My step daughter lied about having cancer

Fraud Act 2006; She made false statements, knowing they were false, and with the intention of persuading another person to give her money based on those statements. Fits the criteria for fraud very well, but it might be tricky proving it unless there’s an evidence trail like emails or WhatsApps.

@mydaughterisademon People who lie about serious illnesses with such a flippant attitude are the very people who deserve those illnesses.

Mental health? She sounds like a textbook sociopath: no moral compass, lies and manipulates, no sense of guilt. That’s not an illness, it’s who she is. I’ve worked in treating such people and they don’t get better. Stay well clear.

The Father can hardly be blamed for the daughter's behaviour, when the birth mother is just as bad.

The best case scenario is she feels so resentful at her rotten childhood that she lied to either punish him or get compensation for her upbringing.

The worst case scenario is she has inherited some kind of mental illness from her mum.

In neither scenario is reporting her for fraud going to get a positive outcome for her.

How much do you and your DH care about her? You're clearly angry about the lies and the money, but do you want to build a relationship with her?

A lot of people equate love with money. It's why so many behave so badly around possible and actual inheritance.

Is she a pure con artist, a mentally unstable woman, or just a very hurt woman looking for love and attention?

Of course, all three things could be true.

Extreme attention seeking? Did she find it difficult when her mum and dad split up? Or what happened for her to end up as your SD? Perhaps she does think her dad owes her big time for the break up of her family. Living with her GM is a bit sad where's her mother?

If she grew up in a house where lying was the norm she may not understand that it's not OK.

This is a classic attachment based disorder. Go look it up. It’s not about the money. She wants to feel that her dad loves her. The ashtray incident was her trying to get him to choose her, or believe her, over you. The money is more about validation than material need.
Wake up. This is a very sick young lady. She will continue to try to keep people from leaving her in very maladaptive ways until she gets help. I don’t see many people get help after being completely abandoned by their parents.
Rightly or wrongly, your husband is partly responsible for who she is now, he is her parent, this looks to be a trauma response. She is unwell, no one would choose to live like this. Imagine how it must be to live inside her brain and to feel so insecure, so worthless that you make up lies of this magnitude to make someone love you.
If she was self harming would you cut contact?
You can ask her to take responsibility for her actions and hold her accountable but not cut her off entirely. Would she set up a repayment plan?

No it's not obviously an attachment based disorder, and they are very rare anyway. They aren't the result of a typical broken home.

Sociopathy is partly genetic and partly environmental triggers. She sounds like she had the set up to go that way. It would be good to get a diagnosis but generally one only gets them once someone has ended up in a clinical environment for another reason, such as crime. Sociopaths don't think they need a diagnosis, or that anything is wrong with them.

Why can't they both be blamed? I'm not sure that makes sense does it?

Two parents bring dc into this world and all too often one or both kind of abnegate the role.

ETA and to be honest, the worse the mother is, the more the father should have been stepping up - and any other adults in the picture. It's not fair to blame your child because you selected a poor parent to breed with. That shouldn't get anyone off the parental responsibility hook.

I think you need to go back and read the thread.

The only way rhe SGO story can be true is if your husband was completely absent from her life and uncontactable. There would have been court hearings and assessments. He would need to have either consented, not been contactable or the order given despite his objections.

Either you are lying here or your husband has lied to you.

Which bit? Honestly, the mother, it seems, certainly had serious issues but the father has just abandoned her.

Lowest of the low and you know where she gets it from

The courts only grant a SGO if they are satisfied that every attempt has been made to contact the absent parent to make them party to proceedings, at which point all paperwork is shared with them. There is no such thing as 'signing a document to agree' an SGO, and never has been.
For this to happen without your husband's involvement, he was either uncontactable, or he refused repeated requests to get a solicitor so that he could be party to proceedings.

I don't condone what your stepdaughter did, but she's found unhealthy ways to manage in life in the absence of her parents helping her to learn healthy ones.

The birth Mother clearly.

Read the thread properly:

"He was asked to sign a document, he refused as he didn’t consent to it going through & no one involved him. He wasn’t made aware of any court dates etc, no social worker interviewed him. They all had his number, knew where he lived."

A lot of people are picking on the OP and her Partner - back off - without full details none of you are in a position to judge.

Courts don't make people special guardians without evidence of attempts to track down and involve parents, it's a legal arrangement equivalent to adoption. If a social worker hadn't made any attempts they would have been sent away with directions to call, do home visits, arrange a process server, and if there are doubts about the address, contact other family members to try and track them down, or use the DWP to trace someone.
There is no document to sign to agree to an SGO. Parents views are given to the court in the form of an assessment or a statement of their views that they provide via a solicitor, eg if they didn't wish to be assessed and support the SGO being made.
The only way that a court can order an SGO without a parents input is if they're satisfied that all reasonable attempts have been made to contact the parent and the parent has the understanding to get involved, capability to get (free) legal representation, and has chosen not to do so, over a period of time.

Much easier for an absent parent to claim that they didn't know anything about it.

Regardless of one's view of that aspect, it is just one part of a broader picture.

The part I am judging is the fact that, regardless of detail, the girl has clearly had a very difficult upbringing. The OP herself outlines this.

The fact that they are now making this last development all about the £2,000 pounds, together with a (mind-boggling) self-congratulatory attitude to reporting the girl, is the bit I judge.

The focus here for the father and the OP should be the point the girl has reached in terms of attention-seeking and issues of broken trust that have arisen. She needs help.

'The money isn't the critical aspect of this, and the fact the OP is making it so shows how little real empathy they have.

ETA you say the op is getting a hard time, but she voluntarily posted this situation. Where people see dc who have not been given a fair start in life getting a lack of real, loving support from their family, they will speak out. Yes, of course the girl was in the wrong to lie, but for anyone who cares deeply about her, surely the next thought isn't "how do I get my 2000 quid back?" but how do we unpick this.

I think the victim in this situation is still the girl who has made up these lies, as difficult to swallow as they are. Many men have raised their daughters on their own at the age of twenty. It is perfectly old enough to parent and get a flat. Instead this child was left to grow up with a grandparent and you're complaining about how she's turned out. Her place was with her dad.