...to want a say in how much we give step children for uni?

[GinnyMcGinFace]

My husband and I have been together for ten years and have two sons. He also has two children from his previous marriage. His ex wife clearly hired a highwayman for a divorce lawyer because we have paid, religiously, £1200 a month for the children, plus half of uniforms, school trips etc. for years. She also got £250k in cash from the divorce and he got to keep the dog. Anyway, whilst the divorce agreement appears ridiculous to me, it was signed, sealed and delivered before I was on the scene so I've never really said much about it. However, the agreement is clear that it covers only until the children are 18-step daughter is now 20 and step son is 18. Both want to go to uni this year and have asked us-well, their dad actually-for financial support. He said of course we will support them, but it's a conversation we need to have altogether. His ex wife has lost her shit and says it's nothing to do with me and they aren't my children so I shouldn't be involved in what she called 'negotatiations'. I feel-as does my husband to be fair to him-that as this now sits outside of their maintenance agreement, the request is coming from our joint income and therefore I should be involved in making the decision about how much we can afford. My husband has made the point that whatever we agree for the older children we have to be able to offer the younger ones and my step daughter (I suspect repeating her mother) has said that her and her 'full' brother-her words-should be the priority.

I've always got on well with my step children and they adore their little brothers. They have become typical teenagers in that they only get in touch with their dad nowadays when they want something but he is not always that great at calling/texting them either.

Is it my business? Am I just an evil step mother bitch??

And OP my DHs spent a LOT of maintainence on cars and holidays .... But on a different thread I got totally flamed for saying that it's good to see you haven't !

Apparently it was none of my business or DHs what she did with the maintainence - despite the fact that she could have saved it for them for uni costs but spent it on cars and holidays instead . People talk about resentment but it is very difficult in these situations to never feel resentment - particularly when you have your own children to consider.

So when the step mother and father's money is involved they don't "have" to pay anything and the DCs shouldn't expect it, but the mother was irresponsible by taking her children on holidays and not saving it for uni ? Double standards much

Sorry OP I'm not getting at you at all, just raising an eyebrow generally

Nomud if I am entirely honest, I do agree to an extent that it isn't our business what the maintenance was spent on when she was receiving it and the children do have some wonderful memories, but we had always assumed that she would also be saving to support to children. I think that the reason that she didn't want me involved is because she knew that I would have no problem revealing the truth but that my husband would not have done it, and I think she was right. He is glad that I did what I did re: the divorce agreement but he did say last night that he couldn't have done it because it hurt them so badly. The fact that we had to do that is something I definitely do resent.

The poster who remarked that sad people spend-I agree. I have said a lot that she may have lovely cars and clothes etc. but she will be very, very lonely when her nest is empty.

I do feel a bit sorry for her in some ways, but perhaps I over analyse. My husband has kept photographs of her and him in a box for the kids (his ex wife burned all hers) in case they ever wanted them. It was important to him that they know that although the relationship between him and their mum is not great now, that the were the product of a once happy marriage. If you look at them, it is quite clear that she got caught up in keeping up with the joneses (very easy to feel pressure to do this when you live on military bases amongst other officers' wives I always think-hence the fact we don't live in quarters now as I don't give a toss!!)-everything designer, children in Gucci baby grows with Dior bottles (really!!). I remarked on this to my husband because he can't blame her for that-they were his children too-but he just looked at me blankly-he didn't recognise the labels, he just paid her credit card bill! Anyway, it was a lifestyle difficult to replicate I suppose. And she certainly won't be able to sustain it now. I just hope she finds something else other than 'things' to make her happy....

pissed I do get the impression that you have deliberately missed the whole point of this situation. Are you, in fact, my husband's ex wife?! As I have said, she can spend her money on what she likes and she gave some lovely memories to the children. That's great. However, she is the one who has then intimated to the children that she is unable to afford to support them (downsizing, can't afford to live etc.) and then sent them in our direction. I feel like j have written it a million times, but we have always expected to pay for their university. We can afford to help pay for it. It will be a pleasure!! No, they shouldn't expect it, it's not theirs. However, what IS fair, is that we expect their mother to provide the same as we provide. That's OUR expectation not the expectation of the children.

