This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/AmItheAsshole by /u/Specific_Mud9203 on 2023-06-22 20:52:24+00:00.

So, for context I a 21(f) buisness owner. My business is based around reptile education and breeding. I mostly breed pythons, anacondas, and some rat snakes. I love my work and feel incredibly lucky to be able to have this job. So, I had my family over for dinner one night to celebrate my wife’s birthday. When family comes over I always close the basement door and leave a sign on it letting people know not to go down there unless I or my girlfriend are there. However, I had to run out to the store because I forgot to get a bag of ice (and my ice maker has been broken for like two years) and while I was gone, my sister-in-law took my two three and five year old nephews into the reptile room so they would have something to do. While I was gone and my nephews were downstairs they started messing with the cords that controlled all the heating and lighting to the room. This included the heating to the incubator which was packed full with snake eggs (all for that season) which brings in the majority of my revenue. Before I got back my sister-in-law and nephews came back upstairs for food and I didn’t even know they had been down there. I went to bed right after they left. The first thing I noticed the next morning was that all the automated lights were off because the timer had been turned off. I figured that I must have bumped it until I realized all the timers for lights were off. Then I checked my incubator and realized something was seriously wrong. The inside of the incubator was WAY too cold. I panicked and checked every single bin and almost all of the eggs had gone bad. There were probably 12-15 that were still good. For comparison the day before, there were 230 good, healthy eggs. I immediately asked my wife if she knew what happened and she didn’t. So I checked the cameras and clearly saw my sister-in-law and her sons going through the room and messing with the chords. You could clearly see them fully UNPLUG the power strip connected to the incubator. I called her to confront her about it and she told me to, “Calm down.” These animals mean everything to me. Not only that, as I said, breeding is the majority of my business’ profit. So after talking to my wife and trying to talk to my sister in law to no avail, my wife and I found a lawyer and took her to court. During that case, the judge ruled that my sister in law had to reimburse me and my wife for the dead snakes. But since they hadn’t hatched the judge decided that she would have to pay based off how much I brought in from breeding the previous year which was close to $75,000. My wife and I were resolute in that decision but we have constantly badgered me and my wife telling us we are terrible people for suing our family. So am I the asshole?