Long story short, my girlfriend’s father is disabled, and has been for a majority of his children’s lives. Prior to us dating, my girlfriend (23) took care of her father and siblings pretty much full time for free. My girlfriend has 2 siblings, an older brother and younger sister. 1 month prior to meeting on tinder, my girlfriend’s father got into a car accident which totaled her car, and he was even lucky to survive. Since then though he’s been laying in the same hospital bed, chain smoking cigarettes 24/7, and got an AMA form signed from the hospital after the accident. His femur is still broken to this day, and the lawsuit against the other driver was dropped because of his lack of care to continue fighting. The insurance payout for my girlfriend’s car was pocketed by him and she was never able to financially recover from it (still without a car). 

After almost a year of dating, we moved into an apartment together because the situation with her family wasn’t healthy. Her siblings stole her money, like thousands of dollars, and her father didn’t want her to go to school or work (only to care for him). So moving has helped my girlfriend finally breathe and grow as a person. Last year, her father decided to cut off the state medicaid he had for his kids. It left my girlfriend with a huge bill from when she had a bad infection, and left her sister unable to get medical attention for a sudden onset on seizures. After we moved, her sister took the brunt of the work on, and it forced her to drop out of high school (she had been 18 already). Her brother did next to nothing like he had always done. Just telling them what to do, when to do it, and threatened physical violence if they didn’t do the chores. 

I found out that whenever her sister would complain that she wanted to get seen by a doctor, her father would just give her some of the opioids he was taking for his pain. Saying stuff like “she’s young and healthy” and “there’s no need to go to the doctor”. Finally in the fall last year her sister was able to move to their grandparents house and hour away with the help of her boyfriend. Similar to how I helped my own girlfriend. Her grandparents helped her sister get her own state medicaid and helped her go to the doctors finally. And she was on the right path to get her GED, and a nice job. But it must’ve been too late because her grandfather found her passed away this year. 

We haven’t gotten the autopsy report yet, but after knowing that the neurologist she had seen said that any scans were clear makes me feel uneasy. My girlfriend has taken her sister’s death really hard, and it’s been a very difficult road for us both. Her father refused to go to the funeral service because his sister was not allowed to attend (His sister abused both my girlfriend and her sister severely enough to where it warranted a whole restraining order (of which her father forced her to get it dissolved as terms of living with him)). This enraged me, and I’m blaming him for the death of his daughter. As he refused to allow his own daughter to seek medical help for a whole year.

Now my girlfriend’s father is trying to tell me that he wants my girlfriend to live with him again. And her brother is trying to convince her to live with them again too. She’s very vulnerable right now, and I know if she were to go back, she’d probably face a similar fate. Plus not to mention, her brother is telling their grandparents that my girlfriend is not going to be living with me anymore, and to send her mail to his father’s house. But anytime I ask my girlfriend, she says she doesn’t want to live there. She wants to move with me across the country to escape both of our families this summer.

Deep down though I feel as though IATA for blaming her father for her sister’s death. Because my girlfriend says she still loves her father. I respect that she loves him, and I don’t want my dislike for her father to affect our relationship. But I love my girlfriend so much I don’t want her to get abused again and again by her family. She deserves the world and shouldn’t have to be free labor for her father, who refuses to get any type of nurse or aid.

TLDR: my girlfriend’s sister passed away this year after taking care of her father for 2 years. Last year her father cut off the state medicaid insurance for his children and refused to let his daughter get medical attention when she fell ill. Now I blame my girlfriend’s father for her sister’s death. AITA?