Responsibility towards niece and nephew

[Emotionalstorm]

I don't know if I'm being unreasonable.

My sister in law is a qualified GP but has chosen not to work because she said that she found the job bad for her mental health. After 6 months of sick leave, she has been a stay at home mum for three years now.

Her husband has failed his medical exams so won't be able to make consultant. His income is around £65k as a trainee doctor and has stagnated. He's also not hungry and won't take locum work for extra pay.

My husband earns quite a lot (more than £1M each year) but it varies based on the profits of the business. He thinks there will be a slowdown in work in the next 12 months so his income may go down.

We are planning to send our daughter to private school in September. SIL caught wind of this and sent her husband over to ask us to help them out because the cost of living crisis is hitting them hard. They think that their kids should also be sent to private school if their cousin gets to go. They said it might cause resentment between cousins.

We can comfortably afford to send all three kids to private school this year but there's no guarantee we can fund this for all three kids up until they're 18 so we don't want to make this kind of financial commitment. I also find it a bit insulting that my SIL chose not to work as a GP or find an alternative career. Both my husband and I work (although I work only 3 days a week part time - I earn around £120k a year so much less than my husband). Why should we be subsidising their lifestyle so they get the same thing as us when they have a SAHM. My husband has also been on stress leave in the last 12 months and is very overworked. We have been discussing cutting his working days to 3 or 4 days a week but he would not feel comfortable doing this if he has to fund three kids through private school till they're 18.

When we go out together (with in laws) we always settle the whole bill and when we go on holiday we also pick up the bill.

My husband and I make financial decisions jointly so if one of us vetoes then we don't go ahead with the plan. I plan to veto and he is not keen to fund his nephew and niece's school fees either. We help them out here and there. We buy them everything on their wishlist (toys books etc) so it's not like we do not help out.

However, this may of course put my husband in a difficult position with his brother and we are worried they may restrict our access to their children. I am very close to my niece and she misses me terribly when I am too busy to visit her. She sends me voice messages asking me to come.

I feel a bit guilty because I do love her. Should I just suck it up and take on this financial responsibility.

Please note that although my husband earns more than me, I have more assets than him so we have equal say over what we do with our money.

@Emotionalstorm oh and, it's not just 14 years of school fees for them, there's ALL the extras too, uniforms, school trips...etc. it's non-stop. Think of all the extras involved in sending a child to state school, then multiply it by many. Then if you turn down school trips, the rich kids will tease them etc. It's all a class thing at private school. I am friends with several people who have sent their children to private and it makes me glad we didn't to be honest. That's not me saying you shouldn't, it's just that had we sent ours to private, we'd have been scraping by financially as it was.

Don't worry I will tell them no. When we go out to eat as a family they never reach for the bill. It gets a bit uncomfortable so me and my partner end up settling it and they never offer to pay us back. Once my partner's mum told my BIL that he should take this particular meal since it was at a fish and chip shop and is fairly cheap and he pretended not to hear. My partner couldn't bear it so picked up the bill and paid it.

@Emotionalstorm then there's Katie & her brother's uni fees, they want to go to Cambridge by the way. Then they need a first car because your child got one for their 18th birthday and there will be resentment between cousins if you don't buy Katie and her brother a car too. Katie wants a pony too, so there's the coat of that plus livery fees. Then there's Katie's wedding, you need to pay for that too because you have more money than they do. They need to catch themselves on, cheeky fuckers.

Once my partner's mum told my BIL that he should take this particular meal since it was at a fish and chip shop and is fairly cheap and he pretended not to hear. My partner couldn't bear it so picked up the bill and paid it

Is your partner’s mum one of the family members who also thinks your DH should pay for their private schooling?

And Katie and her brother both need houses at university as they can’t live with other people. And deposits on houses which you’ll probably be helping your on child with. Can you stump up for school fees for their kids too-as it’s only fair if you’re paying for your own grandchildren?! It will never stop.

I wouldn’t pick up another bill for them, they sound vile. Your BiL ignoring his own mother suggesting he get a dinner bill shows that he’s as bad as his wife.

I voted YABU purely because you describe your husband's £1m+ income as "quite a lot" when surely you know that's a fuck load of money.

We don't have the same lifestyle as BIL and SIL, because they have better paying jobs and different priorities to us.

Both families have made different educational choices for our children. It never occurred to me that there'd be resentment between the cousins!

Isn't that just life?

