My husband (32M) and I (30F) had been waiting for my mother's boyfriend, who's a mechanic, to look at his Mustang. My husband loves his car and bought it with his own money before moving down to Texas from Missouri to be with me. It's an '04 and it's really nice. Whenever it would have car trouble he was able to fix it himself. He knows basics, enough to keep up with it. However, late November, his car had a major issue. I'm not knowlegable in cars at all but I remember him saying the head of a piece in the engine had broken off and was knocking around. Either way, it doesn't run and it was stranded at our work for a week before we could move it.

My mom has a new boyfriend who's a mechanic. He's alright, but I really don't care. As long as my mother is happy. Anyways, my mom sent him to check out the car and that's how we found out about the broken piece. It was dark out and we were in a parking lot so he said he could take a better look once we took it to my grandmother's. We got it towed and told him we were free any weekend or afternoon, since we work mornings. And then six months passed. We had contacted my mother and she said he would come and that they found a brand new engine on Ebay. No diss no Ebay, but we don't trust something like that on there, and from what he had said before, we didn't need a new engine anyways, just some parts that we had already saved up on. He gave us a list of parts he would most likely need and we checked the prices and started saving money to at least match it.

All throughout those six months it sat in my grandmother's driveway, we didn't realize the engine was uncovered in some way. The hood was down, but I guess the engine was still exposed. After waiting so long, we finally took it to an auto shop, one that is highly trusted. They looked at it and said the engine had so much rust that it wasn't salvageable, or at least not worth the money to do so, and the whole thing would need to be replaced. It would cost us $12,000, with labor and they needed $6,000 up front. We don't have that kind of money, we both work fast food and barely managed to save up for parts, so we're gonna have to cut our losses and get rid of it.

I'm so angry because it wouldn't have come to this if my mother's boyfriend had just said he was too busy to look at it. Just because he's a mechanic doesn't mean he has to work on our cars, it was just convienent. If he had just told us he couldn't we would've been fine and looked for someone who could, we wouldn't have seen him in a different way or anything. He has two kids and usually doesn't get off work till 8pm from my mother says. But because he kept saying he would look at it and we waited, we have to spend way more money than we have saved.

Because of this, I almost feel like he should at least help pay for a new car. Nothing expensive, we don't need a top of the line car, just something that works and is reliable for our visits to Missouri. I haven't talked to anyone else about it, I'm not good with confrontations like this, but I feel like it would be at least fair to help since he is part of the reason this happened.

Would I be the asshole if I demanded he help?