12 year old wants to go to wedding where sister hasn't been invited

[Stuckinthemiddlewithnoone]

Essentially we have declined an invitation to husband’s nephew’s wedding in the summer as he has not invited my 15 year old daughter (16 by the time of the wedding) from a long ago relationship. We simply declined without saying why.

Sister-in-Law asked if we were on holiday etc. so I told her the truth. She seemed very embarrassed as did mother-in-law. We were told that she would ask, well that was a month ago and we haven’t heard anything. Husband all along said he wouldn’t go anyway even if they changed their mind.

Now here is the AIBU! 12 year old wants to go. She has completely lost it saying that she has a right to make her own mind up and that elder sister isn’t related to cousin.

I have lost it back at her saying she needs to support her sister.

However, husband thinks we should let her go and we shouldn’t put her in the middle of this.

So, what would you lot do?

@Stuckinthemiddlewithnoone YANBU. Your 12 year old daughter is probably thinking that this is her opportunity to go to a wedding and that she might not get another chance. Maybe it would help to reassure her that there will be other weddings.

Also, I think this is a valuable learning opportunity for dd 12 to develop some empathy and understanding for others. And a good way to teach her that is to show her empathy and understanding for why she wants to go and why she is upset about not going, while sticking with your decision that we as a family are not going.

It is absolutely awful behaviour to ostracise your 15year old. I think that your 12 year old will come to understand that eventually. Right now her perspective is focused on how special a wedding is and she is missing out. But, there will most likely be other wedding invites for her in her future.

It’s good for character development to not always get what you want, especially when it is for a good reason.

Honestly, you're one of those horrible people I'm speaking about. Take a look at yourself and your attitude.

My (step) dad's family have always treated me as a "normal" relative. The thought of them doing otherwise, and other people thinking that's ok, makes me want to weep.

My dad has not legally adopted me for financial reasons as it actually would have made life trickier for me. But I took his name in a ceremony with a JP and to be honest it's never crossed my mind that I'm not adopted, let alone anyone else's. He's been my dad since I was 3 and we don't need anyone else's permission to call ourselves a family, let alone the "blended" nonsense. He's my dad.

To all the people who keep saying, "I can't believe anyone thinks it is ok to exclude one child" - NO ONE thinks that. 🙄 People saying the 12-year-old should be allowed to go are talking specifically about that. It is possible to hold the opinion that it is wrong to exclude one child AND it is ok for the other to still go.

Then to all the people who keep talking about blooood and "would adopted children would be treated the same way" as if it's some kind of mic drop. Nope. Adoption is a hell of a lot different to being a step-parent. It's a legal commitment, not just something that exist while the marriage exists.

Then for the comments about the OP being invited and she's not bloooood. Well, duh. She's the legal wife of their relative. Legal. Like how adoption binds a child to their parents, marriage binds the OP to her husband. That is why she is invited. But that doesn't make her family their family. Her daughter, her parents, her siblings are all her family. They are her DH's in-laws. They are nothing to the rest of his family.

Most people wouldn't draw the line at children from previous relationships because it causes awkward situations like this, but clearly the nephew doesn't care about making awkward situations. That still doesn't mean he is wrong to not consider his uncle's wife's child as his cousin.

Totally agree @HollyKnight

Not arbitrary at all. In the event of a divorce, DH and the in laws would never have a right see OP's eldest again. I'd be surprised if similar custody laws applied on the event of a disability

I don't think excluding one child is the correct thing to do.

But we do not know what other step cousins the couple have. The Groom is 30 they could easily have another 3 or 4 adult step cousins who they have zero relationship with and being adults need a plus 1. That's a whole table of non-relations.

If they must have a reason they haven't gone for no kids approach

Nobody's said that he has to consider this child his cousin, although it's bloody odd if he doesn't. He should invite her because his uncle considers her to be his daughter.

And there's absolutely no difference between this and her being legally adopted unless you're a very strange person. Imagine going down the legal route when planning a wedding list. "Hmm, are those people legally our relatives?"

Anyway, thankfully the family aren't going to the wedding and can do something else nice together. As a family. Which is what they are.

Grandparents have no legal rights to see their grandchildren anyway and if DH has parental responsibility of both his daughters he legally has the right to see the eldest too.

This is an insane thread.

In laws have no direct rights no, but they could reasonably expect to see the youngest when DH had access.

Where did you see that DH has parental responsibility for the eldest?

There is a massive difference between adopting a child and being the step-parent to a child. One gives you PR, which means you have actual rights and responsibility. It also means you are still responsible for the child even if your relationship ends. The other means either partner can walk away and that's the end of it.

People have said that the nephew and DD1 are cousins. And even more have said that the nephew and DD1 are family. But, they are not. Just declaring someone is your family, doesn't pass an obligation on to other people. If the uncle considered his MIL to be his second mum, should she be invited too? Or his SIL as a sister? He can call people family if he wants, but no one else has to.

It literally doesn't matter - at all - the reasons the other kid wasn't invited. The kids should have known nothing about it. Mum kicked off, creating drama, expected a 12 year old girl to be happy miss a family event and is now excluding the 12 year old for her own reasons.

