In-laws want their deposit back

[ArnosLeach]

I married 5 years ago and I have a three and a half year old and a nearly nine year old from a short lived relationship.

Full background as I am anticipating the questions I would want answering.

The nine year old sees their father once a month for a weekend. I assume that my ‘ex’ owns his house. He had a vasectomy before our child was born. We do not communicate on any level other than if arrangements need to change. He pays a set amount every month but every month will buy shoes/clothes etc.

We moved into the house my husband had bought fifteen years before. It has doubled in value. Following a miscarriage last year we are trying to conceive again and we are looking to move house. We mentioned this to the in-laws a fortnight ago. I did not know that they had provided DH with deposit.
They have now asked for twice the deposit back comprising the original sum and the proportion of what that deposit has added to the value.

They feel that my elder child will benefit from their largesse. We are both completely gutted by this. A bolt out of the blue.

I think they are worried about your dh losing our finically if you were to divorce.

Arse holes. I'd not give them a penny and have very little to do with them from now on. How hurtful to all of you.

Have you been to the solicitors to make this legally binding or just a verbal agreement? I bought a house with a relative on my mortgage to enable me to purchase. Now I have cleared down the mortgage I asked for them to take their name off as agreed they would and they now want a sum paid to them before they do this. I feel I need to as I don’t want to make repairs on the house until it’s legally all mine. I’ve paid all the repayments all these years! It was a verbally agreed sum, but more recently I’ve got them to sign a bit of paper to say they will remove make off deeds once I’ve paid the agreed some. I hope this is enough in a court of law should the crap hit the fan.!

I totally agree that the parents are hugely foolish in this - I assume the gift wasnt intended as no-strings attached (eg did they have a say in the house? etc), and as unfair and unreasonable as they sound, they clearly do see it as "their" money still. I assume they feel they should /do have influence over adult childrens lives due to finances, help, etc.

Im not Team Parent on this, but I do get the desire to keep the money that had been theirs in their own offsprings hands, not in a divorced spouses hands.

How mean! Unbelievable.

When we gave our adult children, deposits for their first houses, we had to sign a form to say it was a gift to them. Even if we hadn’t I would never ask for it back. We were only to happy to be able to help them.

Get DH to write a will excluding your eldest. That should be enough to placate them.
Wait for them to die and then rewrite the will splitting everything as it should be split.
If you've been married 5 years then presumably they've known your eldest since they were only 3 or 4. Arseholes.

If you feel you must return the money, do so but not at the terms they stated. I would return it with a reasonable amount of interest paid for the "loan". Sounds like a serious discussion is needed between both parties.

Have the siblings since moved from their first homes, and, if so, did they repay their deposits plus the increase in value of their homes?! If not, do they realise that they will have to?!?! You should tell them - I doubt they'd go along with it.

Yeah...you see, I'd give them £80K when Hell froze over AND never speak to them again.

It's impossible to know without you explaining what the original agreement was, OP. For all we know, it was that they would invest in helping their children buy homes on the assumption that, if the house was sold, they would get the deposit plus proportion of increase back. If that was what they agreed, that seems fine but I guess you wouldn't be shocked by it.

Same. They really do not sound like nice people.

which i’d wager we won’t get clarity on

It's your dh call but I would either refuse to pay it back as it was a gift. Or I would return the 80k. But I wouldn't want a relationship with them after this.

How you and your dh manage wills/beneficiaries is none of their business.

Oh, I wouldn’t want to but hell would freeze over before they held anything over my head. I would also ensure they have no access to their bio grandchildren because where I go they go. They do not need these toxic people in their lives.

No they are together

100% agree!! The mean spirited attitude is appalling but to try and profit from a gift is pole volting into cheeky fucker territory!

Also your in laws sound like lovely people 😊

I had to do this when I moved recently and had some help (nothing like this big amount though) from parents, but I didn’t have to do it in 2007 when I bought my first place and had a gift from a grandparent, so is it possible the money laundering/gift documents required only became compulsory after the parents gave him the gift?

Older child stands to benefit from their dad, so could you have it written in to your will that your half of things is split between older child and any younger children, and DH’s is just split between ‘his’ child or children if another comes along?

When my inlaws gave us a deposit, they had to fill in a form for the mortgage company saying that it was a gift.

Presumably, your dh parents had to do this for him?

In which case, they haven’t got a cats chance in hell. As for wanting double back, unless there was a legal agreement in place for this, they are batshit.

That would basically be a loan with APR, No. they cannot gift they're child money and then ask for double back when it suits them. Shame on them!

That’s shocking. What a pair of arse holes!!!

Something posters are not noticing is the the op eldest son, has a bio father, in theory this is the father this stepchild should inherit from. That is the law in many other countries unless the child got adopted by the op husband.

The eldest would also inherit from its mother. OP parents in law are obviously annoyed about this.

80k It is too small a fraction of the total for IL to worry about. That’s why I think they are really annoyed about op getting half the value of the house but they can only swing this 80 k around in their anger.

It is the grandparents money. Clearly the husband is an ethical person and respects his parents by trying to give them the money back because he's made choices that they don't approve of.

It's their money and the husband benefitted for some time from it. He's a grown up and should be able to stand on his own two feet if he wants to make lifestyle choices his mummy and daddy don't like. Bunch of freeloaders stating the grandparents are being petty.

As parents you support your children, but if they make choices you dislike it doesn't mean you need to financially support them.

What they have done has fucked your relationship anyway so 'I'd say piss off it was a gift' and then go no contact.

It is not their money. They gave it away as a gift.