<prompt> Human: I am 26 years old and am from a village of around 300 people. I having been living away from my family in the big city since college. My girlfriend and I are at the point where we would like to get a house together, my folks have made their money owning pubs and restaurants over the years. They are now retired well meant to be as they are both about to turn 70.After thinking that we were the average family and everything was rosey I found out towards the tail end of last year that my father had been slowly sliding into heavy debt to the tune of around 300,000. He had taken out a 200,000 mortgage on our house nearly 10 years ago and interest that he has had to pay for this now stands at around 100,000. At the height of their powers my dad had invested in a company in the republic of Ireland, the recession hit and as far as I know we have not got the money back. After hearing this I have found that this was quite clearly a tax dodge where he would hand over money to a company that would return the 200,000 with 66,000 on top of it. My mother has been pleading with him for 8 years to tell her what company it was and who was involved. To this day he will not say, I decided to talk to him to see if he would tell me in case there was a slim chance that we could get the money back. He has said yes but has been putting it off for the last 3 months. To make matters worse I found out that he owes around 18,000 to local people, from mechanics to business partners.My mother in order to try and save the house has been working 3 jobs which are very physical, my dad has diabetes that is crippling him and making him more and more sick. Their electric bills are shooting up as he never leaves the house he wakes up, watches tv, eats and sleeps. Thats his day.I think the deadline for paying back the mortgage is August of this year and it seems quite evident to me that the investment money will not return and my mother will rather kill herself working to save the house rather than give it to the bank. I have just cleared my debts and start help them but I dont want to land my potential new family into debt before it has begun. If there is someone who has been in a similar position or has managed to get out of such crippling debt please help me. I need your advice, thanks for reading.  <response>: Firstly, dont let ANY of your money get mixed up in this mess. Make sure you arent planning on any inheritances either.I know their end goal is to try and save the house, but from the sounds of it, its too late for that. I would work on selling the house now on their terms to get as much as possible out of it rather than having it be taken away and have someone sell it to get anything out of it and be left with any balance Im pretty sure mortgages are recourse loans in England.But really the best advice I can say is to offer to give advice but if they dont want it, youre all adults and its their right to refuse any help. Any money you throw at the situation will just disappear and wont make anything better and just removes the opportunity to save that money for your own future. 