To Think The Ex Wife Is In The Wrong Here?

[midori1999]

DSD turned 18 a few months back. DSS is 14. DH has been paying over-the-odds maintenance since the split. DSD is not DH's birth child, but he has brought her up as his and treats her exactly the same as his DS, we both do. DSD does not know DH is not her birth father. (DH and I do nto agree with this, but that's another thread)

Anyway, DH had always assumed that maintenance for DSD would end once she was 18. It seems ex wife expected it to end when she finished full time education. Due to this discrepancy, DH and I decided we would reduce the maintenance paid to the ex wife and then give DSD an allowance, and leave the ex wife to take housekeeping from DSD if she wished.

DSD has two part time jobs and takes home approx. £75 per week from these. We agreed with DSD we'd give her £50 a month allowance. We did tell DSD upon agreeing the allowance that her Mum might decide to take the whole £50 in maintenance and that she should respect and adhere to her Mum's decision.

So, DSD recently complained to DH that her Mum wanted £75 a month from her. Tonight, the ex on the phone has told DH that DSD is 'in debt' now as she refuses to pay the maintanance and she wanted DH to agree there and then to stop giving the money to DSD and give it to ex wife each month instead. I don't think DH should do this, especially without speaking to DSD first. The ex also said that DSD had applied for an overdraft and been refused. (probably just as well)

The ex never allows DH any part in decisions made in their children's lives, but always comes to him if there is some problem. She has a very poor relationship with her daughter and I feel DSD's current behaviour (as well as some past behaviour) is a symptom of that. I also feel that DSD has few adults she can trust in her life and DH and I have worked hard to show DSD we think of her as an adult now and make her feel like she can talk to us. I think it would be wrong to now take the allowance from DSD.

Who is in BU here and what would be the best way to deal with this situation?

I agree that usually the onus should fall onto the shoulders of the biological parents I was just giving an example of when this is not the case.

I really resent the idea that I mist hate all stepmothers because I choose to disagree with one.

I wonder why no one (not including OP) wants to go against this mothers wishes and put those wishes above the rights of the now adult in telling her that her father is not her biological father. It means in the future that when this daughter finds out that everyone went along with the mothers lies - she will feel no one had her interests at heart - what a fcking mess, sorry but this poor poor girls to be lied to by everyone* and it is everyone as they are agreeing with the mother

I think quite a few posters have said that the child needs to know about her biological parentage.

Skeleton many of us are married to step parents , my dh is a fabulous step parent. Why would we all hate step parets therefore, it does not make sense.

I am the resident parent to my child but my husband is a step parent so I appreciate it is a difficult job. Admittedly as the RP I have been through the bitter divorce, pointless battles and refusual of my ex to put my dd first. I know that parents can act like twats.

I also know that my dd has a fantastic step mother so I am not likely to adopt the default position that all step mothers are evil and all mothers are saints. I have done and said things in the past that I am ashamed of.

I have just admitted that I have been a twat in the past. You only have to spend a few seconds on the AIBU board to find out that most posters are more than ready to think that mothers are being unreasonable "arseholes"

I don't think stepmothers are second class citizens, far from it in fact because they are willing to step into a ready made family and accept that they have to make all future plans bearing in mind the family that already exists with needs.

For example my DH who is a wonderful stepparent has had to accept that he will never have his own biological child as he has to support my dd who already exists. I could not be that generous in spirit and could never be a stepparent.

"On her 18th birthday her mothers bills or obligation to feed and clothe her did not reduce" - right, so then why is she charging her child rent?

OP, I'm shocked by what some people have been saying to you earlier in the thread. I think your dp sounds like a fantastic man and is doing the right thing by dsd. The payments he is making are above and beyond what he would have been paying if dsd was his and the CSA were involved. If exw is charging dsd rent then she has money coming into the household from another source which would be taken into account by the CSA.

Unfortunately, dsd is going to be devastated when she finds out the truth and your dp will get the brunt of her despair which is entirely unfair but sadly the way things go. I wish you luck with this and I hope the exw grows a backbone and tells dsd the truth and explains why she has been lied to for so long.

at some of the responses you have recieved on here OP.

You and your DH are obviously just trying to to your best for your DSD, ignore some of the rubbish that has been posted.

