After being fired from the family business she helped build, a woman refuses to hand over the website

NEED TO KNOW

• A woman was fired from her “adopted” family business after eight years of hard work

• When they demanded that she move the complex website she had created, she refused and offered to let them copy it and take the domain.

• Now she’s wondering if she’s wrong in her stance

A woman turned to the Reddit community for advice after she was fired from her family business and refused to hand over the company’s website, which she had built and maintained for years.

The woman explained in her post that the situation had a “very complicated history” that spanned more than a decade. “I met my ‘adoptive parents’ when I was 19 and they really took me in and helped ‘raise’ me as a young adult,” she wrote.

When they decided to start the company eight years ago, she helped them build it “from the ground up,” taking care of everything from licensing and insurance to marketing and technical logistics.

She said she also built a “very extensive company website in her own time” because she had already started her own small freelance marketing company. Over the years, this site has become a key part of the business’s success and a prime example of her professional skills.

As the business grew, the role of women deepened. “I started working from home just for the family business,” she shared. Her responsibilities included handling all correspondence with clients, scheduling, handling insurance and licensing, and overseeing crews and payments.

Although she was officially paid for three days a week, she said the workload was full-time. “I often worked until 3 a.m. and sometimes even 5 a.m., including my ‘off’ days, and I was always on call,” she wrote.

Her husband joined the company six years ago, working long hours as a foreman and project estimator. “He was scheduled for meetings 2-3 days a week, sometimes driving 300 miles in one day,” she said, adding that he spent other days leading crews on job sites, often far from home.

Both of them used their own vehicles, telephones, and tools for work, free of charge. “All business expenses were covered individually,” she explained, noting that even mistakes made by other employees would be deducted from her husband’s salary.

Things began to unravel six months before she published the story. Her “adopted children” invited her to a meeting, supposedly to discuss her husband’s performance. “Remember, I was his direct supervisor and took this role very seriously,” she wrote. Although her husband had some early problems, she said he has improved and is “doing a great job, but very tired.”

During that meeting, the couple’s employers told her that her husband would “never find another job that would keep him around and keep him doing what he does.” When she replied that they didn’t pay as well as they thought they did, the reaction was immediate.

“They were beyond insulted that I would even suggest it,” she wrote. “They told me Friday would be my last day and good luck ‘finding someone else to pay you what we do to stay home with your kids.’

She said her husband was given a 30-day notice shortly after. Despite the tension, she says she tried to leave on good terms. “I tried to get them to extend the time by a week or so so that they could train the people who were replacing me well enough,” she said. “But they were convinced that I hadn’t really done that much and none of it was difficult.

Still, she spent the rest of the week creating “fact sheets” to make the transition smooth, and continued to answer their questions in the weeks that followed. But aside from those work-related interactions, she said, “Now the whole family has completely cut us off.”

The real conflict began when her former employers asked her to transfer ownership of the company’s website to their eldest son. The woman explained that the site was always her creation, which she maintained “with her own time and pennies to sow into my ‘adoptive parents’ and company.” Even after being fired, she agreed to keep it.

But now she’s focused on rebuilding her freelance marketing business. “If I were to move this site out of my LLC right now, it would be a huge blow to my business,” she said. She explained that the website was “a great representation of my abilities and the only one in my portfolio that I liked.”

As a compromise, she offered to make the process easier. “I explained to the owner that I could leave the site so their son could copy/paste everything, but he would just have to recreate it because I can’t copy it,” she wrote. She even said she would donate a domain name she valued at over $1,000 to help them out.

Despite the generous offer, her former employers were furious. “But they are extremely upset with the idea because their son doesn’t know how to do all this,” she said.

She even offered to teach them how to manage the website, but they declined. “Of course they don’t want to do that because they run their business out of their home and I’m not welcome there anymore,” she added.

The woman said she felt torn. “I don’t want to make things difficult for them and I feel I’m more than fair with the opportunities I’ve been given,” she admitted. But she still wondered if she was wrong not to pass it all the way. “Maybe I just need to move it on and accept the loss,” she wrote.

Reddit commenters were quick to back her up. One wrote: “NTA. You are too nice to people who let you go without a second thought. You offer so much of yourself and your time to people who don’t care about you.” That commenter said her offer was “reasonable” and that her ex’s family should be “grateful instead of making all these demands.”

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Another commenter was even more direct. “The OP needs no contact,” they said. “It’s worth thousands of dollars to build a complex and well-designed site…never mind maintaining it. The domain? The OP paid for it and didn’t get compensated? It’s theirs.”

That person urged her to bill the company for all costs associated with the site. “If the company wants it back, send them an invoice for ALL costs involved. Pay up front or tell them to be mad,” the commenter wrote. “Your skills are worth time and money, so you need to pay accordingly. No more freebies.”

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