to think grandparents do not have to treat their step grandchildren exactly the same way as their blood grandchildren?

[betnet]

Firstly, I am not advocating for step children to be treated badly in anyway.

But I think it is fine if grandparents do not give gifts or gifts to the same value to the stepchildren as to their grandchildren. If there was a divorce the stepchildren would generally not be seen anymore anyway.

People generally would not expect grandparents to give their non related stepchildren an inheritance. Those who advocate for stepchildren to be treated exactly equally, do you think they should inherit from non related grandparents?

I am talking about stepchildren in this instance where ones DD or DS has married a partner who has children from an ex partner.

Same for family holidays. Often grandparents will pay for a family holiday and want their grandchildren to join them. They should not have to pay for the step grandchildren also.

Stepchildren can end up with four sets of grandparents.

When someone decides to marry a person who already has a child with someone else that is their choice. They do not get to dictate to people in their life that they must accept this child as family because of their choices.

Being polite when seeing the child(ren) is expected but people shouldn’t be shamed or guilted if they decide they don’t want to treat this new child as a relative because the long and short of it is that they’re not. They’re just a new random person that has been plopped into their life due to someone else’s decision.

Unpopular opinion I know.

Why should you. Those children already have their own blood grandparents and family who can pay for their school trips if needed.

I imagine there are plenty of stepfathers financially supporting their stepchildren, Maybe even more than stepmothers doing the same.

what does your DD think about this, @betnet?

It’s not cruel.
My dsis and I were privately educated because the girls school gave good bursaries, my db’s went to the local grammar and nobody thought it was unfair.
The dsil is just jealous so he needs to up his earning potential.

It's not clear. Is it
a) All six children were going to private school, all funded by the new marriage.
b) All six were going to private school, the step 4 DC funded by their other side of the family/bio relations and the other 2 by their parents.
c) All six were going to private school, the step children funded by their bio family, the other two by you.
d) Only your bio GC were going to private school?

Then someone lost their job, either your SIL or the step children's bio family and you have taken on funding/are continuing to fund your bio GC?

Even if all six were at private school there’s still zero chance in hell I’d stop paying for my own child or grandchild to make it fair for someone else’s.

I see you’ve mentioned inheritance a lot @betnet

In my opinion it’s best to leave money to your children and not the grandchildren and then they can decide who gets what percentage.

By dividing it up between Grandchildren you’re discounting any further children that may not have been born yet.

If it’s all divided between your children it stops there being an issues about which children got what and leaves the decisions up to them.

My DD had step children. They were included in everything we did. We didnt treat them any differently to our other grandchildren. They were in our lives for 6 years. When DD and her husband split up we were not allowed to see them again. I wish we hadnt got so close to them.

It is surely possible to treat step-grandchildren fairly and kindly, without treating them equally.

Not if you state to be split equally between all legal and biological grandchildren that gives room for new additional grand babies.

edit. By future I mean between will writing and death.

I read this and was thinking that it would be a different relationship and then suddenly realised that this does actually relate to my family.
I was considering it from a child being brought in because of a relationship. I have the same situation with a step-grandad, although I've never considered him as such.
I think it very much depends on the circumstances and relationship between the family. In my case my grandad has been married to my grandmother for over 40 years, before I was born. He's always been part of my life and he's my grandad and he treats us all the same.
My grandad (grans ex-husband) remarried when I was a teen and I have never considered her as my grandmother. He passed away and we don't see her at all.
The circumstances made a big difference to the relationship.

@betnet you’re a good grandparent paying your dgc school fees. Your dsc have their own gp’s.
As long as you treat your step dgc kindly and don’t leave them out of small treats when they’re all together with your dgc then I think that’s fine.
A while back there was an op whose dp’s wouldn’t let her dsc in their garden, that is another level of cruel and nasty.

There are no absolutes with this. When I met my DH I had a 2 year old DD from a previous marriage. From the beginning my MIL was lovely to my daughter. Tbh she had given up on having grandchildren at that point and was delighted to have a little child in her life. When DH and I had another DD a few years later she treated both my girls exactly the same and I loved her for that.
By contrast my first DD's real grandmother chose to never meet her because she didn't like me, even though she was her only grandchild . The contrast in capacity to love between the Step GM and biological GM couldn't have been more stark and taught my DD that good people who care for you and love you are not necessarily related by blood.

If this is a situation you are personally facing OP, I suppose you can only do as you feel is right but if the step grandchild is a small child and being singled out for different treatment you will undoubtedly be judged for this by your famil. At the end of the day though it's your life and your decision to make.

