AIBU to feel undervalued when my husband keeps score financially?

I don’t know about all your bills but if you’re saying him pating the mortgage increases his share in your dhared property, it seems unfair that he doesn’t contribute to the food bills, unless he pays all utilities or similar.
The issue isn’t the money for me in this relationship but the fact that he doesn’t seem to like your children.

Oh come off it. Taking a role in meals and transport of minors you have chosen to cohabitate with is hardly unusual and does not render him ‘responsible’. The children have two parents and one step parent. Where would you draw the line at responsibility? When he empties the dishwasher, should he only put away his dishes? Should he never touch an item of clothing that isn’t his? Should he divide up the contents of the pantry per head?

Refusing to check in on a meal because it isn’t being prepared for him is just petty.

The agreement OP and her DH have on the house is another example where I disagree with her. Where there are unequal deposits I'd completely expect them to have agreed that they both get their deposit back in full before any equity is split, and if there isn't enough equity to cover both deposits then they get back in proportion to the deposit they've put in. But why does he get a smaller percentage of the remaining equity until he's paid in enough mortgage? Why is it not already 50/50 after that, with the impact of his mortgage payments being to bring it closer to 50/50 overall? OP is undervaluing what she is getting here. Yes she provided the deposit, but presumably his income was needed to get the mortgage and she couldn't afford to pay even 50% of it herself. Until they are actually in an even position this is an excellent deal for OP. If I was her DH I wouldn't have agreed to that!

If the deal allows him to get more than 50% equity over time then she shouldn't have signed it, and I can see why he might have been willing to take the short term risk for a better overall deal i.e. it might be in his interests to structure it this way. If it does top out at 50/50 then he's actually been very generous here.

OH is getting p*ssy because I asked him to check on the dinner when I went to pick up DS for 10 mins.

I feel like I cannot expect everything from him.

Finances and childcare are one thing.

But you should expect him to check on food he’s going to eat, when you have a child to collect.

You’re in paid work 4 days a week. Just because he earns more than you, doesn’t mean you should be his personal chef in your spare time.

Tell him to get his own dinner in future.

No, it’s evidently not a given. He married someone with children, sure, but that didn’t and doesn’t make him responsible for those children.

It doesn’t sound like he gave OP the impression that this he would be taking that on either, so she’s getting precisely what she signed up for.

If I had 2 kids with another man and my new husbands salary allowed me to continue to work part time no I wouldn’t feel undervalued. If you had to house yourself and your kids and pay all bills you’d be paying a lot more than you do now

I didn't say I'd never do what he did, I said I'd never accept him doing what he's doing myself. I wouldn't live with someone who wasn't willing to take an active role in family life, and who would not take into account time (or money) I was spending on my children as contributions to the relationship. One of the reasons for that is I'm perfectly able to provide a comfortable life for me and my children on my own. In this situation I wouldn't value the extra money her DH is bringing in that much - sure more money is always nice, but my lifestyle would be just fine without it. More money would be money I'd want to be saving for or spending on the kids primarily!

I don't think it is a given at all that he should be "taking an active role in ensuring the inhabitants of the household are fed, young people are picked up and dropped off to places" when there's a massive income disparity. I know you said "dropped off occasionally" and I do think that that should be a given.

But OP's actual post isn't that he was pissy that she asks him to help occasionally. She's saying that he doesn't recognize their contributions as equal and she thinks they are. She says he's undervaluing what she brings to the table. My point is she's wrong there - he's objectively contributing much more unless he considers the contributions she makes to her kids as contributions to their relationship. He's not undervaluing what she bring to the table for him. That's the real issue. There's no arguing that she's not getting a great deal here in terms of how much she gets from him, it's just because she also has the kids to manage she's still struggling and tired and needs more. The issue is she's looking at what she brings to the table for the family unit, and he's looking at what she brings to the table for the couple relationship.

(I'm assuming that 6x her income makes him a very high earner (she mentions she has a professional role so presumably isn't on minimum wage and she works 4 days a week), and so he more than makes up for what she's lost in benefits in terms of his additional financial contributions).

Yet when women come on here to complain they have to financially contribute to theit step children they are told to stop they are his kids, it seems it is considered family money when the man earns it and he knew what he was taking on

It’s all very well to say you’d never do what he did. I wouldn’t either. But he did do it! He fell in love with a woman with children, married her, and took on a mortgage.

