Step kids have moved out, DH is still funding them

Your DH's decisions sound fair enough. You sound like you need to stay out of it, and let him try to repair the damage between him and his oldest children.

My DD is 11 and these kids lost their mother when they were only 13. Around the age 2 of your kids are now. I can’t imagine how painful that would’ve been for them. Your DH did not do them a favour by paying for their international school there, that is the least he could have done. The teenage years are tough without such trauma in their lives so my heart goes out to them. I understand it was complicated and you say you could not leave the UK because you are co-parenting with an ex but basically your DH chose you, the child you have together, and your obligations and not his kids who lost their mum. That is a double loss for them. I’m not saying he doesn’t love them a lot but from a child’s perspective at the age of 13 I think that’s likely to be perceived as rejection. I get there was likely no ideal solution but the fact is you came out the best on what was decided- not your fault, his choice. But please show a little more compassion to these children. They came to your home carrying with them the loss of their mum and likely perceived rejection of their father. They are trying to find something to fill that hole. Who are they confiding in about their pain and fears? Who can they truly go to and be vulnerable with? You emphasised the moving of the bedrooms etc and I understand it was likely inconvenient etc and it feels like a big thing that was done to welcome them but there is SO much more to their transition from France to living you with all. Good luck x

Completely unreasonable. Dh paid my son’s rent on a flat and he’s not even his child! Of course he has to support them!!! Will you be cutting off your joint child financially at the same age if they decide to move out?

Yabu

I agree. But then MN does not like men who have the cheek to start second families regardless of the circumstances.
The mother, of course, is OK doing this.
There is nothing MN likes better than an evil stepmother thread. It means posters can a project how they would never think like that and congratulate themselves on the perfect man they married.
The idea that this man should give up work to move to be beside his children when they were settled where they were is ridiculous. Yes he should have tried to get them to live either him, but if they didn't want to and were settled at school, I can well see why things panned out the way they did.
The OP is being awful here. She clearly dies not want his children disrupting her family and is glad to see the back of them. I guess she is also trying to manipulate her dh into thinking the same. That's terrible behaviour.
Still, it gives pps an opportunity to do that Poor, Poor Children and Those Poor Children routine. Along with Wow for good measure 🙄

i wonder when your own children decide to fly the coop.. if you will demand the same for your children as you have for his?

YABU

Maybe if you need your own children from a different relationship provided for, you should be looking to yourself and their other parent rather than a man who has 2 clearly traumatised older children of his own as well as the child you both chose to bring into this mess.

Op you’ve described it as a ‘strop’ - it sounds an awful lot more serious than a strop.

Of course your husband should pay for schooling and food. Thats what most parents do for their 16/17 year old children.

I’ll start by saying I’m a mum to teens and a step mum to an adult who is still being funded by us while she tries to build a career . These 17 year olds absolutely should be being funded by their dad . I’m really shocked that you think they shouldn’t . I’m actually hoping this post isn’t real . I really hope Dad is seeing them regularly even if they have moved out - they need way more than money from their remaining parent

School, food, clothes and tube. It's hardly as if he's giving them the earth is it? It's the bare minimum a father should be expected to provide, and YABU to expect him to stop.

I’d be focusing on getting them some help to address the issues they clearly have with the move to your household. They are teenagers. Still children. They must be feeling so lost.

How did he end up living in a different country to his children in the first place? Did he leave France or did he allow their mother to take them away from the UK? If it's the latter then those children really have been unsettled throughout their lives and have had no stability for any length of time at all

These poor children. They lost their mother a few years ago, their father lived in a different country and their stepmother clearly has no empathy for them. Of course your husband should still be supporting them. A bit of acting out and recklessness is totally normal in adolescence. You’re being very unfair.

It's called comprehension and knowing what a typo meant on the basis of all the other information.

Do you think OP was saying her DH is half-something not French when going on to talk about his French ex, French kids who lived in France his parents who live in France. That his ex took the kids 'back to France' after 6 months in the UK which very much suggests they were born there?

And how he could have chosen to live in France with his kids after their Mum died but would have to leave the OP and her kids and be temporarily out of work so it wasn't feasible in her opinion.

Do you know how immigration works? That you can’t just rock up in a country you're not a citizen of and decide to live there and get a job?

OP didn't say 'of course DH couldn't decide to live in France after their Mum died, he wouldn’t get a visa' did she?

No, she said it would be inconvenient to her.

Jesus I’ve read some bad things on this site but this one takes the biscuit. You want your husband to cut off his school aged kids financially because they’ve left his house? Their mother died. They were left living with grandparents while their dad formed a new family. They then came to live with you and understandably found the adjustment difficult and now you want him to cut them off? Unbelievable.

The very least he can do is continue to fund his 17yo children! What is wrong with you?

She wasn't sharing with her Brother. The 14 and 12 year old were sharing. Way I read it anyway.

Yes I agree. The clamour to permit any behaviour - and fund any poor choices made by these kids - is quite frankly worrying. Yes, they are grieving, yes they have been uprooted, yes their lives sound pretty traumatic until now - but kids need boundaries and allowing them to do whatever they want isn't helping. It's a knee-jerk reaction to the fact their mum died but it's not sustainable going forward.

I'd be appalled if everyone on here genuinely would be fine with their 16-year-old living with a 22-year old with such encouragement as to give them as much money as they wanted to carry on doing it.

Sorry YABU

if he stops it will make relationships with his children even worse
I understand you are upset your kid is going without but it isn’t different compared to them living at home

It’s legal for 17 year old to live with the 22 year old if she wants, I would have made more effort for her to want to stay at home but you can’t blame her for moving out when she has to share with her 17 year old brother.

Poor kids. I HATE blended family crap. Poor poor kids.

You and the 'father' must be really awful for both teens to be so desperate to leave, and put themselves in precarious living situations.
Stupid man for shacking up with someone else's kids, and creating an extra kid, when he didn't even parent his first two. And you chose that (he sounds rich, so there's that).
Neither of you come across well here at all. He had the choice to stay where his kids were. His first two, that is. He owed them that.

YABVU

Yabu

Now they want to be here and that’s been accommodated

Do they? I haven’t seen anything from OP that indicates why they left France.

I don't know why you mention the keyboard etc since those are their possessions, they were given them. And your DH does have to provide for his DC, they are his and they are in a foreign country and under 18 (which means they are still children so I wonder whether there is an issue of the DS living with a 22 year old - I worry about that more than about keyboards!). He will be financially supporting them for some years in the future too.
(I'd mutter about 'only having a five bedroom house' too, but they say those who live in glass houses should not throw stones - you are lucky to have such a large house.)

He didn’t leave France. Read the thread properly.

What a vile pile on because the OP is a step, oh and somewhat comfortable financially apparently. The ex wanted to take the kids back to France. The husband made that work as it’s what they wanted. Now they want to be here and that’s been accommodated, apart from unlimited pocket money and freedom to shag in their parent's home where other younger children also live. I don’t know the full story any more than anyone else on this thread but I’d be shocked if all of you would be happy about a 16 year old shacking up with a 22 year old if she was yours. Other than that, yes he does need to carry on supporting them.