Stepchild wants to see finances and money spent on his stepsiblings.

I quite agree with you.

And some are the views of someone who is in neither position with regards to children, but has strong feelings about invasions of privacy and gross bad manners....

There are clearly two schools of thought here.
Some are views of a current wife and some are views of an x wife.

Why interesting? Greedy is not an objective statement here but a subjective one. Interesting!

That's a very telling response.

OP is greedy. The boy is greedy.

But all you see is "rage at OP"

Interesting...

No one suggested she leave her children alone and people use childcare every single day of the week in a completely BAU non dramatic manner. And they have their own father.

The OP is well able to make her own demands including ask step son to leave his table at a family wedding because her 9 year wouldn’t sit down while hot food was being served.

There is plenty of bratty & entitled behaviour to go around.

Maybe she didn't want to leave her children (of an age at which they ought not to be left alone) to their own devices and didn't want to dump them on a childminder. We know her residence has been in another country; it may be that she lacks family in England on whom to foist her children.

There are quite a few people who prefer not to go to family weddings without their children, particularly if as second wife they will be made to feel sub-standard by their husband's previous family. I wouldn't want to myself, come to that, with or without my children.

Making demands and trying to police someone really is not the way to persuade them to look on one with favour; picking on members of his present family in an unpleasant way is rather more likely to incline him against the person or people doing the picking-on. And pushing someone around about how he is allowed to spend the money he has earned is objectionable in the extreme; I think the husband is saintly for not telling his bratty son in short words what to do with his demands and indeed himself. He clearly must care a lot more for the son than the son does for him: it's easy (as we read here all the time) for a man to walk away and do the minimum for a previous family, and he has not done that.

The son knows the terms of his grandfather's will; he knows the income from that "not-a-trust" is not his, only the capital. He needs to pull his neck in, apologise for his intrusive unpleasantness, and hope he has not made his father resolve to give him the money that has already been promised but not offer anything more.

Oh, and "And the way the grandad set up the financial arrangement it seems keeping an asset in the family mattered to him.": it has never been suggested that the asset (the grandfather's assets) will not remain in the family: it will be divided among his grandchildren. What the son wants is money that was not his grandfather's.

Agree it’s stupid, I struggle to see how it can be stupid & calculated at the same time. He’s 18, he doesn’t have life experience, he’s probably needs help dealing with his emotions and figuring out what is reasonable to expect and what isn’t.

The Op is well into adulthood with two children of her own, yet she decided she couldn’t go to her partners brothers wedding because her children weren’t invited. I don’t think the 18 year old is the only one at fault here.

The 18 year and his mother are no doubt very aware that not only the Op but also her kids have had a lifestyle upgrade thanks to DH which she describes as “inevitable”, and want to ensure that his biological children are protected. That’s not entirely unreasonable.

And the way the grandad set up the financial arrangement it seems keeping an asset in the family mattered to him.

They all want a piece of DH.

Such a weird way if looking at it. The poor dh. His life is not a zero sum game. He is married to OP and wishes to share his house, life, food, money with her and the people she lives with and loves. Thats as it should be. If he didn’t want to do that he wouldn’t have married her they would have kept everything separate.

There is a real weird fear of the OP’s children as sort if cuckoos in the nest pushing out or cannibalizing the dh’s first family. But what if he just loves them and doesn’t want to live with class distinctions in his house. Doesn’t want to treat his wife and her children as jumped up second class passengers who snuck into first class?

Its his money. Earned or received from the trust after his first marriage ended. Why all this rage at OP and no contempt for the first wife for not earning enough after the divorce to gratify her son’s greed?

I am unsure I would classify unjustified (and unjustifiable) demands to see his father's accounts and to be reimbursed, after his father's death, for any money spent on his father's wife and children as "lashing out". It's too calculated.

It's also stupid unless what he wants is to cause his father to stop helping him financially. Perhaps he wants to make a martyr of himself....