She tends to just want to avoid conflict and is normally walking around egg shells around my SIL. As a MIL she is lovely. When I am ill she comes over with tupperware of food and wants to look after all of us. She looks after SIL's kids for her 5 days a week. She wanted to do a day for us too but SIL said no so my mum helps out. She generally just does what the SIL wants. She knows I'm not going to give her a hard time so she doesn't prioritize me. I also don't expect anything from her.

OP they wouldn't even be grateful. They just expect.

Imagine expecting a handout to the tune of around £500K, and feel entitled to it.

Fuck them.

Ok it's a lot. It's just how I talk. I put quite or a bit in front of everything. 😂

If I was offered this kind of support from family for my child (I would never ask for it!), I would be looking for a trust fund which covered the fees from the start of the education to the end. As I would not want to put anyone under the stress of having to maintain this on an ongoing basis.

So looking at my local private school which is probably mid ranking outside of London. It's £6000 a term 11+ and £4000 a term 4-11. That would be fees only £126000 plus £84000 total £200,000. Clearly your local figures will be different.

Do you have £300,000 (because inflation etc). you can put aside for your child's eduction first. Then can you comfortably afford to do the same for both of your niblings without detriment to your family? Only then would I consider it. If you do not have that £900,000 to establish these trusts then you cannot afford it without adding pressure to your household- at the likely expense of your husbands health.

I'd say you need to looknat the whole level of support your family is offering your BILs tbh.

Yes I will go with my husband to put a stop to this thus weekend at the family BBQ. When we help I just wish they would understand it's something nice we are doing voluntarily. I feel like I owe SIL money sometimes when I don't.

So if your MiL is lovely and you get on well, who are you referring to here…

But my husband's family think I'm being stingy

Who thinks you are being stingy, @Emotionalstorm ? What are they saying to you?

BIL, SIL, FIL, SIL's parents.

They say things like, look who's the scary controlling iron lady because my husband earns more than 10x what I earn but I stop him from spending money on them. They ignore the fact that my family home in Wimbledon was gifted by my dad and I have rental properties that I inherited from my granny. I don't like feeling like some kind of gold digger freeloading off my husband when I brought in most of our wealth and it would take him decades to save for the equivalent.

Frankly your BIL and SIL sound awful so I wouldn’t give a shit what they think. I’m guessing you don’t see her parents much anyway-you’re not related to them, and they are probably just like her.

What’s your relationship with FIL like?

They sound nasty. I wouldn't be able to spend any much time with these people.

They say things like, look who's the scary controlling iron lady

My husband would be livid if his family said anything like that about me and they wouldn’t be saying it twice.

Has he actually got your back here?

I don’t get why either of you want to have anything to do with any of them except his mum.

Can't you just say 'DH I'd planning to reduce his hours to do 3 days pw as work is getting very busy and stressful. So apologies but we can't make that kind of financial commitment right now.' And leave it at that.

65k a year is a massive wage! My husband and I jointly earn half of this and wouldn't dream of asking others to fund us. If they want their children in private school they will need to get better jobs and fund it. I can't believe the CF of it tbh

They’ve really done a job on you. As the saying goes, never let a kind act go unpunished. If you did find the kids’ private school I suspect there’ll be some kind of drama down the line ( they’ll be unhappy at the school/ fall in with the wrong crowd/ the money might get tighter and you guys can no longer afford it, with much resentment on their part etc). But the whole idea is outrageous. I can only think that cultural expectations around supporting extended family have moulded your husband into feeling he should do it, while really he resents the very one sided nature of the relationship where money is concerned.

I agree with the person who said maybe they would fund it if for example the kids were already at the private school and just had a year or two to go and the family had fallen on hard times.

But I agree it would be madness to agree to putting someone else's 2 kids through private school from age 4 to 18. As your DH said, if you can't afford to continue and have to take them out part way through, that would be worse than not sending them at all.

I hope you husband is already speaking to a therapist to support him with his mental health difficulties, but if he isn’t he needs professional help with assertiveness and setting of boundaries.

I will do this. Thank you. And re the other comments. My DH does have my back but I think they probably still say stuff like that behind my back. My FH thinks my DH should be man of the house but my DH is very respectful and we act as a team.

No shortage of work for gps. Why the frig should your husband sacrifice his health and mental well being to fund his lazy arse brother in law and his wife when she has chosen not to work and could easily afford to privately esucate her kids if she went back to work part time. Sod that they are cheeky and entitled. Just no.