AITA for sending a group text my wife’s siblings?

A Reddit user shares his experience of sending a group text to his wife’s siblings about her surgery, taking on the responsibility of keeping them informed. After sending the initial message from his wife’s phone, he discovered a heated exchange among the siblings regarding their parents’ estate in the replies.

This led to the younger sister accusing him of being an “asshole” for sharing their contact information and stirring up family drama. While he believes he was just being efficient, he’s now questioning whether he crossed a line. Read the original story below for more details.

‘ AITA for sending a group text my wife’s siblings?’

Background: My wife (49) is the middle child of four kids. She has one older sister and a younger brother and sister who are twins. They don’t all get along. I’m not sure why and the reasons change depending on who you ask. I happily stay away from being involved in their family drama for my sanity. My wife is the only one that talks to all three siblings.

This past July she was having surgery. As her husband, it has become my responsibility to keep everybody informed on her progress. When I received a message saying she was being taken into the OR, I used my wife’s phone and sent out a group text to the entire family about what was going on.

I then put her phone in my bag and headed to lunch. I was finishing lunch when the doctor called to say that she was out of surgery and everything went fine. I fish her phone out of my bag and find 20-30 replies to the original message. I skimmed the messages and they were all fighting about who got what from their parents’ estate.

Then MY phone started blowing up and it was the younger sister calling me an a**hole and saying that what I did was a d**k move. Because now the older sister had her number, as well as the numbers of her husband and two kids.

I replied that I simply fulfilled my obligation to keep everyone informed in the most efficient way possible. She didn’t see it that way. So I decided I value my sanity more than being right. So when there was another update, I sent the younger sister a separate message and said “you can forward this to whomever you choose.”. So AITA?

Heres the input from the Reddit crowd:

gfdoctor −  Question: Did your wife ask you to text all her siblings?
Because if the family is so fractious, then giving out each other’s number is definitely a YTA move.

Nobody7713 −  Soft YTA. Don’t share peoples’ contact info without their permission. It’s the same reason that if you’re emailing people who don’t know each other, you use BCC.

KSknitter −  So, this isn’t something we should judge. This is something your wife should judge. Just saying.

catsndogspls −  INFO: did you know that the other siblings wanted their information (phone number, etc) private from other family members?

AIIergicToReddit −  Whether or not the group text was a good idea is not really relevant, you can’t really be blamed for knowing details of who has whose number etc.

Having said that, it takes literally no effort to reply with “Oh. I’m really sorry, I didn’t know.”
“Um ackshually I was just fulfilling my duty in the most efficient way ☝️🤓” may be technically correct, but it still definitely makes YTA.

WeaselPhontom −  YTA, you unintentionally exposed somone to t**ic family she was obviously no contact. It’s never smart send group texts you weren’t right. You can sent send a text to a group of peoples as separate not one the way you did.  It was your bad unintentionally yes but your response makes you a j**k

EmceeSuzy −  INFO: What was this surgery? You weren’t even there… it doesn’t sound like it was serious to warrant any sort of family update until you wife was alert enough to communicate with her family.

Avium −  That’s a tricky one, honestly. You did f**k up a little bit, but assholeishness, to me, requires some sort of intent.
You shouldn’t have added everyone to a new group just because you did expose their numbers. That’s the f**k up.I think I’m leaning to a soft YTA just because you knew there were problems in your wife’s family so you shouldn’t have created a new group with them all.

Polly265 −  I’m just going to say if I were to send a group text to a (new) group, right before my partner had surgery it would not even cross my mind that I was sharing phone numbers. I know, objectively, that I am doing that but I don’t think it would occur to me until someone pointed it out. I wonder if OP even knew that they didn’t have each other’s numbers.

ZombieHealthy2616 −  I can’t get over the fact that they used a group text health update about your wife who was in surgery to b**ch and moan about their parents estate.

Seriously – NTA. Having had to send group updates on my husband’s health during a very long and involved surgery, the dead last thing I was thinking about was petty issues between adults. If adults can not set aside their issues and behave like adults, that is not your problem. You married in to a hot mess though. I’m so [sorry.tt](http://sorry.tt)