This. I never meant that a parent shouldn’t have a job, other kids, hobbies etc etc

But if you are going to move a new partner plus her two kids in with you while your own kids are still kids you need to proceed carefully. Because a child who wants to be with their dad may feel he now can’t relax in his dad’s home, and may resent the step children and feel that dad has created family 2.0 and feel pushed out.

And the way OP behaved about the wedding wasnt ideal. The whole, I couldn’t go to a wedding my kids aren’t. Her invite to the wedding was as a plus one to the groom’s brother. There was no obvious need for her children to be at it, but the Op seemingly can’t accept her DC not being as much as part of the family as the groom’s nephews. And then asking SS to swap seats away from his own father & aunt at his uncles’s wedding because a 9 year old who wasn't originally invited couldn’t sit down.

It’s not that surprising he’s lashing out.

Wow. I would stipulate that i am very much alive right now son. Inheritance from grandad is a given. But Inheritance from me isn't.
How about im not an atm. Why are you more concerned about how much i am worth when im dead over how much time you can spend with me whilst I am alive.
To be honest. He's jealous over the younger step kids.
There is much more going on there

I don't think the issue is a "despicable" father.

It's the people round him and their motives. The boy has become that way because he sounds a bit spoiled, and he's watching two random kids suddenly take over the place he held, ie living with his father all/most of the time.

Plus the lovely new wife whose kids have to be invited to weddings or "she won't go" then starts moving who's sitting where at the wedding because her youngest won't do as she's told and sit down. Also claiming she's supporting her kids with her ex, but actually using her new hubby to fund their school trips and multiple holidays. She and the ex as the actual parents can't afford this at all. Then the kid makes sure he rubs it in shows his beautiful manners and gratitude directly to the existing kids, at this wedding he shouldn't have been at, sitting at a table he shouldn't be on (but OP decided otherwise by moving him to suit her daughter who she can't simply parent and tell to sit down) that "your dad's paying for my ski trip."

Grabby, crass money centred. That's the kids and OP.

Oh, I did. They were utterly furious, turned out, that I didn't get a divorce until the last of them had left university; I ruined their lives, apparently, by staying around and being there for them pretty-much full time.

I note though that it is being assumed that the father both walked out on his children AND introduced a new wife and her two children into HIS CHILDREN'S home. It's entirely possible that not only did he not walk out, his ex left him, and that she kept the marital home because she retained primary care of their children. That last bit we do seem to have an inkling of from the OP saying the younger child "visits frequently"; I think that makes it certain that she and her children are not living in the younger child's main residence. For all we know to the contrary, his children never lived in the house where his new wife and her to children live, because that has been bought since the divorce.

But since the father is a divorced man he must be entirely despicable, and since the OP is a stepmother she must have been cruel to his children by his previous wife; this is Mumsnet, after all.

Jesus the drama 😂😂😂

The notion that parents ought to subsume themselves utterly in their children is both ludicrous and destructive.

And also not remotely what the poster meant.

How about look after your own kids as a bit more of a priority than someone else's, as a basic concept.

Sorry; I should have mentioned in parenthesis at the end that my post was not intended to be taken as factual any more than a claim that parents should give (each of?) their child or children their full attention should be taken too seriously.

A friend of mine made a poster for her first baby's nursery wall which read "Parents Are People Too" in handwritten blackletter. The notion that parents ought to subsume themselves utterly in their children is both ludicrous and destructive.

You know I didn’t mean that, that’s illogical.

So that they can grow up secure.

And yes me & my sibling did get my parents full attention when it came to parenting. And I intend to do the same for my kids. And yes I have more than one and I work. But I’m not moving a man & two kids not related to them into their family home.

But of course people want to think thats a load of tosh because they don’t want to put their own need for a relationship aside & commit properly to their kids.

My grandparents had 8 kids, one committed suicide, one died completely alone in his flat in London estranged from his entire family. But I’m sure lots of big families with committed parents get on very well. The key is committed which no one could have accused my grandmother of.

