AITA for refusing to pay an HOA fine, which caused my dad to cut ties with me?
I’m really torn about this and could use outside perspective.
Some background for context: my dad is not my biological father, and growing up I often felt like the black sheep compared to my siblings. I’m not sharing that for sympathy, but because it helps explain why the unequal standards in this situation feel like part of a pattern rather than a one-time disagreement.
I was supposed to move into my dad’s house on February 1st. He had bought a new home with his gf, near 1mil. He wasn’t wanting to put the old house on the market since he didn’t want my older brother to move into his new home with them. So the easiest solution was to rent it from him so my brother could get on his feet and I had a place to go with my children.
Before that, he paid me $300 to clean it so it would be ready because he didn’t want to pay someone more to clean it. I put some belongings in there to avoid storage as I was actively homeless at the time (I was threatened with a gun by people who already assaulted me and one of my children. We moved out immediately for safety and were sleeping on someone else’s floor). My stuff was put in the middle of the dining room and some in garage only. This wasn’t a good excuse to not have it cleaned but I felt ambushed last minute and if I knew how bad it was I wouldn’t have agreed. The house was honestly in really bad shape because it had been neglected for a long time, and the mess was his and my siblings.
Even though we had originally agreed on a February move-in, while I was cleaning he started pushing me to move in early, complaining about how long it was taking and telling me I needed to accept responsibility and just pay, even though we didn’t live there. I eventually gave in to the pressure and moved in sooner than planned, despite not being in a strong financial position. That meant I started the tenancy already in debt, which was exactly what I had been trying to avoid by waiting until February.
The cleaning was not normal move-in cleaning. I had to use Goo Off on every single kitchen cabinet because they were so sticky. There were exploded eggnog that riddled the entire kitchen walls and floors, water-logged toilets, toenail clippings, buildup everywhere, and urine stains and other messes left behind by siblings, all of which I cleaned during the initial move-in process.
The oven was already disgusting when we moved in, to the point that we barely used it at all and mostly relied on an air fryer or 5 in one grill.
He had also left a lot of his own belongings behind. With his permission, I threw away about 9 yard sized heavy duty trash bags of his stuff, including furniture. He kept promising he would come back and finish clearing things out himself, but he never did. I lived there for over a year surrounded by his stored belongings that I was not allowed to touch.
At first my brother and I rented the house together. About six months later, my brother moved out, and from then on I covered everything myself. I paid rent and every utility, worked three jobs to afford 3k a month in rent and 600 in utilities and raised two kids the entire time.
When my brother moved out, he left a huge mess behind. There were pallets, trash, oil stains, and cat urine, dog urine, and cat vomit soaked into the carpets. I cleaned all of that. My dad gave me a $600 cleaning credit, but my brother was never held to the same standards I was later held to. He was essentially given a free pass.
There were also a lot of repairs that either never happened or were delayed for a long time. The front door lock was broken and I fixed it myself. The hot tub was never fixed even though he said it would be. However I still had to pay to keep water in it and have it leaked out and wasted so the hottub wouldn’t break more. We had no properly working air conditioning for two summers. There were doors and walls with old punch holes. He claimed it was my brother. The garage door stopped working. We couldn’t open it or close it without it constantly re opening. Often had to pull the level. The water heater kept going out and it took weeks to be addressed. Two outdoor spigots were broken, one for almost my entire time there and the other for an entire summer. The sprinkler system broke because it had not been winterized, which caused the other spigot to go out and it took him until August to actually fix it. He also provided lawn equipment but did not maintain it, even though the yard already had weed problems and the HOA expected it to be kept up.
We received a few minor HOA notices over time. He gave those notices to me, and each time I took care of them to keep the HOA satisfied, even when the issues involved things he had promised to help fix and never did.
Later, an HOA fine came up for weeds. I declined to pay it because I never received notice or a chance to fix the issue, earlier notices had been sent to him and not shared with me, the weeds were addressed before I even knew a fine existed, and HOA fines were not assigned to the tenant in our agreement. I explained this calmly and paid my prorated portion of the water bill.
My position was simple. I was not going to pay a fee I did not believe was my responsibility. I stuck to facts and explained that if I was given notice a fine would have never been issued.
That is when things escalated. Instead of discussing the issue, he started attacking my character. He repeatedly said the fine existed because of my “neglect,” told me I had “failed miserably” as a tenant, and said that whether I agreed or not “was not relevant” because, in his words, these were “facts.” He accused me of lacking integrity, said I was “stealing $200” from him, and told me this situation showed “who I really am when no one is looking.” He called me “a major disappointment” and implied that after everything he’s done for me, I owed him compliance. At that point, it was no longer about an HOA fine but about being shamed and attacked for not giving in, which is why I set a boundary and ended the conversation.
As a side note, I will say I live paycheck to paycheck supporting my kids and myself, no help from their father. My dad makes a ton of money. Not that this makes it better, but this is over $200 fine. Everything else that was my responsibility was paid in FULL. I just don’t think this HOA fine is fair to me to bear.
I asked him to stop speaking to me that way and to keep the conversation focused on facts. He did not. Since then he has blocked me, which I knew he’d do and was afraid of because that is his MO unfortunately. And it’s what kept me constantly giving in when I felt I shouldn’t or couldn’t.
What makes this especially difficult is that after I left, those same issues were suddenly resolved. He now has a new tenant. The problems that went unfixed for over a year and nine months were repaired. The rent was dropped by six hundred and fifty dollars. None of those concessions were ever offered to me, even though I was a single parent with two children trying to make it work in good faith.
So that’s where I’m stuck.
AITA for refusing to pay the HOA fine, knowing that refusing is what ultimately led my dad to cut ties with me?
