It’s a well-worn tale – families thrust into conflict when good fortune comes their way in the form of a lottery win.
One young Canadian woman, however, picked at a serious moral scab after checking tickets for her uncle and later entertaining the idea of squirreling away significant winnings from free plays for herself.
The woman recently took to an online forum to ask, “am I the a–hole?” – revealing what she had done.
It all started when she was contacted by her estranged uncle, who randomly reached out to ask if she could check tickets he had purchased while in her area.
She said he could not do so himself online as his IP showed him being in a different province.
She agreed, and he sent her pictures of the tickets.
After checking them on an app, lo and behold, her uncle had won some free plays.
A week later, she used one of the free plays and netted $9,000 [USD].
“Now, if I had bought the original ticket, everything would be fine and dandy,” she said.
“But I’m feeling like I might be the a–hole here if I don’t inform my uncle and offer to split the prize.
“I mean, the tickets/free plays were useless to him without me, and I picked the ticket that won big, but I never spent any money on any lottery tickets.”
The woman went on to inform the forum she was considering telling him she had won some money, but a lesser amount, and then she would keep the difference.
“Do I tell him I won, but only like $3,000 [Canadian], and see what his reaction is?” she asked.
“Then, worst case scenario, I’m the godsend niece who won $3,000 and gave it all to my relative, and I still have enough for most of a new heating solution.”
In an attempt to present the forum with some mitigation circumstances, she said she and her uncle “were not close”.
“I mean, we’ve seen each other twice in the last maybe 15 years, once at a wedding and once at a funeral,” she said as a disclaimer.
“I’m not close with anyone on that side of the family, so alienating them is, well, our current dynamic, really.”
But the good in her seems to have prevailed, with the woman ultimately deciding to fess up to her uncle.
“I’ll text him in the morning, I honestly don’t care about money that much, and I’d rather have good karma,” she said.
“I’ll see what he wants to do, and if he wants all of it I’ll suggest I keep a few bucks for my labor – like $20 – and call it good.”
But her brief consideration of greed sent the forum into overdrive over ethics.
“You’re the a–hole majorly. That money is not yours, and clearly, you are not happy to help folks when you’re now considering stealing money they won,” one lamented.
“If you didn’t discuss what to do with any potential winnings, then you technically didn’t do anything wrong. On the other hand, you only got the tickets because of him, so if it were me, I would offer him half of the winnings,” one more understanding person said.
“For me personally, I would offer half, just because I would hate for something like this to come in between family (we all know what money can do to some people), although she is under no obligation to do it, it’s nice to offer,’” another added.