‘I Said No’: Man Turns Down Foster Officials’ Plea to Take In Half-Siblings Left Orphaned in Crash

A Reddit user says they refused to take in three half-siblings who entered foster care after their parents died in a car crash, and the post has divided commenters.

The post was shared Oct. 16 on the r/confessions forum. It has more than 2,000 upvotes and 199 comments.

The poster said their mother had an affair during their father’s 10-month battle with cancer. The father learned of it a week before he died and made her leave, the poster wrote. The poster, a teenager then, said they later learned the mother was 5 months pregnant by the other man and that the two had married.

The poster said they and their father’s family warned the mother that her partner would be removed if he attended [the funeral]. She stayed away. “We didn’t speak after my dad died,” the poster wrote.

The couple had three children and were still married when they died in the crash this year, the poster said. The mother’s only other surviving relative was her own mother, who lives in a nursing home.

The poster said officials asked whether they would take the children after the children’s paternal relatives had declined. “I said no,” the poster wrote. They said they also turned down an offer to meet the children and have a relationship with them. The poster said a social worker kept pressing until the poster hung up, and that they ignored later attempts to make contact.

Commenters largely backed the decision, though several acknowledged the children’s plight.

“It’s heartbreaking that the kids ended up in this situation,” one commenter wrote. But the commenter said expecting a person who was already hurt to become a parent isn’t fair, calling it a lifetime commitment.

Another commenter said raising three children of different ages after such a loss would be a monumental task and a long-term financial strain. That commenter wrote that it could have bred resentment.

A third told the poster not to carry guilt, saying the children are not the poster’s responsibility.

The Daily Dot could not independently verify the events described in the post. The details reflect the poster’s account on Reddit. The identities of the poster and commenters have not been confirmed.