If you choose to do that, taking an active role in ensuring the inhabitants of the household are fed, young people are picked up and dropped off to places occasionally, well…surely that’s a given? You married someone with children for goodness sake. All my friends who are step parents (ok, there’s only two) operate their households as a family unit.

I've actually got a friend in a similar situation and this point is one of the big reasons that they're not living together. There's a huge disparity in income, to the extent that there's basically nothing she could contribute (financially or not) that would balance things out. She would lose income if they moved in together (see it as like your benefits point but more significant and longer term impact), but whilst he is completely happy to cover all of her costs and support her (because he loves her and the value to him of being with her is massive), he's not keen on taking on financial or other responsibility for her children because he doesn't see them as his children. He of course wouldn't let them starve, but he wouldn't be financially investing in their future, things she would pay for now happily for the kids (eg after school activities) would likely become a battleground and if the relationship were to breakdown he wouldn't guarantee continuing to support the kids until she was back where she is now. It's not this, but look at it as her needing to relocate to somewhere with extremely limited employment prospects. She's be willing to do it, and sacrifice her career, but not without rock solid commitments to financial support for the kids long term.

Neither are wrong - for him they're not his kids, and for her the benefits she would get from living him don't outweigh the risk to her kids. They love each other and the solution they've found is to continue living apart.

Blending families is hard.

He shouldn't be being pissy with you for being asked to occasionally support the kids, and he knew you came with kids when he married you. This is a marriage and a family and it shouldn't come down to the numbers of who contributes what, whether financial or non-financial. If he's going to be living with you and the kids then he needs to be treating the unit as a family which means things don't always balance out - if it's constantly him thinking that you are solely responsible for the kids that's a pretty horrible relationship in my view. I would prefer to live separately personally. I could also completely understand it if someone in your husband's position didn't want to take this on himself, but at the end of the day he married you!

However, I am not clear that the contributions here are as equal as you are making them out and actually think he has a point. You not recognizing quite how unbalanced this actually is that might be making this issue worse. Yes you paid more financially into the house, but in doing that you got a higher ownership share. He's building his ownership share back up by paying 100% of the mortgage [hopefully your deal means that it stops when it gets to 50:50 ownership or it's a very bad deal for you!]. You and your two kids are living mortgage/rent free and presumably expect to even when the amount he has paid in mortgage exceeds the amount you paid in deposit. To me that easily balances out the bigger deposit you paid, and plus presumably if he had been buying on his own the big deposit wouldn't have been needed in the first place because it would have been a smaller house.

You're working part time because of your children. He's covering the household bills. I don't know how that balances out, but I would assume that means he's paying at least 50% of bills plus groceries, and there's one of him and three of you. Everything else you talk about having to cover is all costs that are either directly your costs or related to your kids. Who pays for the luxuries in life? Holidays, meals out etc?

If he doesn't consider this a true family unit and therefore doesn't count contributions made to the kids when he's considering whether contributions are balanced or not (and see above that I personally wouldn't be ok with that), how is he not contributing massively more than you are? What non-financial contributions are you making that benefit him? I assume you're picking up more of the domestic stuff and cooking, but how much are you doing for him as opposed to for you and the kids.

In my view your issue isn't that he's unfairly not taking into account your true contributions (including non-financial) but that he doesn't see contributions that you make that relate to the kids as part of the package. The contributions you are making to the relationship are massively unbalanced and objectively this relationship almost certainly benefits you much more than him.

But all that said, it shouldn't be about that. This is part and parcel of being in a relationship with someone who has resident children. Relationships shouldn't be about totting up who contributes what providing that there's a reasonable balance of free time and personal spending money whatsoever. Imagine if you didn't have kids, both worked similar hours but he was in a much higher paying job. It would be the same point - there almost certainly wouldn't be enough of a non-financial contribution you would be making to balance out his financial one (say he hires a cleaner and cook!), but that happens all the time because relationships shouldn't be about a balance sheet of who gets what.

The op has said she works four days a week so she isn't very part time and no doubt does the majority of the life admin and household chores.

She did put the majority of the deposit down for the house and her husband's stake increases with each mortgage payment.

Op you must have a calm and frank conversation with your man about his attitude, each must listen to the other and take everything on board.

Make notes in advance with bullet points.

Where there's a will there's a way. If there isn't, ditch him.

MN has such strange ideas about relationships - you need to take entire responsibility for your dc, while also working full time and earn an equal salary to
your dh so you can be entirely independent of each other. The split chores equally - he can wash one side of a plate and you wash the other.

