School fees and step families

[Tiger2113]

Looking for views.

Grandmother in family pays grandchildren’s school fees. Three grandchildren in total.

Son has just got engaged and will become step father to two secondary school age children. Custody of these children is shared 50-50 between parents. Two sets of grandparents actively involved.

Fiancée has just commented to her future MIL that it is a pity they didn’t get angaged before the start of the school term as the children could have enrolled in their new private school at the start of year instead of the middle.

Grandmother is looking forward to getting to know these two teens but had not considered paying school fees for them. She is now concerned there will be a rift in the family if she doesn’t. She could just about afford it, but it would impact on her lifestyle. Her son could not afford private school fees, and she knows his fiancée assumes she will pay as she commented it was a great perk of being in the family,

I am a good friend of grandmother and My view is she should explain to her son this situation. This lady doesn’t know these teens well at all, and paying thousands of pounds for their schooling seems too much. But neither of have experience with step families. Are we being too hard nosed?

N o, she shouldn't pay.

Trialsmum three existing grandchildren. School fees being paid for all three. Father of oldest will soon become step father to two children. So three grandchildren and two step grandchildren.

The fiancé is a cheeky and grabby. The grandmother shouldn’t have to pay for private school for her son’s stepchildren.

it was a great perk of being in the family

Good grief - it's relationship, not a meal ticket.

If your son wants his stepchildren to attend private school, it's up to him to negotiate this with his new wife and her ex-husband, and to find the money for the fees himself. It's beyond belief that he feels he has the right to spend his mother's money like that. Reassure her that her son is being grossly unreasonable. She can't control his inflated expectations, but his expectations aren't her responsibility.

Sorry, her son - not yours.

I hope that his assets are protected in the event of a split! She sounds dreadful. Absolutely not on to expect your friend to pay for children she barely knows, and to take it for granted is horribly cheeky!

@Trialsmum
"So hang on a minute, the grandma is potential going to be paying for 5 grandchildren but only actually has one?! 😵"

No, she has three grandchildren. Clearly three says in the OP, and that one grandchild is adopted further down the thread. So, if you are implying that the adopted grandchild is not a "real" grandchild, who should be treated equally with the biological grandchildren, then she has two grandchildren, not one.

HTH.

I think your friend needs to sit down with her son as soon as possible and tell him quite clearly that she will not be paying for the stepchildren's school fees. And this conversation needs to take place asap, before the mother starts making promises to the children, taking them on open days, even signing them up to start.

Step children should absolutely be part of the family and treated equally but I think it's not as black and white outside the immediate family. For example do ste grandparents usually split inheritance equally between step and bio grandkids? My guess is probably not? As it's expected they will inherent from their other grandparents. Step grandparents may give more if they develop a good relationship with them.

I think it's cheeky and I wouldn't expect her to do it. Aren't secondary schools more expensive than prep? I'm assuming she doesn't pay for the eldest who is now in grammar and the expectation is that the younger ones will also to there.

I'd say no on the basis that she simply can't afford it. And is not paying for secondary education for any of them. If she wants to make a gesture she can always offer to pay for some private tuition for specific exams or to get into grammar or something? Do the kids even want to go?

It sounds awful - a perk of the family!!

“Ha ha ha ha. Yeah. No way. Sorry. Your chikdren have their own GPs.”

Sad that he would fleece his DGM for 000's pounds for private school fees just to get one over his sister or impress a partner of 12 short months.i hope your friend doesn't indulge this shit.

Also advise her to check her will so actual grandchildren (adopted or otherwise) benefit, not randoms she has known a year.

I don’t think she would differentiate between the five children at Christmas, birthdays etc. She is lovely and very fair minded. She still treats her ex DIL like a daughter. It’s this very expensive issue which has caused the surprise.

It’s not that she would be in fancnial hardship if she paid their fees, she just would have to cut back on a lot of the luxuries which she had been enjoying in her retirement. I suppose we are both living the life of Merry Widows and I don’t think I should have to holiday alone for the sake of two children she barely knows (that last part was in jest, but you catch my drift!).

I don’t think she should claim budget wouldn’t allow it as if she would pay for future hypothetical grandchildren this will cause potential resentment in the future.
She needs to explain she will not be paying for the step children to go private, that if they want that they need to pay themselves. Step families can be awkward when people have different expectations but she needs to be clear now and not feel guilty either, it’s a LOT of money they’re expecting. CF indeed.

