Bit of a weird one - GMIL giving money to DC but wanting to control it

[NCforFamilyKerfuffle]

Genuinely not sure if we're being unreasonable so wanted to get a consensus.

DH's grandmother has a lot of money. She's mostly very generous with it in terms of gifts and things but there's always a palaver about it all or strings attached in some ways. Some parts of the family jump through hoops and put up with things (eg 'I'll take you on a holiday of a lifetime... if I can come with you and dictate everything we do at every given point' or 'I'll pay for blinds to be fitted in your house, but I'm going to tell you which is the best blind company in the area and be there to oversee it when they come to quote and then give you strong advice on what colour blind is the right one'). DH tends to disengage as much as possible when she gets especially overbearing and I figure it's his circus and monkeys and take my lead from him. It means sometimes we accept his GM's generosity (and are polite and grateful and make a fuss about it / her) but when the strings are too much he tends to step back.

GMIL has just said she'd like to give our DC £500 each into a savings account. This is awesome, particularly because they don't have accounts of their own yet - my (significantly poorer) family have given them money over the years but I've just chucked it in a disused savings account of mine to keep it separate and never got round to sorting the admin. But GMIL wants their birth certificates so she can go to a bank of her choosing and set up the bank accounts herself, naming herself as the trustee of the account and keeping the books/cards/whatever it is kids get nowadays so she can add money whenever she wants at her discretion.

It just feels a bit weird but I don't know if we're being unreasonable saying that.

We're happy to set the kids up bank accounts and give her the details (even the books if that's what she wants although it feels a bit odd) but it feels weird having her named trustee, not least because she's in her seventies - if something happens to her before the kids are of age how would the accounts be administered?

MIL (who is pretty much grandmother-whisperer on these occasions) can't explain why GMIL feels such a need to have control of the book and be trustee of the account but says:

a) it's not her being controlling
b) it's not her distrusting us with the money
c) it's not her reserving the right to somehow claim it back (although frankly this isn't a concern - GMIL is honourable in her way, just likes to be controlling... bearing in mind during a random family discussion about lottery wins she told the assembled throng if she won tens of millions she wouldn't give people cash but would buy everyone anything they wanted, houses, cars, etc, as long as they came to her for the money so she could oversee it)

MIL also (and this was a massive tactical error) told us when we were discussing it with her that if we went and opened our own accounts for the children GMIL would pay in the £500 but 'probably wouldn't ever give us any more' which frankly put both DH and I's noses out of joint and left DH saying he wouldn't be bribed in that way by his family.

Should we just suck it up and give her the birth certificates and let her get on with it, secure in the knowledge that it makes her happy, the kids will end up with some money and, frankly, if for whatever reason they don't they'd never miss it anyway? I veer from feeling it's not a hill worth dying on to feeling uncomfortable and a bit insulted without really being able to pin down why.

So. Are we being unreasonable to want to be trustees to our kids' bank accounts?

I think you need to either agree to the gifts and to her being controlling or decline the gifts.

Agreeing to the gifts and complaining about her being controlling seems a bit daft. You know the score. Is the hassle worth the money to you??

I'd like to think I'd refuse to accept anything from her.

We have a very very overbearing Aunt (Hyacinth Bucket type) who would like to spend a lot of money on us but we always refuse as she makes such a song and dance about it. We have other relatives who accept gifts from her and then complain about her behaviour. I think that is disingenuous of them.

I can’t see the problem with this. As you admit that when you’ve been given money for your DC from your side of the family you’ve casually put it in your own savings account as you’ve not got round to the admin, I’m guessing the GMIL wants to ensure her cash goes into an account in their names only.

Btw - savings for your children in your name will presumably be subject to income tax? Another reason for you to get them accounts in their own names or stick in a junior isa for them.

With any luck, she’ll carry on paying in and hopefully by the time your children are old enough to appreciate the funds - uni fees, new car, house deposit, there might be a nice chunk.

I’ve got a savings account for my niece, plus a share account. I control both but they’re in her name only. My son has a junior isa, plus a pension fund. Neither of which I plan to tell him about until he’s much older!

Mil opened accounts for our kids and it never occurred to me to think that is controlling buy they have their own accounts too.

No. Unless you want to spend years whinging on about how the children can't spend 'their' money without her consent then tell her, politely, to shove it. It's simply a means of control. Don't be a doormat. Some things aren't worth having.

I wouldn’t be fussed by this. Let her have her own savings accounts for the kids and you open separate ones for them.
My Nan had her own savings accounts for me and my siblings, non issue if you ask me.

It wouldn’t bother me either. It’s nice of her to do it.

Given how many parents seem to think children’s savings are there’s and use them I can see why this would make sense.

I thought it was quite normal for grandparents to open savings accounts for their grandchildren. They're generally for long term saving so it's not like the grandparent in another thread who didn't allow the kids to spend their Christmas money without approval.

The important thing is to not actually see the money as accessible in the short term Just as something that will come to them at a much later date.
My mum had an insurance based savings account for my girls, which automatically matured when they were 18 and was paid to them without anyone's involvement.

Thanks so much everyone for posting on this. It's actually a bit of MN at its best - really helped us think through where we were at with it.

We've decided there are two separate issues. Firstly that we haven't sorted the kids with bank accounts yet (although to be fair they're 2 and 4 and there's around £200 in my old savings account for them so it's not been something they've especially missed at this point) and then GMIL's wish for a bank account for her to put money 'from her' into.

We're going to set them up with bank accounts and start paying £20 a month in them for now - not much admittedly, but it's a start and will help when they need/want specific things as they get bigger. Over time (read: when we're not paying cripplng nursery fees) we'd like to save more for them but for now that's where we are.

Meanwhile, I'm going to give GMIL the certified copy short form birth certificates and let her go off to do her own thing - assuming I'll hear very quickly if she struggles to open it with that ID. A poster early in the thread pointed out if she was putting £20 notes in a shoe box under her bed for the kids we wouldn't have any input in it or feel like we needed to oversee it, and that really chimed with us. We won't tell the kids about the (and if she does when they're older we will very much counsel not to count chickens etc) but it seems counter-intuitive to do something that could be to our DC's detriment in the long term and that is an attempt at GMIL to do a nice thing.

Great decision

Don't be hard on yourself now about putting money into the DC's accounts once you open them. It's hard when paying double nursery fees! We put money in ad-hoc but also have relatives who will transfer in money instead of buying gifts