Meanwhile back irl, what do you think is going on with him? Objecting to checking on dinner is manosphere level pettiness. Can you sit down together and calmly discuss what’s going on because it doesn’t sound feasible to continue with that level of resentment?

How do people not sort these issues out BEFORE making big commitments like a house and marriage when there are kids involved????
so so selfish

This! Some people never learn and it’s so frustrating that kids have to pay the price. One marriage down and another relationship going the same way, some people 🤦‍♀️

Surely tenants in common mortgage doesn’t change though unless you re-did it and changed the percentages. I owned with my ex years ago, when pregnant with DS2. I had a child from previous, whom I had when a teen, so although i’d gone to uni, bettered myself, I was only 2yrs into my career when we met, and so had no deposit, in fact I was paying off debt still. Ex DP paid 30k deposit and we owned the house 60-40.

I actually suggested it, as he paid the deposit. It probably would have been better to just protect his deposit, as we split after 7yrs, and by this time he had paid another 50-60k off the mortgage. I always paid 50% of all costs, including during mat leave for DD. He rarely paid for food, rarely bought any clothing / essentials for the kids and benefited from me dropping a day at work and reduced nursery cost. In the end I was so desperate to move out, I signed it all to him. I hated that house and couldn’t have stayed. I could have taken 40% of the deposit and 40% of the 50-60k he paid off, savings whilst I paid for everything else. So i’d advise my kids to protect your deposit over a share. 15yrs later, I am finally buying again after renting in the south east since the split. Youngest is 18 now. Ex DP is wanting to contribute something (not sure what as have declined) towards my home, I think 15yrs older, he recognises that it was a little unfair. He has also benefitted hugely from working overseas over half of those 15yrs we’ve been split, earning mega bucks whilst i’ve raised our DC, totally alone and miles from family. Cannot wait to ‘go home’ this summer. Oh and he never paid maintenance, not until more recently when I got fed up and he showed up with 15k. He can never just pay monthly, he likes to be the hero. He has however saved for the kids uni, and they are both able to do uni debt free, so they have benefited, just I had to struggle to pay everything else over the years .

I could never live with a man / share finances again. My ex is obsessed with money, and i’ve always been a fair person so he never needed to be worried I was going to fleece him. My new beautiful home is paid for with 100% of my money, no bank of mum & dad, no house profit. It is annoying i’ll be working until 70 plus to pay for it though, but hey ho.

sorry that was long, I feel better getting that out!!

Exactly! A stepmother shouldn't inconvenience herself in any way for her stepchildren. Yet here, it's "he knew you had kids when he married you."

The phrase I've seen for stepmothers on here is "nanny with a fanny." We need to come up with something similar for the stepfather in this situation. Something that rhymes with "wallet," I think.

Did you get legal advice for your self separately before the pre nup?
because if you have no money of your own and you’re buying his food and I would imagine doing all the household chores plus life admin, all the time .
Meanwhile he’s gaining more and more equity of the house you live in that could leave you very vulnerable in the event of a break up? He sounds very financially savvy…..

You have to sit down, without kids around, and have a serious talk: does he want to be a step parent because you are a package deal.
Is there an xdh? Are there issues there? ie he doesn't contribute? Get it all on the table. Find a solution - even if it means ending the relationship.

Hi OP, I'd feel bad about this situation but I don't know how to help because me and DH have never had a money split, on anything, for any reason. He's always made more than me, at one point just barely, but we've never compared salaries and everything just gets paid from a joint account. Sounds like a horrible situation to be in.

My questions would be:
How did you divide spending/finances when you lived together before buying together? And what level of input did he have in DCs life then? If this has changed on moving into your shared house he may not have been prepared for it. I think he's being a dick, you either work together as a married team and don't quibble the finances and accept each others kids, or there's no reason to be married and buy a house together. You can't half arse it, thay's really unfair on the children.

@PinkCatStripes I would feel the same as in the children are not my responsibility if they weren’t mine; however, I would know never to get with someone with kids because I would feel this way, it would never work.

Your OH should not be with you if he wasn’t going to take on your kids too, you come as a package. Fair enough you pay for them but he can at least help you with anything else, collecting them etc…and never tell you they are not his responsibility.

You’ve both have made a mistake in getting married to each other.

Is it not a 50/50 split if you came to sell it?

I don’t think OP said this.