My (26f) brother (44m) bought my mom (66f) a house. He's expecting all of us (5 other kids, him oldest, me youngest) to pitch in to build her a carport and deck even though he still owns the house. I say no and the family is now divided.

I will try to keep this is short as possible even though there's years worth of "big family drama" at play.

My dad passed last year. My mom had no idea how to pay bills or take care of herself and we learned that my dad had essentially spent them into enormous debt and there was zero money so my mom went into bankruptcy and lost everything. It was very sad and this is where the first family split happened since we either were on team "dad was always an abusive lying jerk" or "don't besmirch the memory of the dead."

My brother is a multi-millionaire and he bought my mom a house. I am very happy he did this but he and I have never gotten along and he seemed like he was going out of his way to say "Sis, this is still my house...don't expect it to be in any sort of estate because mom has no estate" when I didn't even ask him to clarify. Fine, he did a nice thing and he deserves the credit for that...no one is saying he doesn't.

However now its become very clear that the car port is crumbling and my mom would like a new deck. He hired a full on architect to design a new deck and has already spent something like $1500 just on that. Recently he sent an email to all of us that basically said "mom needs a new carport and deck, since I've already paid for the architect, I will cover that but he is projecting the cost of the deck and a much sturdier car port at just over $20000. I think it's fair that each of us pitch in $2500 to cover the costs and any escalations. I will refund each of you what is not spent."

I sent the group back an email saying "just to be clear, when you sell this house, we can expect to be paid back since we are not giving this as a gift to mom, rather as an improvement to the house you made it very clear you own?"

Of course battle lines were drawn again with 2 of my brothers coming in on my side, my two sisters on his side and you would have thought we were in our house again battling it out after a pillow fight turned into a real fight.

The two that are against us are calling us greedy and not providing for our mom after they (especially he) have done so much. I give my sisters all the credit in the world because they are the ones that are driving my mom to her doctors appointments and what not and to be very honest if there were to ask for help with gas money I gladly would. But we aren't talking about help, we are talking about pitching in more money than I can afford to literally make improvements on a house my mom doesn't even own.

It's gotten so incredibly ugly that I'm seriously considering just giving him the money and writing it off as the cost of keeping the peace in my family. I just started my first adult job and I can afford it, but it would mean not getting some work done on my car and putting off starting my 401k.

What should I do? Should I take back my statement to my brother and try and talk my other brothers into seeing it his way or should I stand firm on this?

tl;dr: my brother bought my mom a house to live in (but makes it very clear he still owns it) and is expecting the rest of us to pitch in about $2500 a piece to build a new deck. I asked if we would get the money back when he sells the house and caused a huge rift in my family. Should I take back my question and just give him the money?

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