This paper examines how the circulation of genealogies and family histories in Saida, Lebanon constitutes who counts as kin and shapes practices of giving within families. Based on fourteen months of fieldwork in Saida, it analyzes the interplay of narrative and the formation and functioning of family mutual aid associations (rawabit/jama'iyat al-‘ayleh). In a context in which the state provides markedly limited social welfare, all of Lebanon’s largest religious groups (Sunni, Shia, Christian, and Druze) have increasingly joined together to found family associations. In Saida, stories about descent shape how one’s obligation to others is understood, experienced, and practiced. This paper begins with an analysis of the ways in which genealogical stories shape Sidonians’ (i.e., people from Saida) understandings of obligation and debt, within and between families, through an analysis of conflicting family histories told by members of one illustrious Sidonian family. Self-described fallen princes who traveled to the Levant from Morocco and Andalusia, the family’s disagreement about their history has led to the formation of two competing mutual aid associations: one based in Beirut, and the other in Southern Lebanon. In creating new kinship organizations, people sometimes wind up being counted as kin alongside people they had previously thought of as strangers, or even rivals. The process of bounding one’s kin group can cut across class, sectarian, and geographical lines. This paper shows how, in certain cases, ethical responsibility can be both prior and orthogonal to sect. It further shows how family associations can connect with and/or chaff against an ethics of belonging rooted in Arab Nationalism or forms of Islamic piety. It focuses in particular on the ways in which the bounding of kinship mutual aid associations, and the resulting relationships of obligation and indebtedness that emerge, have changed since the end of Lebanon’s civil war, and in the context of the crisis across the border in Syria.