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The thing about gifts is that they’re supposed to come with no strings attached. And when you say “no strings attached” while giving the gift, that kind of doubles up on the whole “no strings attached” thing! 

But it is, of course, the case that people all too often say one thing and mean another, and for one woman on Reddit, this sort of situation has put her between a rock and a hard place with her very angry dad. 

This woman’s dad generously gifted her money to help with a down payment on a house. 

As you no doubt know, buying a house in today’s economy is virtually impossible without a hefty amount of cash on hand, and this woman and her fiancé have been saving for one for years. Despite that, buying a house was still out of reach until her father generously offered to gift them $15,000.

“He said he wanted to see us in our first home while he’s still around and made a big deal about how it was ‘no strings attached,'” she wrote in her Reddit post. It made a huge difference, giving her the “proof of funds” needed to secure a mortgage, and before long, she and her fiancé had found a house and were ready to sign on the dotted line.

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So, she used said gift for a down payment on a house. Now, he wants the gift back because he wants to gift it to someone else!

“Everything was on track until last month, when my dad suddenly said he needed the $15k back,” she wrote. “Apparently his girlfriend’s son, whom I barely know, is in legal trouble and needs help more urgently than we do.”

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Her dad then demanded the money back after they were already under contract for the house.

Understandably, the woman was not particularly amenable to handing the money back. For one thing, her dad’s insistence that “family comes first” doesn’t hold much water for some kid she barely knows. His claim that they’re still young enough that they can keep saving didn’t sit right either.

But more importantly, she and her fiancé were already under contract for the house they found. “The $15k is already tied up in closing costs and deposits,” she wrote. “If we give it back, we lose the house and thousands in fees,” leaving them not just back at square one, but in the hole.

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Her dad was far from understanding. “He blew up, saying I’m choosing a house over family and that he only gave us the money because he thought we would understand if something came up,” she wrote.

The uproar has divided their family between those who think she’s being selfish and entitled and those who think her dad has no right to even ask for the money back, let alone be upset. For his part, her fiancé is furious. But she worries this will permanently damage her relationship with her dad.

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Most people agreed that her dad was out of line and that she shouldn’t budge.

Yes, mishaps happen sometimes that change the shape of things, and her dad’s anger is perhaps understandable to some degree. But the simple fact of the matter is that a gift is a gift, and “no strings attached” means “no strings attached.”

And her dad’s arguments don’t really even make sense. If “family comes first,” then why is he demanding his own daughter upend her own life and lose a huge chunk of her life savings to help someone neither of them is even to?

The bottom line is that if “he only gave us the money because he thought we would understand if something came up,” then he should have said that. What he said instead was that it was a gift with no conditions. That’s nobody’s fault but his own.

Like all too many conflicts, this one has arisen because someone said one thing and meant another. Now that the discrepancy is coming back to bite. It will be deeply unfortunate if this does indeed damage their relationship, but that, too, will be one person’s fault: her dad’s.

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John Sundholm is a writer, editor, and video personality with 20 years of experience in media and entertainment. He covers culture, mental health, and human interest topics.