<prompt> Human: She is 76, in good health, widowed and living off a fixed income. She spends money unwisely. She has 6 or 7 years left on a second mortgage. She wants me to buy her house so she can get the money from the sale of the house and still live in it. According to Zillow.com the market value is around 200K assuming it sells at all.I live in another state and dont want to own her house and be responsible for taxes and upkeep. I think she should sell the house and move into a rental and take the proceeds and buy an annuity.What is the best thing to do?Edit: Thanks for all of the thoughtful replies. On the one hand I cant help but feel like of course I should bail her out - but on the other hand I dont want to subsidize her unwise to put it mildly spending decisions. If she totally runs out of money then I would rather find her an apartment or a rental near where I live. The unanimous consensus of Dont do it gives me a bit more fortitude to say No.Edit: The more I read about Reverse Mortgages the better that option sounds. She wants to live in that house for as long as possible, selling in a down market is unpalatable, she really just wants to extract the equity from the house - the contracts might be expensive up front but they seem pretty reasonable especially if she lives there until she dies. Definitely food for thought.  <response>: Came here to say that this is a bad idea except when you are really rich, so rich that you can pay for the house out of pocket and preferably with pocket change and can leave all the maintenance and tax trouble to the professionals without blinking an eye when they give you their bills. So the answer is probably no, dont get involved in this... 