I actually think that the day that the daughter finds out, her anger won't be directed at the OP's DP, it'll actually be directed at the mother.

This woman is clearly not acting in her daughter's best interest, there will be immense fall out.

So often we hear about dads that are absent, don't pay anything to their own biological child. Here we have one that is paying, knowingly, for a child that is not his.

The exw has 'a bit of a cheek to be so 'entitled'. She is quite literally lucky to get anything at all.

OK so I'm going to look from another angle.

DexW is charging DSD rent, so she is gaining on top of the maintenece, what OP and her DH are doing is taking that back an giving it to DSD to use to pay her rent - the BM is not any worse off - except the £20,000 for the kitchen.

There are many fathers, including DS' who do not pay for their children and this DH is paying for a child who he has raised and see's as his own out of love and devotion and someone can argue that he should - er no its his choice.

As for not letting her visit?? She's 18 she does not need her BM permission to travel alone. And what happens when DSD wants to travel abroad and has to submit her birth certificate and parental details for a passport?? BM can not hide her true parental past from her much longer.

I am going to go against the grain here and suggest that your DH needs to talk to DSD face to face and explain he loves her, always has but he is not her BF. That he chose to support her as he loves her but doesn't want her to reject him when she finds out, and mention her BM had no intention of telling her but he felt she needed to know the truth now not by accident, for example when she has to provide proof or parentship.

OP YANBU, and you have been given a hard time here.

this actually has nothing and everything to do with step parents
it largely has to do with how children and women are treated by their fathers and partners once they have moved on especially when there is another relationship/family/wife involved

some can be very lucky and find that the new influence is fair, nurturing and respectful but a large number find a resentful, short-sighted, interfering, rancid, nightmare

often the new partner will infer that the ex no longer has to pay maintenance
i have never heard a new partner discuss the fairness of the amount paid to an exw or urge that it be raised to a more acceptable level
they will often discuss the exw's wasteful ways (as though she has any right to do so at all)
very often state what a poor mother she is

to be honest I find it incredibly sad that women can treat other women in this way
especially sad that they can treat a familial bond with such disdain
disgusting that they feel they can put themselves above the needs of a child

sometimes that is why step parents feel they get a raw deal because, like this poster, they pretend that they are saying one thing when they are very clearly thinking and acting out another
they hate it when people point out on here
that they are behaving meanly or nastily

if you want step parents to get a better rap be honest with yourselves, treat others as you would wish you and your children be treated in the same situation. Don't allow any man to shirk his responsiblities. Don't sit in bum faced judgement.

HTH
as you were all decent, lovely step parents

I agree that the mother is going to regret not telling her dd the truth.

However just because the mother is recieving maintencance from the OP husband does not make her a bitch. As I said I could see the same happening if I ever split from my DH ( which I could not see happening) that does not make me a bitch

If your DH has accepted your DSD as his daughter for all these years and paid maintenance accordingly, why is he now trying to treat her differently?

The CSA insists that natural fathers should maintain DCs until 19 if in further education then he should do likewise. The CSA are not generally known for throwing loads of cash at DCs so there must be a good reason for this rule.

Your DSD is not yet in higher education so cannot get a student loan to support her. This is why the maintenance up to 19 rule exists. She cannot keep herself on the £75 per month she gets from part time jobs. What do you want her to do, give up her education and go to work full time?

Fair enough if you cannot fund her through university, that is what student loans are for. But she cannot claim these yet.

If your DSD does not realise yet that she is not your DHs natural daughter, I can tell you that she will if your DH carries on like this.

If your DH no longer wants to treat your DSD as his daughter, perhaps he should have the decency to tell her himself.

I have managed to discuss the matter with my DH during his lunch hour.

We really don't want DSD to be in a difficult position, but we also don't want her to lose out on money she thought she would have. (even though she isn't really having it at the moment anyway). We are thinking about suggesting to ex that we give her an extra £50 a month, which will mean she is only then £25 a month worse off (and in fact STILL getting a more than decent amount of maintenance, as she is now) and we will then keep giving DSD the £50 a month we have been giving her. We will then end maintenance for DSD when she finishes her levels and put the maintenance down to the 15% the CSA suggest for one child. We will also tell her that from that point on maintenance is maintenance and whilst we will obviously help out with school trips and spending money etc when we can, that she shouldn't expect this. (in the past she has asked, been told we cannot afford it and then got the DSC to ask DH)

The only forseeable problems with this are it makes things tight for us finacially andmight also make it hard for DH to see the DSC as often as he'd like to due to ex being difficult about visiting arrangements (eg. she will not allow either child to take a one hour flight without my DH being with them) and DSS may feel left out that he isn't getting an 'allowance'. However, we are currently paying for an expensive school trip for him and will be giving him some spending money and after that we could maybe arrange to give him a nominal amount and explain we can increase this when he is 18 if still in full time edducation or college etc.