And as far as I'm concerned this is exactly why nobody should be sending any children to private school unless they can afford it themselves! Parents are beholden to grandma, and poor grandma is being made to feel guilty about something she really should not be involved with at all.

I think grandma should talk to son and say 'look, I have a limited pot so I can either pay full fees for 3 grandchildren or a contribution towards fees for 5'. Once he realises he will have to cough up something for 4 sets of fees he will probably back pedal furiously. And gold-digging new fiancee may discover she isn't so keen on marrying him after all - no great loss.

And apologies I have used the wrong terminology which may have confused. The secondary school is fee paying. I don’t have children mad didn’t grow up in the UK, so am very out of date!

Grandmother should be very blunt about the difference in relationship to her and the long-term nature of schooling. Son will, presumably, not be adopting these children (if he were, I think it would be a very different situation), if he and fiancee split up there will no longer be any relationship between children and grandmother, they aren't married yet and in any case haven't been together for all that long, they both already have one broken marriage (so, statistically, are more likely to get divorced again). Schooling needs to be consistent, pulling children out of one school in order to send them to another and then have the possibility they will have to leave that new school part way through because mum and step-dad split is a bit precarious and not something to go into lightly.

On the other hand - if the children are at terrible schools and private education would make a huge difference, I think it will be very difficult to develop a well adjusted, happy extended family if the other children are all given extra legs up with private education. So there may be good reasons for the Grandmother to consider paying. This is her son's new family, he is presumably committed to trying to develop strong bonds with them and hopefully between their step- siblings and cousins.

There may be a happy medium that everyone would be OK with - private tutoring/summer courses/etc.- that could provide some of the private school advantages without pulling them out of their schooling or providing a huge commitment from the Grandmother to children she does not know and may easily lose contact.

I think Auntiestella and bewareofdragons have it right.
I can completely understand treating the children as similarly as possible. But it's not the grandmother's responsibility to do this.
And if the step children have a 50:50 relationship with their dad then surely he would want some input?
I don't think she has to pay anything and actually, I don't think she should be worried about future children's provision because that's at least 4 years away. And a lot can happen in that time.
I think the difficulty here is that the son already seems to see it as his money/inheritance. (By this I mean the comment about his sister getting twice as much.) So he perhaps has informed his fiancee that it's 'his' money.
How sad for your friend.

Think DIL is being hugely presumptuous and cheeky. The grandmother should not be expected to pay for the stepchildrens school fees. She sounds lovely in that she is feeling guilty/anxious about it and she absolutely should not have that pressure put on her.

I do understand the awkwardness - I have a step daughter, who is very much part of the family, gets Xmas/birthday presents etc. from my extended family but the biological children in the family do get more overall. However it has never caused problems as my DSD has an entire other extended family who give presents etc. so she is in no way missing out. The stepchildren here presumably have other sets of grandparents/extended family - it's not the brand new step-grandmothers responsibility to provide very expensive private school fees.

Hadn’t thought about the quality of their existing education - and I don’t think my friend knows much about their schooling.

The son hasn’t been particularly proactive about mainintig his relationship with his daughter. My friend sees a lot of the girl, but this is arranged through her ex DIL (and increasingly the girl herself now she is a little older). My foremds house is very close to the schools in question so the older girl can walk there after school. I don’t think the son sees the girl regularly. The girlfriend only met the daughter bap

Grandmother should explain that she has invested for many years to plan for the existing grandchildren school fees.

Agree Fiancee is being unreasonable.

Sorry because they were all at friends house for a Christmas party.

This is so silly I’d suspect someone is being joshed. Maybe the DIL was joking. It seems the most plausible explanation.

I can't believe anyone would say that unless the son has told his fiance that that would be the case. Even so there are a few reasons why your friend should not pay their fees.

These children's own grandparents may become resentful of the new MIL (even if they would like their grandchildren to go to private school)

If they are settled in secondary school it may not be that beneficial to take them out at this stage.

You mentioned Grammar school. Your friend may be seeing her grandchildren through private school to 11+ so that they can get into Grammar school. There is a difference in cost between prep and senior
so it could be a far more expensive proposition.

Your friend might be concerned that her son will have more children with his fiance and would want to pay their fees. However if they are yet to have children it would be at least 5 years before it would be an issue and presumably the other children would have left school by then.

It sounds like it is her son she needs to have a chat with.

I wouldn't be surprised if no school fees meant no wedding, the fiancee sounds like a cheeky money grabbing fucker