve.

Have you ever had an employee who consumed an extraordinary amount of your mental energy because you simply could not figure out what was going on with them? And did you ever reach the point where you realized that the amount of effort you were putting in was completely out of proportion to what they were contributing? How did you learn for the next time?

I’m a manager of a remote team.

During a Teams meeting, one of my employees was visibly in pain for several minutes. I stopped the meeting and asked if he was having a medical emergency. He said his knee had popped out of place and he’d pushed it back in himself. I asked if he needed medical attention and reminded everyone on the team that medical care always comes before work. He insisted he was fine, so we continued.

About an hour later, I had a one-on-one meeting with him. Right from the start he seemed unusually disorganized. Then I started asking him questions about a report we were both looking at. The answers were literally right in front of him, but he was giving responses that made no sense. He suddenly looked unwell, so I asked if he was okay. He said he was feeling lightheaded.

At that point I told him I didn’t think this was the right time to be talking about work and that I thought he needed medical attention. I ended the call, called 911, and had another employee call him to ask if he would let us send help. He refused. The 911 dispatcher told me that since he was alert and refusing care, paramedics couldn’t force treatment. I then called his emergency contact and notified my company’s HR/safety team.

Company policy now requires him to be medically evaluated before returning to work.

He’s furious with me. He feels I overreacted and embarrassed him.

One piece of background: last year he voluntarily told me he’d had episodes where he unexpectedly falling. I don’t know whether that’s related, but it was in the back of my mind when this happened.

From my perspective, I had an employee who had just experienced a painful injury, then an hour later appeared cognitively impaired and reported feeling lightheaded. I felt I couldn’t ignore what I was seeing.

AITA for escalating the situation instead of taking him at his word that he was fine?

I’m looking more for perspective than validation.

My husband’s family is falling apart over estate planning. There are five brothers, my father-in-law has advanced dementia, and my mother-in-law refuses to make clear decisions. She sees inheritance very differently than I do. Her dream is for her sons to keep a sentimental family cottage together, but I believe one brother will eventually force a sale anyway. Ironically, the current plan will likely leave my husband with only about 10% of the estate, even though a different plan could have resulted in a much more equal inheritance. Every conversation about the estate ends with resentment and personal attacks.

Last year I made the mistake of getting involved. I encouraged my mother-in-law to make her wishes legally clear before the brothers grew resentful of each other. I also shared that I see inheritance as a legacy to pass on to our children, not something worth destroying relationships over. During that conversation, I opened up about my fears for our son with high-functioning autism and what adulthood might look like for him. One of my brothers-in-law was present and started mocking me while I was talking. I tried to convince myself it wasn’t really an attack.
A year later, during another estate argument, that same brother (who had been drinking) verbally attacked my husband, insulted me, and then said, “Do you know what your wife thinks about your Down syndrome son?” before correcting himself to “autism.” Whether it was intentional or not, it felt like he weaponized one of my deepest fears as a parent. Sadly, this isn’t even the first brother to use my son’s autism as a way to hurt us.

The saddest part is that none of this changed anything. My in-laws still haven’t made decisions, and the only lasting result has been damaged relationships. I can feel resentment, anger, and even hatred growing in me toward this family, and I’ve spent the last 15 years trying not to become that person.

My husband now doesn’t want to visit his parents if that brother is there. I understand why, but it also means our children may miss time with their grandparents, cousins, and a place that has always been important to the family. I still find myself encouraging him to maintain a relationship with his parents because I think he’ll regret it if he doesn’t.
There’s one piece of context I intentionally left out until now because I wanted people to judge this situation on its own first. The inheritance conflict is just the latest chapter in a much longer story. My husband was severely neglected as a child, and that neglect allowed years of abuse by an older brother. His mother had explosive rages and would throw objects, sometimes even knives. One Christmas she destroyed all the children’s presents. One of his brothers remembers the year she simply “gave up,” and the older kids made Easter baskets so the younger ones would still have a holiday. My husband never experienced regular family dinners. Neighbors remember an older brother being made to hit the younger children because their father was absent and mother turned him into a stand in dad. While everyone adored my father-in-law, the reality is that he could be emotionally cruel, especially toward my mother-in-law. We recently found love letters he exchanged with another woman in the early parts of his marriage. It took me years to understand why my husband maintained relationships with this family at all.

I don’t know how to move forward. Part of me feels relieved to finally step away because I’ve never truly felt emotionally safe around this family. Another part of me doesn’t want to stand between my husband and his parents while they’re still alive because I think he’ll regret that later. I won’t allow children to be around this family without me present.

For those who’ve dealt with toxic in-laws or families like this, what actually brought you peace? Were you ever able to truly let go of the hurtful things that were said? How do you stop carrying the anger without pretending the past didn’t happen? I’d genuinely love to learn how to care less.

One final note: I have been to therapy. A lot of what I worked on was my resentment toward this family. It helped to have a place to talk openly, but I’m still stuck. My husband refuses therapy because he’d rather leave his childhood in the past. Despite everything, he’s a wonderful husband and father. He’s worked incredibly hard to unlearn the unhealthy ways he was raised, and I’m proud of the man he’s become. I’m just trying to figure out how to find my own peace and support him when he is forever in conflict with the mixed emotions around his family.

My husband’s parents are in their 80s and have six adult children. They spent years talking about what they wanted their legacy to be, but never actually created an estate plan.

Most of their wealth is tied up in three properties. One is a lake cottage worth about $1.2M that has been in the family for generations and is deeply loved. Another property is worth around $400k, and a third is worth about $75k.

Years ago, one sibling started informally dividing up the future inheritance. At that time, my husband and I were told we’d eventually share ownership of the $400k property with another sibling. Two siblings would share the cottage. Another sibling would get a life insurance payout, and another would get the smallest property. Nothing was divided equally, but we were told this reflected the parents’ wishes.

At the time, my husband actually preferred not to be involved with the cottage because there were concerns about co-owning property with certain family members and concerns about who would pay expenses over time.

Since then, a lot has changed. One sibling passed away. Family relationships have shifted. Some of the siblings who were expected to inherit the cottage have spent years treating it as though they already own it. One family in particular spends much of the summer there and talks about future ownership as if it’s a certainty.

Last year, I encouraged my mother-in-law to finally create an actual estate plan because it was becoming obvious that resentment was building and assumptions were being made.

The proposed plan now is for three siblings (including my husband) to inherit the cottage together through a trust. Each family would get a month of use each summer, rotating annually. Families could also rent out their month, with some proceeds going toward maintenance and expenses. The goal is to keep the property in the family for as long as possible.

One sibling’s wife is furious. Her family had apparently envisioned spending entire summers there and eventually becoming sole owners. She has openly questioned why my husband should inherit any portion of the cottage because my husband and I are financially comfortable. She also argued that another sibling’s children don’t even enjoy the property enough to justify inheriting it.

The awkward part is that she didn’t realize there are serious family dynamics involving the teenagers in the family that make unlimited access to the cottage unrealistic. Those issues are part of why some people believe broader ownership and a more structured schedule is necessary.

My question: Is it unreasonable for someone to feel entitled to a larger share of an inheritance simply because they use a property more often now? Or because other heirs are more financially successful?

And more broadly, have others seen family vacation properties survive multiple generations without creating major resentment among siblings?