Our son and DIL (26 years old) have been together for two years and live together. We’ve always felt she was a nice person, and she appears to make my kid happy, so no worries from us. Our kid has his own law firm that he is currently trying to establish. We are quite pleased of him, and we are lucky to be able to provide him with a start-up loan. DIL works in retail and is extremely pleased there.

When my husband and I visited their flat, we decided to order some dinner. My husband and I wanted to pay, and because DIL was ordering from her phone, we handed her our card so she could withdraw funds from our account. We assumed it was obvious that this would be a one-time draw for lunch. However, DIL allegedly added our card to her Apple Pay and has been using it ever since.

We hadn’t noticed for a few months, but we finally discovered withdrawals we didn’t recognize. We had our accountant look into it, and he discovered that 1) DIL has been using our card on her phone, and 2) she has spent approximately $17,000. We were astonished and called her to ask why she had been using our card. She became defensive, tried to deny it, and then stated she was entitled to it, and why should we care because we hadn’t seen her usage in over 4 months.

We informed her she had to pay us back right away or we would record her conduct as theft. She allegedly does not have enough money to repay us. We approached our son, and he volunteered to repay us even though he couldn’t afford to. This isn’t about money for us; it’s about the fact that she stole a large sum of money. While we are comfortable and it took us some time to realize, we understand the gravity of stealing $17,000 USD.

Our son has fully rejected her conduct as stress-related. She has refused to accept responsibility, and we sincerely hope that the police report will teach her the repercussions of her conduct. Will we be TAs for doing this?

Edit: They are not married; referring to her as DIL is simply for the sake of narration.