I really feel for your step dcs. - must have been a shock to have been lied to all,these years skewing their moral compasses.

Well pizza if you think about it. There isn't much wrong with their moral compasses. If their understanding of the situation had been accurate, then their outraged reaction would have been perfectly understandable. Equally now they are contrite towards us and outraged with their mother, whilst still not wanting to hurt her feelings unnecessarily. Good kids. Untidy little beggars but good kids

I have a career/profession but I struggle for promotion because I can't do what others do after hours. I don't have much of a pension and likely never will. It is very clear that there will come a time when I will have no choice but to tell our children to look to their father to support them because I will need to downsize etc.. It has fuck all to do with labels or holidays or poor priorities, just the inevitable result of divorce and there not being enough to go round. I'm not sure how my ex could change that? it is very convenient to judge when you're not the one trying to make it all add up.,

Um, I think we need to be careful about projecting our own situations onto others. The OP has already said that the children's mother is quite well paid.

Erm....yes...I am also quite well paid. I also received a substantial divorce settlement. But at some point I will have to downsize and I won't be supporting my children through uni. There is more than one side to a story.

Yes, I genuinely do sympathise with your situation and if you read the thread I have a huge amount of respect for a lot of what my husband's ex wife has done: she has a job that is very well paid (circa £60k) but VERY hard work and she has raised two, usually very lovely children. However, she earns a lot of money and was awarded a quarter of a million pounds in cash as part of the divorce settlement not including maintenance. I have not pleaded our own poverty in this thread but don't think my husband's ex wife's position mirrors yours, which sounds upsetting for you.

Surely the mum should have been saving/planning for her children's uni education.

She absolutely cannot expect you to have no input of opinion when she clearly expect your earnings to contribute to her children's education.

cannot you are quite right in that divorce does affect career in ways that are not always apparent and has a lasting legacy. She may look like she earns well, but with the freedom of a househusband, might she have been able to earn more? That was perhaps what was taken into account with the settlement.

She was perhaps determined that the children didn't suffer during their childhood, hence the holidays. There can be surprising unseen costs too. It's easy to spend money on children's activities - over time that does add up. Did they have expensive hobbies? Children of divorced parents are almost always worse off, the consequence of supporting two houses with the same salary, or 1.5 times the salary. And you do try to let you children do stuff as you don't want to be the one saying no.

Well she was never going to have a househusband, was she? He was in the army.

And £1200 a month is an extremely generous maintenance payment. Pretty sure some families have less than that for their whole monthly income.

And yes their father does earn £60,000 (I think) that is a very good salary but doesn't make him filthy rich. I think the OP said the SDC's mum earns similar.

She also received £250,000 cash in her divorce settlement. She could have bought a house outright with that (not in London I suppose).

Pissedoff - did I state in my posts that my husbands ex wife took her children on those holidays that she had lots of when we paid maintainence - no she did not .
She did take her youngest child by her new partner though.

So yes I stand by what I said earlier.

From what I can gather, the OP and her husband paid £1,200 a month and half of uniform and school trips. They probably also paid everything when the kids were with them.

Move this on to the £250,000 that would have been a hell of a deposit on a London house 10 or more years ago when this divorce seems to have come through. You certainly could have gained a mortgage with a massively significant deposit on somewhere nice back then.

Basically, the mum here has had a good deal, whilst earning a good wage. She can't claim poverty when they go to uni, the amount they can get on a loan is based on her income, and the OP and her family are willing to contribute, not fund it.

More than reasonable, more than fair. The saving point is also very fair the other mother should have taken into consideration that her children might want to go to university, as the OP is doing.

