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.

On the other hand I know families that did this and it caused huge resentment ... even decades later. The privately educated were all boys and the state educated were all girls.

They are absolutely trying to take advantage. They have chosen not to further their careers, which they are entitled to do. However, their children are their responsibility, so will suffer the consequences as a result of this. You absolutely do not have to pay for their children’s education because of choices they’ve made. That’s their issue to deal with. Stand your ground because if you don’t do it now, where does it stop? Paying for college expenses, weddings?

I genuinely can't see any issue, here. In the normal world, people don't say 'I need you to pay for my DC to go to private school, cos I can't afford it' to others.

In the normal world people don't worry that refusing to even consider something so ludicrous might be 'unfair' or 'unreasonable'.

Just say No.

as well as choosing not to work, they also decided to have three children.
Why do they expect you to fund their lifestyle choices?
Lazy entitled CFs

Totally entitled behaviour. You are paying your own way. They are not. You need to take pressure off your husband not increase it. Ridiculous.

I would only consider if I had millions in assets. Do you? All fantasy figures for me!

OP you are not being at all unreasonable . If you’re husband and his brother are close though perhaps it is time for some honesty about how he is feeling and why it might not be a good idea to commit to extra school fees rather than just say no . If your SIL is SAHM due to her own struggles there is something very wrong if they do not understand.

My own children are currently in a mix of private and state schools and I don’t see any issues between them !

Your SIL could very easily fund private school by doing GP work, even as a locum. Their choice and responsibility, not yours.

Wow. Very similar set up in our family (DH and I lawyers, BIL and SIL civil servants). Never in a million bazillion years would BIL and SIL or PIL suggest that we pay for private school [missing the point - where about 40% of the kids’ parents are doctors] so that the cousins had similar experiences. No resentment at all. And I grew up going to a state school while all my cousins went private - aside from thinking they had a nicer blazer no resentment here years down the line.

You should feel under no obligation at all to do this.

You should also acknowledge that by any reasonable standards, you are very, very wealthy indeed. Your husband does not earn 'quite a lot'. He earns shedloads. It would probably benefit him to cut down his hours and spend time with his family, nobody needs that kind of money.

Cheeky Fuckers. Seriously. This is an outrageous ask and I don't care how much you earn.

Your finances are NONE OF THEIR BUSINESS and their children's education is NOT your REPONSIBILITY.
If they want to send their kids private, then they need to get off their own arses and pay for it.

I know of lots of families where one set of cousins went private and the others didn't. The only time it caused resentment was when the parents of one went on about it all the time.

Bailing out is one thing. Agreeing to a 14 year financial commitment of putting 2 kids (not your own!) through private schooling is quite another.

Your sil can work, she is choosing not to. Your bil is earning twice the national average as it is, he can't afford to put his dc through private school anyway, as pp have said maybe if they only had a few years left but not for the full 14 years of education. They are being massive CFs

Siblings are an entirely different matter to cousins!

Resentment goes two ways.

My parents were immigrants who sent money back to ‘family’. Paid for land, tuition fees, medical expenses, rent, clothes, furniture, wedding dowries, gold!

We were not particularly rich (all siblings went to state schools, student loans for Uni, always worked since graduating).

Cousins got to go to private schools, study abroad, live rent free. Yet, because we lived abroad there was a lot of sniping how we were the spoilt ones. We saw how hard our parents worked (and faced barriers / racism etc) while they just expected money to be wired to them.

We are all grown and we still have aunties trying to persuade us to give money to our able-bodies cousins who don’t work.

We have relatives fighting with my elderly mum over HER property!

2 things I have learned:

1. people who ask to borrow money consistently are shameless

2. the asking never stops, they are never satisfied and the moment you stop they will cuss you out

And me and my siblings are very resentful not only over the greedy relatives, but our parents who made sacrifices over us to keep others happy.

Lol.

dc’s grandparents put their DD’s kids through private school.

the did not offer to do the same for their DS’s kids. They went state.

kids are all fine. The ds and dd did have a massive bust up but that was because she’s a CF and a horrible person 😂

If your husband drops down dead tomorrow with a heart attack from all the stress, will your BiL and SiL be there to pick up the pieces?

Their DS is your DH… yes?

A quick Google brings this up - The average cost per child is now £20,480 a year, or £6,827 a term for day pupils, and £34,790 a year or £11,597 a term for boarders.

So your in-laws are expecting you to cough up (wow) £573440 (for day pupils, it's a whopping £974k for boarders) over the next 14 years to put their 2 kids through private school - at CURRENT prices, never mind the annual costs that are crippling lots of parents of dc in private education.

Jesus H Christ.

Is there a cultural issue at play here as you seem to be required to help out your husband's family?

Please do not do this, this will be the first of many things they ask for!

they'll be next in line to be presented with the begging bowl by these 2 freeloaders if you dont cough up
that's why

I was responding to a pp who said that it created no issues for siblings

of course they wont, altruism isnt a freeloader personality trait, they'll rush off in search of the next victim

If you’re south of Birmingham I’d say those figures are on the low side. And to expect increases of 8% plus a year…

Don't do it OP. Mad idea. Vast majority of kids are perfectly fine at the local school!