The house is rented. We love it. lovely area, lovely neighbours, nice walks near by, lovely pub within walking distance.
We've only been here for about 6 months but as soon as we moved in we instantly felt settled. We're so happy here.
DH's exW has just split up with her BF, he's temporarily moved in with his Mum whilst she finds somewhere to live. She moved the children to live with him (about an hour away) so they moved school etc. They'd only been together 5 minutes so tbh this split was always pretty inevitable (she doesn't have a great track record!).
So now she's trying to find somewhere to live and is struggling. Her old employer has given her a job so she wants to come back to this area. Which is great as far as the 2 DC are concerned, it will mean contact with DH will be much easier and they can start midweek contact again. Excellent.
So on Sunday she picked the kids up from our house and saw that one of the houses on our Avenue is up to let. She said ''oooo wouldn't that be lovely if the children could live across the road from their Dad?'' Although I don't fancy the ex being so close, I do agree it would be wonderful for the children.
Anyway, DH said ''it would but it's really overpriced, it's £200pcm more than this one, it's got an extension but I don't think it's worth the extra money''.
It was left at that.
Then on Tuesday DH got an email asking if he would let her and the children move in to our house and we move in to the one down the road.
We thought she was having a laugh. She wasn't.
DH has said that there are plenty of other houses in the area and we will do anything we can to help with the move, but to ask us to move house is just totally unreasonable.
Her arguments are: DSS (9) has behavioural problems and she thinks living near DH will really help him. She can't afford the bigger, more expensive house but we can (we can't). She wants the DC to go to the school which we live on the door step of, it is an excellent school and she thinks it will suit DSS better because it's small. However, she doesn't have a chance of getting in there as it's so over subscribed, even people who live a few streets away can't get in. When we moved I didn't even bother trying to get my DS in to the school as I know there's no chance.
She's turned really nasty now saying thinks like ''you're a selfish prick, you only think about her and her kids'' (my kids are also HIS kids). And ''you have a responsibility to provide all your children with the same standard of living''. DH's response to that was ''they can come and live with us then''.
But she does this kind of thing, once she's decided that she wants something she won't give in until she gets it and she actually convinces herself that she's being totally reasonable and anybody who dares to disagree with her is a bastard.
She did something similar years ago. When they first split up she moved in to a council house (her choice, she didn't want the marital home). After a couple of years she decided she needed the marital home and asked DH to swap houses. He didn't want her house but we were at a point in our relationship where we were considering moving in together so he moved in to my house and let her have the marital home. Since then the house has been sold.
But I can see in her eyes, she got what she wanted previously, so she should be able to do it again.
And even if we did agree to her having this house, there's no guarantee that the landlord would agree to it.
I do suspect that part of the reason for doing this is because she'll struggle getting somewhere in her name. She has bad credit. DH got declined for credit a few months ago and when we checked his credit report there was something on there from her, some debts had been taken over by a debt management company and it was showing on his credit file because they were still financially linked on there. That's all been rectified now.
There's no chance that we can risk her living in a house that we're financially liable for. We had all that when she was living in the marital home, she sometimes wouldn't pay her half of the mortgage so DH would have to pay it all.
Sorry this has turned out to be a bit of an essay, didn't want to drip feed.
Please tell me I'm not being unreasonable.
DH pays more than minimum child maintenance, she is in a very well paid job and earns about the same as DH and I do jointly. Yes DH wants to make sure his DC are in a decent house and we genuinely will help her with a deposit and the actual house move if she needs it. But this is just too much isn't it?