She should have shut her trap and politely declined if she felt so strongly about not being able to dictate the wedding invites.

The 12 yo doesn’t have a parent in the 15 yo family.

No legal rights.
I said "if".

The invitation was opened in front of the younger child. Quite why you'd like to blame OP I'm unsure.

As DH considers both children his daughters, they are his daughters. It doesn't matter what anyone else thinks, least of all his horrible nephew.

12 year old will always be their granddaughter/cousin/neice, the lack of parental rights or adoption, despite your imagination to the contrary, means that 15 year old could vanish from their lives at the whims of a very dramatic OP.

I understand the hesitance to form a bond.

Nothing to do with "blood" at all, just cold hard reality that could have been avoided with the correct process.

She's 100 percent to blame for her massive overreaction and sense of entitlement. Nobody - absolutely nobody - tells a bride and groom they must invite anyone.

You have two options, polite yes or polite no.

It's probably gone too far to fix, no matter what she does one of her kids will be upset.

The OP created a drama. Now she's stoking it. It's just not a big deal and shows incredible privilege to think otherwise.

As DH considers both children his daughters, they are his daughters. It doesn't matter what anyone else thinks, least of all his horrible nephew.

This isn't the DH's wedding, though. It is the nephew's. What this horrible nephew thinks does indeed matter when it comes to inviting his family.

I'm pretty sure this OP has posted about this before. If it is her, all step-children on both sides were left out because the bride's sister's husband has children and grandchildren and she didn't want to have to invite all of them. It was not personal towards DD1.

Not being unreasonable. You are a family unit and should be invited as such. Excluding one -a child- would mean it’s a hard no thanks from me.

So you're suggesting the mother, father and one of the children all go to a family wedding leaving another child behind because she's not 'blood'?

Do you have children?

The OP did politely decline with no drama. Then a family member asked why and she told them honestly.

Also the OP has said that she has not posted before.

The OP is in no way to blame for the situation. She is protecting her family unit, one of whom has been excluded from this invitation. Her DH has also refused the invitation.

And as far as this quotation is concerned: To all the people who keep saying, "I can't believe anyone thinks it is ok to exclude one child" - NO ONE thinks that. Quite a few people are essentially saying exactly that it is okay to exclude this child.

The significant relationship in all of this is the family unit that OP, her DH and their daughters have formed. It's wrong to invite three members of a family unit and exclude one, especially when that one is a child.

My 'step' cousins are just my cousins. They'd never be cast out by other family members like. They are treated no differently than blood relatives and I don't see them any differently.

My husband was the step child, his Dad came into his life when he was 4. It's affected him terribly being treated differently. He's never felt good enough and has had depression on and off all steming back to childhood.

OP, you're doing the right thing by not going. And that means all of you.

You sound like a deeply unpleasant person if you can see nothing wrong with this.

The OP caused the drama out of a sense of aggrieved entitlement.

She didn't have to wail and gnash her teeth - ever. She should not have told the girls about her choice to be a drama llama and should simply have politely refused and told nobody except her husband her reasons.

She wanted validation and caused a drama to try to get it. So she got a drama.

Now she has to deal with a very disappointed 12 year old who has every right to want to go to her family wedding and she's made her other kid feel absolutely horrible when she never had to know and cannot possibly understand that stuff like this happens all the time with weddings.

It probably can't be resolved now tbh. I was saying before that she should allow the 12 year old to go, as is her right, and take the other kid out somewhere nice - but she's caused a rift and pitted them against each other now, so she'll be dealing with this nonsense for years to come and neither of them will ever forget. They'll be moaning about it on Mumsnet in a decade, wait and see, my sister was always the favourite, my sister still has the shits with me, my mum caused a family rift.

Utterly stupid, the whole thing. The privilege of being able to pretend that not being invited to a wedding actually matters is off the scale.

You get to invite or not invite anybody at all to your wedding and the only response is to say thanks or no thanks. You don't get to control other people, only your own reactions to the things they do.

She should have kept her gob shut, but she didn't. Such is life.

If you reread the original post, they did decline without saying why. But it all came out because family members asked them to explain their absences. It looked like it was going to be sorted out by the embarrassed MIL, but which didn’t happen, meaning that other members of the bride and groom’s party likely doubled down on not including the 15 year old.

Don’t you think the 12 year old would have also asked why her own parents weren’t going and she was being sent alone? What could the parents have said? “We thought it would be nice to have a day out as a family instead!” It sounds implausible, even to a 12 year old. They would have been forced into being truthful.

This situation was entirely created by the bride and grooms party who were being weird about the 15 year old. The poster is understandably quite upset in a similar way to how a parent feels upset when they learn their child has been cruelly excluded from a social group at school. To be excluded by family is far worse in my opinion than school friends.

It’s actually not easy for step parents to legally adopt their step children today, even if both parties wanted it because it’s very difficult to terminate the rights of biological parents, even if they are not present in the child’s life and have no contact.

The biological parent has to voluntarily cede their rights (if they can be found). Forcible termination of parental rights is only done as a last resort and it has to be shown to be in the best interests of the child.

So it’s not “a process” at all.