DEAR SOMEONE ELSE’S MOM: My husband comes from a family of low-achievers. He is the exception, along with one of his cousins, for their generation. Both men have established their own businesses, built from scratch, and work very hard to keep these businesses healthy and growing.

We live in a nice, not huge house, but it’s nicer than anyone other than my husband and his cousin can afford.

All this means that the less ambitious and less successful members of both my husband’s and his cousin’s families are always going to them to borrow money, or ask for a job, or try to make them feel guilty if they don’t give them either. I hear my husband and his cousin talk about all this and it clearly upsets them, because they are both good guys, and don’t like to say no to people who ask for help.

Whenever they have helped out though it ALWAYS backfires, and they end up regretting it because it ends up costing them either in money or the good name of their companies.

It gets even better, because at a recent family get-together, I heard some of the people they tried to help, or their spouses, backbiting my husband and his cousin because, “They think they’re all that and never give a s##t about anyone but themselves.” I felt like I was slapped in the face.

When I told my husband about what I heard he was upset, but he said he has learned, and from now on it’s no more favors for his family.

I don’t believe him, although I do think he meant it when he said it. He is such a good guy that when someone comes asking again, he’ll do what he can for them.

Why should he do anything for people who are so mean, selfish, and ungrateful? --- HE’S TOO NICE

DEAR HE’S TOO NICE: It’s precisely because your husband is a good man, as you readily recognize, that he’s also such a soft touch.

Hopefully, he’ll learn from some of his miscalculations and begin to take greater care when he grants favors or loans, and in time he may indeed truly grow tired of always being the helping hand that gets bitten.

DEAR SOMEONE ELSE’S MOM: My grandfather was a very wealthy businessman. He started a bank in his hometown when he was just back from WWII. He and my grandmother were like local royalty.

When my grandfather died everything was left to my grandmother, who remarried after a few years to a man with an adult son who was still living with him and who then moved into my grandparents’ house when his father did.

My grandmother died last year, and it turns out she left everything to her second husband, not my father and his three sisters, which really gets me angry.

Doesn’t it seem just plain wrong to leave everything to someone who has no connection to my grandfather and the family he and my grandmother raised, not to mention the legacy they built for that family?

I am so hurt for my father and aunts. When I think about how my grandmother’s stepson will then get everything when his father dies, it makes me even madder! --- JUST NOT RIGHT

DEAR JUST NOT RIGHT: Regardless of how right or wrong it feels, your grandmother was at liberty to leave her estate to whomever she chose.

It’s understandably painful for you and your family, but your grandmother may have based her decision more on a desire to provide for her second husband than to slight her other loved ones.

Through the years, I’ve seen similar cases where there was a perceived uneven distribution of assets between survivors based on the departed’s belief that some of them were either better off or less in need of extra income than others.

DEAR SOMEONE ELSE’S MOM: My daughter and her wife have been happily married since same sex marriage became legal in our home state. So for almost eight years, we have kept their marriage from my father, who may not be homophobic exactly, but he is a typical 83-year-old man, who grew up in a different time thinking differently.

Lately my daughter and daughter-in-law have been pushing to tell him they are married, especially since they are currently in the process of the adoption of two children who desperately need a loving home, which I know they will have.

After all this time why should we break the news to him that his granddaughter is married to a woman? He only knows my daughter-in-law as his granddaughter’s roommate. --- DAD’S OLD-FASHIONED

DEAR DAD’S OLD-FASHIONED: How sure are you that your father hasn’t figured things out on his own by this point? His is a generation where some things were just not spoken of, but rather simply accepted as they are.

Whether he already knows his granddaughter is gay or not, it seems to me it’s up to her to decide if, when, and how she shares information about her life with her grandfather. Your role would be to support and honor her wishes.