So backstory. My family owns an apartment (an apartment, not the building) in NYC that is rent-stabilized. It is where a few of my older sisters grew up in and moved out from. We kept the apartment because it would be stupid to give it up!

One of my sister’s was living in this apartment with her son and her “fiance” for a couple of years. He moved in fairly quickly after they had met and she didn’t let anybody in our family know beforehand. Not that she is obligated to, but it was a surprise to learn that he was living there.

Fast forward a couple years and my mom and I found out that they were not paying the full rent for almost a year. The only way we found out was because my mom looked into the apartment’s records and saw that only my sister (not her fiance) was paying half the rent. When we spoke to her about it, she claimed she didn’t pay the full rent for months because of concerns about mold in the bathroom, and the apartment being old and not updated. She never spoke to us or the landlord or the super about any of these concerns however. If it wasn’t for me speaking to my mom about possibly asking my sister to sleep on her couch for a couple months to look for a job, we wouldn’t have known that my sister was racking up a lot of debt in unpaid rent and utilities.

It was my plan at first to ask my sister if I could sleep on the couch in the apartment so I could look for a new job, and then move out into a different apartment with roommates. However, upon learning about my sister and her “fiance” not paying rent, my mother ended up kicking him out. He was essentially living there for free for years. And the rent is rent-stabilized so it’s not as much as other NYC apartments.

Currently, my sister is understandably upset that I have now moved in and it’s me in the apartment instead of her “fiance”. I pay my half of the rent and utilities, clean up after myself and buy my own groceries. I understand that she is angry, but she is doing things that are unnecessary and it has been months since he has left. It seems that she is trying to make my life a living hell because she is spiteful that I’m here and not him. I have tried giving her grace because I know her situation has completely changed. However, her allowing him to live here rent free was causing a huge pit of debt, that now neither of them are willing to pay off. She has stated that she does not care and will not be paying it off because she is angry with what has happened. If it went on any longer, we could have lost our apartment.

AITAH for pretty much kicking out my sister’s fiance from the apartment so I can move in even though they were causing thousands of dollars in debt and were facing eviction? I feel like I overstepped just by asking to sleep on the couch at first, but because we found out this information things changed quickly. I feel bad for changing her situation in this way, but it seems like she is retaliating against me now out of spite. She doesn’t clean ANYTHING, she never takes out the trash, is very loud late hours of the night when I wake up at 4am for work, doesn’t pay the debt she caused and is now is threatening not paying utilities and lowering her half the rent.