AITA: OK let’s get a few things out of the way first. This happened a couple months ago with my now ex and her family. There are many different things that I could post to this subreddit about this relationship but I will try to contain myself to this incident.
I (25M) was at home in the wee hrs of the morning. I think it was like 1 or 2 am. I had worked nights so i was still up watching a movie as i was going to bed. I got a call from my then gf saying that her, her mom , brother and sister had been pulled over by the cops. I come to find out it had something to do with their tag being expired. Which btw they foolishly had been driving around with the last couple days and they knew it. In doing so they found out that the mom had a warrant for like skipping traffic court or something like that, I dont quite remember. Thus the penalty was they were going to impound the car and arrest the mom, i think the jail sentence was like 7 days. So, they called me to see if I would come down (it was abt a 20 min drive). Their plan was for me to jump in their car and drive it off so no one would get arrested and no car would be impounded. Now there is one thing that needs to be known abt me. I have pretty serious anxiety and it had been getting pretty bad as of late. I did not like to drive alone or anywhere that was any further than my neighborhood. They knew that ofc and even offered to get me an uber to them and then they said all I had to do was slightly drive away and the mom would get back behind the wheel to drive home. Besides the fact that all of this was highly illegal, I was not comfortable with any of it. I hated to see them go thru this, but like I said it was already very late and my anxiety was already starting to kick in. In addition, all of this could have been solved by any one of the children driving the car, but for reasons unknown to me none of them had drivers licenses even tho they were all eligible. I still felt really bad and wanted to help so I ended up paying the fee for the car to prevent it from being impounded and the tow truck driver was able to take all of them home along with the car. However, the mother still got arrested and thrown in jail for a couple days.
So, AITA for not going and helping them? Or was it better that they learned this valuable lesson?
NTA. I don’t understand a lot of this but from what I can tell, you showing up to drive the car a short distance likely would not have actually had any impact on whether the MIL would be arrested since at that point she had already been pulled over and had a past offense that the sentence would be for. Essentially, they all were helpless and created problems for themselves and had an extremely half-baked and ineffective plan to get out of it but I doubt it would have actually prevented MIL from being arrested.
Op-NTA. First, very happy to read this is now an EX. You definitely wouldn’t have been happy. You have morals and responsibility, and don’t need to be dragged down by a Family who’s ok with breaking the law. You did more than you had to to help, and nothing else you could have done would have stopped your ex future MIL from getting arrested. She had a warrant. Good on ya for what you did do, and great on ya for moving on.
What did I just read? INFO because I just need to make sure there hasn’t been some mistake. Are you saying that the plan they cooked up was for you to show up at the scene of the traffic stop, jump into the car and drive it away, with them in it, while the police were detaining them and the car with plans to make an arrest and impound the car?
And the reason you didn’t want to do it is because you have anxiety about driving at night? Do you not see another important flaw with this idea?
EDIT: I missed the line in the story “Besides the fact that all this was highly illegal.” But also, OP responded to me by saying that he talked to the cop and it was all OK. Which both contradicts his own statement that it was illegal, and raises a host of other questions and inconsistencies. So at this point I just think the whole thing is fictional. Which is a relief because if it was a true story and a sincere question, you would have a person asking the internet whether they were an AH for not doing something “highly illegal.”
NTA…They wanted you to break the law and you didn’t. May your next relationship be less dramatic.
NTA but you’re not thinking this through rationally. You’re questioning if you’re an asshole for not doing something entirely illegal? Why is that even a question. If you can’t reason your way out of that without going on the internet, it sounds like you have some work you need to do on yourself before you have a relationship.
NTA. That was a terrible plan that could have gotten you in legal trouble. You did the best thing for them to pay the fee, and the best thing for you to leave that gf because she would even rope you into doing something like that.
I don’t really see how you showing up and driving away in the car would have negated the MIL getting arrested. Regardless, NTA. They were asking you to do something shady and this was 100% not your problem. Glad they are an ex!
Do not marry into a family that asks you to commit a felony and then gets angry when you don’t
Remove this entire family from your life before it’s too late
NTA
Ummm…what? Did they think that would actually work? If she has a warrant for her arrest, and once she has been detained by the cops, that’s it. She is going to jail. The ONLY time I have heard of people not being arrested when they had a warrant, while being detained by the cops was during COVID.
NTA
Not your monkey, not your circus.
The mother was going to jail no matter what because of the warrant, there was nothing you could have done to prevent that. NTA
All this would have done is get you arrested along with them
Nta
>So, they called me to see if I would come down (it was abt a 20 min drive). Their plan was for me to jump in their car and drive it off so no one would get arrested and no car would be impounded.
NTA. That is felony charge. ***Once they say, “we are impounding this” its the cops property at that time, effectively.*** And with improper tags, its not street legal, you couldnt take it anyway even IF they let you. I would not associate with ANYONE who thinks this is a good idea. There is no way in hell they dont know this is super stupid to do, and these people are going to do stuff like this all of the time and rope you into some really felonious shit down the road. Or try to. ***I guarantee it.***
>but for reasons unknown to me none of them had drivers licenses even tho they were all eligible.
Yea they dont even care to have licenses? Not one of them?
Id cut them all off for all of that. Any one of em coulda done that and didnt because *they didnt want to catch a felony*, but they *obviously dont care if YOU did.*
>So, AITA for not going and helping them? Or was it better that they learned this valuable lesson?
Gonna put money they didnt learn shit. ***They usually dont if they are skipping court dates.***
Also, you couldnt have stopped the mother from going to jail. A warrant is AUTOMATIC go straight to jail. There is *nothing* you could have done to prevent that.
Again, NTA.
The cops would MAYBE have allowed you to take the car, despite the tag.
They definitely would NOT have let you take their prisoner.
I would assume anyone in America would know this.
Are you sure this isn’t fake?
I have no idea how this scheme was even supposed to work.