A Family Member Gave Us A Loan, And Now They're Asking For 10k Out Of Nowhere By Monday.

My wife and I found a “fixer up” house 5 years ago. We needed around 25k to get the place. We were very, very lucky for this opportunity, and we just had to try, even though we were already approved for a house on the market. It all just lined up, and we thought it was too good to pass up. Over the years I'd work on it, get it paid off. That was the goal.

We went to the bank with my wife's "uncle", and he was supposed to simply cosign, but he had an idea. Well, he said it'd be a shame for that interest to go the bank.. so, he said he'd just loan us the money from his savings, and add the 4k interest. All together 30k, $500 a month payment. Obviously now known as a mistake on our part doing it this way.

We did miss some payments throughout the years. We've had hardships like any other. He knew, we explained why, and we just doubled up on a few of them to try and catch up, and just kept going. Hell, he even said if we had to miss payments, it would be okay. But after that, not a word said about anything for years. We're paying it, everything is good.. until today. He sent some texts to us. Very vague, but nasty and cold. He said we owed him 10k by Monday, and that we were losing him money. He was practically scolding my wife for not coming down for Christmas, even though we had texted them and said we'd come by today. That way, we can spend time with them and not have to rush.

I know that doesn't seem important, but that stuff was said right before he got into the "late fee" talk. After we told him we would look into it (not get a 10k loan like he probably thought), he said "I sure hope you can get it, good luck". It's very strange, and shockingly vindictive. This came out of nowhere, but my wife told me that her aunt (his wife) has been having trouble with him, and he has blowouts constantly. That being the case, we believe he's just made the number up out of anger, and decided to take it out on us.

We've looked over the paperwork many, many times now. Looking for any conditions that would make this make sense. We don't know where this specific sum he's threatening us with would come from, nor why we would have to pay it by Monday. We have no paperwork pertaining to late fees or missed payments.

The only thing in all the paperwork I can find that shows what we owe/d is a loan amortization schedule..and as of about 2 hours ago, we have paid the bank to send us our bank statements for the past five years. We went through every payment we ever made. We added them all up, and it shows we owe 3k still, which was expected. We've looked through everything over and over. Again, If we missed a payment, we just kept going, and it was known and explained, and it was accepted. Never got any emails about late fees, no alerts, no him personally telling us "hey, here's what the late fees are". IF this 10k is, as he says "late fees", then we have no information on it at all in terms of paperwork. Nothing signed that said what the late fee % would be. It just doesn't exist. This was practically a handshake loan.

He loaned us 30k, and obviously by what he's said, he's not gonna wait for it to be paid off monthly anymore. So we're going to try and get 3k together tomorrow, and at least make sure the initial 30k we owed him is over and done.

I'm obviously worried that he has something over us that we don't know, and were never told about. That, or he's just making this number up. I do know that if there's any paperwork showing we'd be paying that much money for late fees, we would have never signed such an agreement. It's not that we care to pay reasonable late fees, but an amount almost a fourth of the loan is absurd, and a three-day deadline is just vicious.

Do we need to consult a lawyer? Or should we just pay what we know for sure we owe him and let him decide the next move? Or, should we just go ahead and get a loan for 10k and pay him off? If we do owe him this 10k, what would we have to do to figure out how this amount was decided? Talking to him is not going to work. He's stubborn, and will just say it is what it is, and we won't get anything from him but threats.

If it's real, would the bank have this information, and could we obtain it without going through him? We don't think anything of the sort even exists, but we want to be thorough, pay our debts, and make sure we're not getting hustled.