Does this seem fair and reasonable?

I agree there?s a very negative bias towards step-mothers on this forum, you?re not even completely safe on the step-parenting thread.

We?ve just stopped paying maintenance for my step daughter. The consent order stated that maintenance would be paid up til the end of secondary education (ie sixth form). The CSA operate the ?rule of 19? which means if a child does a third year in the sixth form, you would have to pay up til 19, but as most children do two years of A lvels, that doesn?t happen very often. And with this is mind, it?s very rare to hear of maintenance being paid to a child at uni, simply because you could choose to stay at uni for literally years.

My husband?s ex was very surprised about this, she was expecting we?d pay til the daughter finished uni. But evidently took legal advice, at which point she realised there was no point in persuing things.

In the event of a bio child, I think it?s right for maintenance to be paid til the end of sixth form. But when the child isn?t yours ??. Then the BM doesn?t have a leg to stand on.

I think the OP and her DH are well-meaning (especially as we?re not talking about a bio child) , but maybe as they?d started paying, they should have continued til the child finished sixth form, rather than just her 18th birthday. However, we should remember that these payments are made on purely a good will basis, so god knows why the BM is kicking up so much fuss.

I?m a bit concerned though that the child doesn?t know the truth about her parentage. But as the OP said, that?s one for another thread!

But he is treating her as his own still. He wants to use the £75pcm to give £50 to the DSD and the other £25 to see them more. I mean really if he wanted it say for ........a £20,000 kitchen I could understand the outrage.

sorry my post at 14.20 was in responce to dancing but the other posters got inbetween

I just don't understand why OP and her DH don't keep the old arrangements in place until the DSD is in higher education and can claim student loans.

That is what would be required by the CSA is she were his natural child after all.

Either he sees her as his daughter or he doesn't. If he does then he should abide by what would be legally required of a natural parent.

My DF treats my half sis entirely as his own and would never have dreamed of acting like this .

Even when she was screaming at him "you're not my real dad, you can't tell me what to do"

Perhaps I can point out, yet again, that DH HAS NOT stopped paying maintenance for DSD, he has reduced the amount.

Rannaldini I have already point out in thsi thread that I have a great relationship (as does my DH) with my own ex husband. I had hoped initially to have the same with the ex wife, as I feel my own DC have benefitted greatly from the fact my ex and I/my DH all get along and I feel it makes things so much easier for them. However, DH's ex has made it clear from day 1 she does not want to speak to me, meet me or even have us park the car outside her house when we collect the DSC if I am in it. I have still tried to see the good in her, but it is really, really hard when she allows her boyfriend to put DSS in a cold shower as a punishment he has wet the bed (DSS has nocturnal enuresis), lied about seeing a doctor for the enuresis, refused to help DSS use a bed alarm we bought after researching the problem/speaking to professionsls and when the NHS alarm was taking forever to arrive. On top of that, she allows her boyfriend to bully DSD, tell her she eats 'like a pig' is 'disgusting'. The Mother herself tells DSD that she needs to eat less so that she 'loses that tummy', has, in the past weighed DSD on a regular basis, tried to join her to agym aged 14 (the gym refused) told her to exercise more sos she loses weight, not allowed her to get her belly button pierced as 'she doesn't have the tummy for it' and when DSD was here last time she told DH and I she was trying to help more around the house so her Mum didn't thin she was a bad person.

There are a whole loads of other things that make me dislike this woman, I cannot stand her. I am honest about that and feel I have good reason to. She has never once put her DC first, she uses them as a weapon against my DH who has spent most of the time since they divorced doing everything he can not to upset his ex wife because if he has in the past, she has refused to answer the phone to allow him to speak to the DSC. However, whatever you might believe, we are trying to do things in the best interests of DSD.