If your parents offered to pay for school fees…

[Grosshesselohe]

How do/did your adult siblings feel about this?

I’m talking about a situation where the parents are very comfortable financially and their adult children are employed in good professional jobs - but might struggle to pay school fees without some help.

In this situation, the sibling does not have school age children & does not want to be given the equivalent amount of £ to make things even.

They simply disagree with the parents helping at all and are now insinuating that they are being manipulated in some way.

AIBU to think the sibling should mind their own business?

I’m a bit 🤨 about relatives paying school fees. I know quite a few families where an elderly (vulnerable) relative has quite often been manipulated into paying them. It’s a pretty murky area in my experience, even if this isn’t the case it usually breeds resentment of some kind.

We had the opposite. My sister (no kids) openly told my parents that if we wanted to go down the private school route with my two and they wanted to help us then she wouldn't expect anything or have an issue with it (my parents have always been anxious about making things fair). My sister and I were privately educated and our grandparents paid for one child and my parents paid for the other so this was the reason for the discussion. As it is we have decided not to privately educate as I feel it is too big a commitment for our family even if we were getting help

My parents pay for my kids private school fees. My siblings do not have children and they are fully in support (they are teachers and value education, they were also horrified by the local state provision near me).
So to me, that reaction is weird but I guess people are, aren’t they

In that case take the minimum percentage.

Have the fees gone up by 25% this year?

What would you have done if they hadn't offered the money or didnt have the full funding.

The cost for 3 students for up to 7 years seems a great deal to accept if you dont need the full amount.

Maybe the sibling thinks that helping out is one thing but morally accepting the full amount is possibly a step too far.

Personally I think the fairest thing would be to gratefully accept the school fees but then parents leave more of their estate to the other child (deduct the school fees basically)

Hundreds of thousands of pounds ‘won’t be missed’?!

leaving plenty for care needs and equivalent money for your sibling?

You say their child's school fees were not as high as your DC and therefore more affordable . Have you considered that perhaps they went with the schooling option they could afford at the time .

Unless your parents have recently acquired this wealth it seems odd that your sibling was not offered the same help towards school . Who knows they may have opted for a more expensive , prestigious school too .

I take it you would be concerned too if you thought your parents were being conned out of 3x school fees . That's a lot^ of money .^
^
To put it into perspective, my parents recently offered to pay towards some therapy for my disabled child . I declined as it made me uneasy to take money from my aging parents who have worked hard all their life .

Could your parents offer to pay for/towards a first property for the other grandchild ?^

They aren't. They are treating all their grandchildren the same

Better to use it like this than end up having to use it to pay care home fees later on!

Not sure about that, it’s quite nice to have a choice in my experience

@pokebowls how are they treating their grandchildren the same when they didn't pay for private education for the OP's sibling's DC?

They offered the same to sibling when their child was young - several times.

They have offered to help us several times before, this is the first time we have seriously considered accepting.

The fees aren’t unaffordable but it’s becoming more of a struggle. Reducing the total bill by 25% would be a big help.

Must I in their 70S? Not necessarily. My eldest grandchild is 15 and I'm 52. My youngest grandchild ( so far) is 2 so he will be 20 by the time I hit 70

So your sibling is not being crazy or spiteful, they have a point and if you'd posted honestly I expect the vote would have gone very differently. How about taking some personal responsibility for your actions and addmiting at least to yourself that there is some truth in your siblings concerns.

Just out of interest, what happens if GPs pay the full fees but GC choose odd subjects they don't agree with or flunk out? Will they want to see a ROI in terms of outcomes for DC? if so that's a lot of pressure!

Now you're alluding you're only going to take 25%,, so what's the £64000 alluding too. Surely that's not 25%.There was I think one mention of 25% earlier on, but the OP and other posts talk about them paying the fees not paying part of. So which is it?

I mentioned the “$64,000 question” in one response and a few posters took that literally.

This is a phrase derived from an old American game show, where the ultimate, most important question was worth $64,000.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_$64,000_Question

I haven’t mentioned any actual sums. I have however mentioned several times that the parents had already offered to pay fees for both siblings’ children on several occasions.

I totally disagree. The parents can allocate the same amount of money to each child, but count allocation to grandchildren separately.

If I can, I absolutely will pay my grandchildren's school fees. For them. It is not the business of any of my children. I will treat each grandchild fairly, as I would my children.

They aren’t like that. The eldest is already rather eccentric in his hobbies and inclinations they are very fond of him.

Thing is, you may be in a different financial situation between grandchildren.

say you are working and can easily afford GC 1 and 2 fees, but then you become physically unwell/retire/can’t work/need care for GC 3 and 4, and can’t afford the fees.

or one of your children has a child later in life and your lump sum has gone on the older GC?

then what?

Sorry but you're drip feeding. If the offer has always been there then I don't understand the issue. Take the 25% and stop caring so much about what your sibling thinks. Unfortunately to put this unkindly, beggars can't be choosers and there is always backlash in situations like this.
Unless your financial situation changes drastically though, I'd move the one that has 7 years left to state. The Y10 one state at y12. It'll only get more expensive.

Up to the parents. One of my children has left school at 16 so I'm paying for his driving lessons and will buy him a car but other than that he will be a hell of a lot cheaper than my other child who wants to do a 5 year degree and there are other huge costs to help him get there for example tutoring etc. Both of them know my finances and what I pay for but neither of them are interested. I couldn't pay for multiple potential grandchildren's school fees but I would try and help where I could and keep it broadly equal depending on circumstances but it is never going to be exactly the same as needs are different.

I would not take on school fees unless I knew I had enough money to cover all these possibilities. So I am not wealthy enough to do it. But I would on a heartbeat if I were.

Personally I wouldn’t offer if I couldn’t do the same for all dgc, but I don’t think dgp’s can be blamed for not accounting for dgc who aren’t yet born. They have to make decisions on the now, not what may happen in the future.

My dm passed away unexpectedly. She opened savings accounts for 3 of her dgc. My dc have significantly more because they were born first and were the only dgc for 15 years. Two dgc don’t have an account as she didn’t have chance to open them before passing away. One has far less than the others as she paid in the same fixed sum each month to all of the accounts (it would have stopped at 18). If she had lived longer she would absolutely have done the same for all dgc, but she didn’t have chance. And given my siblings didn’t have children until their early forties, dm was under the impression that she likely wouldn’t have any more dgc, although she was obviously delighted when they came along. She loved spoiling her dgc, it brought her so much joy. Would it have been better for her not to give them anything just in case it may be unfair to dgc that might never materialise?

Also, this isn’t the situation in the op. Those gp’s have sufficient to fund all dgc. One parent refused help and seems to resent the one that accepted. They are perfectly within their rights to reject the support but it’s wrong to try and prevent the parents helping their other dgc.

So are you accepting a 25% contribution? Or them paying the full fees? The former would be a hell of a lot more reasonable than the later.

That was the exact result you expected when you made the casual comment though wasn't it? Has that been your pattern through your life?