Parenting matters. You can’t just move two kids in with you & expect no consequences. Thats not fulfilling your duties to your children.

"If they were not middle class or above they were out at work themselves from age six or so, and saw their parents occasionally."

Please, come and talk to some of us on the Genealogy board. I would be glad to disabuse you of this notion - certainly at least as far as my own family are concerned.

Although, to be totally fair my grandparents didn't actually have 12/13 children. My father was one of seven children and my mother was one of six.

My paternal grandfather was one of seven children and my paternal grandmother one of nine.

Similarly, my maternal grandfather was one of nine children and my maternal grandmother was one seven children.

I can keep going back to earlier generations as well.

"...they were out at work themselves from age six or so, and saw their parents occasionally."

This is just so wrong that it's ludicrous. My parents and their siblings were born in the late 1930s/1940s.

My grandparents and their siblings were born between 1901 and 1928.

I can go back further if you wish.

Absolutely none of them:

"...were out at work themselves from age six or so, and saw their parents occasionally."

You're just making this up aren't you?

Perhaps you're thinking of life prior to 1880 (the Elementary Education Act 1880)?

But even prior to then, it was very common for children to be in education beyond the age of five.

For example, at the time of the 1871 Census, one of my great great grandfathers was an engine driver. Their children were at school and the oldest was then aged 12.

Or another great great grandfather who worked as an agricultural labourer and his wife (my great great grandmother) who worked as a laundress. In the 1871 census their children were at school and the eldest was then 11.

Before they were six or so, they saw their mother in the nursery for half-an-hour each morning if she were a devoted mother and they were middle-class or above. Then they were sent away to school, or spent all their time with a governess, once they had left the nursery behind them.

If they were not middle class or above they were out at work themselves from age six or so, and saw their parents occasionally.

How did that work when families has 12/13 children ?

the7Vabo
What children should have for at least 18 years is their parent’s full attention.

So that they can grow up to be spoilt brats who assume that world revolves around them? Sure. I doubt you got that, or your children got that, and I am absolutely certain that nobody in our parents' generations got that. What, no working parent giving attention to his job instead of kowtowing round the kiddies day and night?

Awkward expecting the full attention of their parents if there are two or more children in a family, though. They are not going to get it, are they: that pesky (other) kid will mean they don't get away with it.

You do write a lot of tosh.

“It happens” just isn’t good enough. Yes it happens that adults put their own needs ahead of their kids, hence the thousands of MN threads about “blended” families.

And no child should have to be grateful that their father is doing more than the bare minimum. Nor should be expected to have empathy for a child his father moved into their home. Neither, I’m sure is he unaware of the fact that the two children involved have a much nicer lifestyle because of his father.

What children should have for at least 18 years is their parent’s full attention.

Neither does claiming you have a rental property, support your own children with your work and having an "overpaying ex" as their dad.... When the truth is the actual parents can't scrape together money for just one child's single school trip and let the boys dad pay for that. Then the 12yr child old is at this boy's family wedding, not through initial invite, but because OP refused to go unless her children got invites. Her youngest played up until OP moved tables. And the 12yr old telling everyone how his new step daddy was paying for his skiing. Because he was so grateful and just needed to tell everyone that gratitude? Suuuuure...

The ex wife is chiming in about the actual parents not paying for their own kids. Cue the boy jumping on the bandwagon.

The boy sounds greedy and entitled. OP sounds precisely the same. Well suited.

Sorry, so what? He needs to learn, as we all have to, that he can't always get what he wants. He also needs to learn that making demands of people rarely endears one to them.

Except the actual son would have left the family home (assuming mum main parent) circa age 13 or even before. So OPs youngest, living in the family home from (how old she would have been it was on the thread but now I'm typing I can't go back and check) about age 4 will actually spend more time living with the boy's dad than he did.

Not that there's anything the boy can do about it. But you can see why that would grate on a child.