Im not expecting step FIL to leave anything to dh or dc, he's incredibly kind with them (buys them books related to their hobbies when he's out and about) and LOVES ds as they share an interest. But inheritence/school fees no, he has his own GC (who he is less close with i think), and that's fine with me. mil will leave them her money/not her step GC.

The day to day kindnesses matter more as they require more thought and effort,

Favouring grandchild os whether they are excluded from family events (completely wrong), not acknowledging birthdays / events (also wrong)

However it appears to be 2 different questions and 2 different scenarios …
Schools Fees - if you can only afford 2 then that’s the answer, it’s not about favouring it’s cost
Inheritance - that’s your decision/ discretion to make

Your SOL is a cheeky fucker 🤣 he's trying his luck and if he's always like this might not be in your life much longer. Maybe he needs a better job.....

Honestly I think it varies depending on each individual family.

Depends on age of stepchildren when they met the step-grandparents, I think. My dc were in their mid-teens when I met my boyfriend. His parents are lovely and gift my dc small things at Christmas. Had my relationship with OH started when dc were little, I guess the bond would be much closer. I wouldn't expect anything gift-wise or financial from my boyfriends parents, though; I don't expect that from anyone.

I would assume there to be no one-size-fits-all approach here.

My brother married a woman with two young children. They then went on to have more children together. They then divorced.

My parents, sister and I have always just treated my brother's stepchildren exactly the same as we do his biological children. We carried on seeing them after the divorce. My mum refers to all of them as her grandchildren and my sister and I call them our niece and nephew - it wouldn't actually occur to us to explain to other people that they weren't biologically related to us, unless someone asked.

However, I'm sure things might have been different if they'd been in their mid-teens or something when we first met them. I guess it's just different for every family.

Each family is different and will behave differently. There are no rules. Personally I'd be led by my own child. So if they treated their step child as their own, then so would I. I can't imagine a situation where I'd make a point of giving less to child of my family simply because we didn't share blood and genes. Inheritance is entirely up to the person making their will. No one has a right to someone else's money regardless of relationship imo so the grandparent leaves what they want to who they want. And if they want to bequeath to step children or not, the cats home, or spend it all while they're alive, it's no one's business but theirs. Again, speaking personally I'd bequeath to my own DC and it would be their decision who to bequeath to in their turn.

No I wouldn't expect step-children to be treated equally because they are not blood relatives. If a grandparent had two children, one of who had one child and the other had no children but had four step-children, the money should all go to the blood relative. Why they hell should their share be cut from 100% to 20% because of some random outsiders? Then there's the argument that the step-children might inherit from four sets of grandparents, that's not fair because the blood relative doesn't benefit from this setup.

I think generally step-children aren't to expect equal treatment anyway. There are so many "evil step-mother" threads or "my step-child is badly behaved but won't listen to me because I'm not their real mother" threads.

Mixing families can't always be helped, but it's usually a recipe for trouble unless all parties can set their expectations out in advance, which insn't really possible especially with young children.

Then your SIL is an entitled dickhead! How bloody dare he think YOU should find the four children he and his ex-wife can’t fund?
Or the two sets of actual grandparents his children have.

Treating children the same in terms of welcoming them, buying Christmas presents etc is just reasonable kindness I’d show anyone - an exchange student staying with us got the same Easter eggs and treats as our children, DD’s friend on holiday got bought all the same souvenirs and treats our children did. In a group setting you don’t play favourites.

Actually funding their lives the same as your own GC? Hell, no. They gave their own families for that.

Any issues raised by those discrepancies are for the parents who chose to blend families to resolve.

My DBro’s SC will not inherit from our parents. My parents have discussed that with us both. They want their assets to benefit their grandchildren.

@betnet all you keep saying is “will they inherit from you?” to those with step grandchildren. Why does that matter to you?? God there’s more to everyone’s lives than if step grandchildren will inherit from them! Forget what everyone else is doing, do what is right for you. You sound very miserable and I feel sorry for your step grandchildren.

I would hope that anyone with step grandchildren included them in things like Christmas presents, invites for dinner etc. I would never expect expensive presents from grandparents for my dc, so it wouldn't make much different for additional kids to be included.

I wouldn't expect step grandchildren to be included in inheritance, or school fees support. For you funding an additional 4 children could be £100k a year!

I had a wonderful step grandmother. She treated us all like her own, but didn't have biological grandchildren. There was also no money for inheritance, so no moral dilemma there!