In light of readers’ support for charging family members rent (Letters, 10 May), I am considering billing my wife for accommodation. The house is mine and she has a perfectly adequate income. I realise that to let her live rent-free would be a kind of infantilisation. Moreover, she is just someone I happened to meet, not flesh and blood like our adult son, who I’m happy to accommodate gratis.
It’s shocking to read the venial, commercial demands made on family by your correspondents under the guise of “it’s for your own good”. It doesn’t happen in other cultures. No wonder many British parents are shifted into care homes and left lonely and unvisited.
Peter Brown
Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire
Why would you charge your own children to live in your home? The amount you pay on utilities and consumables is totally fair enough, but if you own the bricks and mortar of the building, then what does it cost you to house the fruit of your loins, particularly when they may have fallen on hard times or are trying to scrimp to make their way by putting a deposit on a flat of their own?
Charging them needless rent to maintain their sense of adult dignity is not helpful, and defies the point of them returning to you in the first place. Unless your child is a difficult person to deal with or live with, do them a huge favour and axe the rent.
Giovanni Fazzolari
London
Our grownup son and his wife paid us rent when they came back to live with us, and we put it in a separate bank account. When they wanted to buy a property, we just handed it all back to them in a lump sum. We hadn’t told them our plans, but felt they shouldn’t get used to having too much free cash, so paying rent kept them in the real world and the lump sum helped them when they needed cash.
Kathryn H Amey
Skipton, North Yorkshire
