Dear Eric: When I came into my wife’s family, I was asked by my father-in-law to do maintenance and repair tasks around his cabin since he knew I’m handy. My wife and her two brothers inherited the cabin about 20 years ago.

I continued to do the chores, sometimes with the help of my younger brother-in-law. The older brother-in-law just uses the cabin without contributing to any upkeep or even knowing what’s involved.

I was recently asked by my good brother-in-law to handle a problem. The bad brother-in-law sent out an angry group email to all involved asking why I was making such a decision for “the family cabin”?

He wrote that it’s not fair that I do all this work, and we should “set a budget and make priorities for maintenance” together. I then made a more complete list of yearly items required, as well as a list of things done as needed.

His next email completely cut me off the thread and he complained to my good brother-in-law that I must be a braggart and a complainer. I now resent doing anything at the cabin. My wife and her younger brother want to tiptoe around the older brother’s ego.

We currently have a difficult repair needed that I can handle, but haven’t volunteered, as I don’t want to hear any second-guessing or whining from the bad brother-in-law. What would you do from here on out?

– Conflict in the Cabin

Dear Conflict: Someone shared your brother-in-law’s response with you after you were cut out of the thread so now the physical work on the cabin and the work of diffusing a squabble are falling to you. This family must think you really can fix anything.

The way your “bad” brother-in-law is going about this is unproductive, but he does have a point: it isn’t fair that you’re taking this on yourself. This family, you included, owes each other a conversation about how this cabin is maintained and its future, so that this legacy of ego and miscommunication isn’t passed to the next generation.

Decades of sibling dynamics may make this hard. Your “bad” brother-in-law could be feeling displaced as the oldest, what with you getting requests from his late father and his own brother. This also isn’t your problem to solve.

However, you should be clear with your wife and your “good” brother-in-law that you need their support. After all, it was the “good” brother-in-law who asked you to make the repair that started this row. Why wouldn’t he correct his brother’s mistaken idea?

Separately, you can either have a direct conversation with your “bad” brother-in-law about working together, or you can grab your tool bag and fix what you can. I’d opt for the tools.

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Send questions to R. Eric Thomas at [email protected] or P.O. Box 22474, Philadelphia, PA 19110. Follow him on Instagram and sign up for his weekly newsletter at rericthomas.com.