And like you OP my DH was in the military he then seperated from his wife , left her everything , the house etc .....

She also gets paid very well .

Unlike you I do not feel sorry for her. We all take responsibility for our own behaviour. I have and do feel sorry for my DSC , but their mother never.

If I'm honest you do sound a little bit toooo soft - be careful with that because it is so easy for it to flip to the other side where your own children feel , as they enter teenage years , very differently about the step sibling situation because they evaluate it with a new fresh pair of teenage eyes.

Yeah...the usual mn shower of shite judging single mums and telling us what we should be doing like we're small children who need help managing to get out of bed in the morning...I wonder...if this were a couple saying they needed to downsize post-children, would anyone even think to question what they had been doing with their money all these years?

And seriously OP, who on earth do you think you are showing children divorce documentation and literally asking children to judge their mother on a situation they will never be able to fully understand? Their mother may well have handled the situation badly but how has that helped?

The settlement takes into account the pension too. That's why often the amounts seem huge.

If you listen to Martin Lewis he would advise giving help you only really need to - but actually let them take out the loans and then help them with a deposit for a house later in life. I had my daughter early in life she's 3 years into a 4 year degree and has had little help financially as we were only able to buy our first house 3 years ago so our mortgage is extortionate. She has a summer/winter/Easter job at home and is so amazingly independent (currently in Holland on year abroad) we give her the odd few hundred pounds here and there but that's it really. Not dissimilar to your situation with your parents I suppose.

The teenagers will not understand the impact of marriage and babies on a woman's career - if she were to not be the main earner. Nor will they understand the lack of pension provision as they will see £250k as a large amount. But it's all relative.

My DH also works away thus pre babies we were on the same income, now he earns a significant amount more. I could not continue in a similar vein, and there were no nurseries in the area twenty years ago, thus limiting options. I now earn a decent amount, that other people bring families up on, but There is still a sacrifice gap if you like.

She still should pay, however.

cannot give over eh? You're in danger of justifying the crap that gets hurled at single mothers.

Her dc are adults, they have been lied to their entire lives, and they've lost 10 years of proper decent relationship with their dad because of the poison they have been fed.

Op and her h have paid the large sums AND they have made provision for not 2 but 4 children.

It's expected that each parent would contribute. She has said she won't and wants to leave it to the "awful man" she was married to. She's out and out lied about payments.

These kids need the truth. It really is the only way.

They've had a horrible shock which was created by their mother. It was always going to happen one day and yes, there was the money for their mother to have considered part supporting her dc in uni somehow.

She chose to spend it on other things.

Sorry for not clarifying a couple of points-I was in bed!

I'm not sure where London came from-my husband's ex wife lives in Lincolnshire; £250k-which she received years ago when house prices were even lower-is more than enough to go mortgage free there, even now.

To the poster who said we probably never said no to anything, you're pretty much right. I do recall my husband coming back from a tour of Afghan to a list of half the cost of 'sundries' she had bought while he was away and there were items like £4 for a gum shield and money for socks. I think we did round that bill down a touch but that's the only time I remember doing it and hat was more me than my husband because I was cross that he could he away for four months and she would ensure he got that before he had even got to bed!

And yes. I know I'm soft. I just don't see the need for the nastiness really. However, when something really matters to me, I'm not soft at all and I'm afraid I will hold firm on only paying an amount that we can sustain for our own children-right from the beginning this has been about being fair for all the children.

And I do appreciate the people giving the other side of the story and saying by husband's ex wife may be a bit shut of cash now for whatever reason. That may be so (she clearly didn't cut her cloth in my opinion) but she has lied about my husband to her children and there is no need and no excuse for that.

The mother earns £60k and up til this year cleared £1200 a month and had a quarter of a million in cash.

Had she put a chunk in a savings account provision wouldn't even touch her day to day.

I have nothing, but a chunk of cash my ex owes me, if that comes back I'll help my ds, if not we'll do what we can to sort things out.