DSS resents his did for the situation his mum is in.

[nevermatchtoesandfingers]

DSS is 19, at uni he is disrespectful to DH and treats him like an ATM. DH and DSS’s mum split after a relatively short relationship when he was 1. No marriage, no assets. He met me shortly after, married relatively quickly bought a house and we worked hard to support DSS whilst accumulating wealth for ourselves. DH and I have supported him and his mum, paid for him to be privately educated and he is now at a top tier uni. His mum struggles, can’t seem to keep a steady job and has moved from rental to rental. Now at 19, DSS needs to be on the rental agreement, she has had to move far away from his uni due to costs. DSS works to contribute to his mum. He is SO angry at his dad for leaving his mum, he thinks he should have stayed and given him a stable upbringing rather than him feeling responsible for his mum. I think he IBU?

I kind of get it- if one family member is on their own and isn’t in the position the other is in due to the other having a better job and a partner too, a teen won’t be able to get their head around that. It must be difficult for him watching his mum struggle and now everything falls to him. It’s not fair he blames his dad but it is understandable

He was probably told that had your H not left that they would have been living the life you and DH share.

If I was your husband I’d sit down with his son and have a vulnerable open discussion that didn’t diss his mum.
Son my biggest regret is that you didn’t grow up in a two parent household, your mum and I tried so hard but we couldn’t make each other happy and our relationship was so toxic at the end that I left.
I have tried so hard to make it up to you but I know it fell short of what you deserved which was a happy childhood with a happy mum and dad at home and I’m sorry I couldn’t give you that. I love you son and I hope you can forgive me.

That is your H being completely truthful and vulnerable at the same time without pointing any blame. Simple from the heart

I feel like there is unanswered questions. Plenty of single parents end up on low wages with jobs rather than careers, even plenty of partnered women in relationships often find their careers are sidelined for their partners job.

It looks like from the outside, dad threw money at the problem, saw him every other weekend, and some extra holidays. It’s doesn’t appear that dad picked him up and dropped him to school 50 percent of the time. These are the issues that stop women from being able to focus on their career. It was also 19 years ago, when wrap around care was just starting to be come more available, and there wasn’t the support for childcare in line with what there is now. These are the years when the disparities start to appear.
Was she the one that also took off time when the boy was poorly? Because when it comes to promotions people are aware of patterns.

So whist your dh may have had sleep overs, and taken him to football training in the evening, what was his involvement like with the day to day commitments?

Being a single parent is hard, and expensive, everyday.

@Namenamchange
There were plenty of occasions where he was with us FT and were more often than not available for pick up and drop off, when she wasn’t. We’ve cancelled trips away / events when DSS needed us to be around at short notice. The school he went to offered wrap around care from primary.
Agree that often that is the road block but that wasn’t the case in this instance.

Plenty of married women receive only financial support from their husbands.
This boy may actually have had a better life and more fatherly input than many that grew up in two parent families.

Agreed but I think his DS would rightly question him trying hard to make it work when he left after a year. Unless his mum was DV of course which OP hasn’t said, he didn’t try for very long did he? And he shacked up with someone new almost instantly.

Lots of young people think in general that the disparities in society between rich and poor are unfair - largely behind recent Green Party wins. They're not wrong. Yes, occasionally someone not being financially comfortable and stable is down to being a lazy fecker and not working hard enough, in other cases it's really beyond their control and down to working unpaid in other roles such as parent, elderly care, disabled care etc. Due to illness or disability, due to health problems (mental or physical).

And in my experience the people who work the hardest and are treated the worst by both employers and society are the working classes - those on min wage which isn't sufficient these days to pay the rent let alone anything else. Hence the need for UC top ups.

Working class jobs are far less stable in general than better paid middle class jobs- employers get rid for the flimsiest of reasons and there's no recourse because what working class person can afford an employment tribunal?

When it's your Mum and Dad that difference must be even more stark.

I mean it sounds as if you and your DH are very financially well off if you could afford private school. What would it cost to remove this burden of caring from his son? You'd be doing it for him, not for his Mum, to free up his life. That's probably what he feels upset about - you could help him with the obligations he feels he must honor, you choose not to as you don't like his Mum.

Why is it on the o/p to “honour” the child’s obligations, and not his parents.

his mum should be doing more to support herself. She’s an adult, she should not be expecting her son to shoulder her burdens.

she needs a steady job and a rental she can afford. Dss does not need to be on the rental contract, he’s 19. It could mean he can’t get a home of his own when he leaves uni as he will flag as already being tied into his mums rental.

dss’s dad could help launch him to independence- help with deposit/guarantor etc when he leaves uni. He does not need to pay mums bills- she should be doing that.

I disagree.

Any 'burden' is being placed by his mother. There is a safety net, not a luxurious one, not one completely comfortable. But a safety net that meets basic needs.

DSS doesn't need to provide for his mother. Of course, it is nice if your child takes the trouble to treat you occasionally. But they shouldn't feel that they are responsible for your basic day to day needs. And especially not for providing luxuries.

Nor does an ex of many years need to.provide. Of course they should provide - in time, emotion and money - for their child. From what the OP has said, this is the case (we can.only go.on the info we have). But if they have stepped up as a parent they don't have to endlessly provide for the other adult.

I agree with the posters who say that DSS is lashing out at his father because he doesn't feel able to face his mother's failings. Failings that weren't her choice, if she struggles with her mental health. But she needs to take responsibility for herself.

Yes, if she is on Universal Credit and he is over 18, the benefits system will expect him to be paying for his food and share of bills. He is expected to do this out of his student loans, or from working part time.
His mother will not be receiving any benefit for him, she will only get the amount for a single adult (that is if she is claiming at all).

Nope. She is a single (divorced) woman now, with no dependent children. So she has to support herself. It is no-one else's job to do this, apart from the state which should pay whatever benefits are due.
Her past history of work and childcaring is irrelevant to her financial status now.

No, it is nothing to do wither her job status or financial status. Any landlord will want all adults living in a property to be on the tenancy agreement.
Even if he has another tenancy agreement for term-time, the mother's home will be considered his main residence.

My exH is a feckless drug addict. He expects our sons to care for him, clean up his squalid place, and pay for food etc. none of them think I should be doing it, we have been divorced 15 years which is way longer than we were married. I don’t think they should do it either, but they feel guilt tripped into it. Just support your SS with his feelings, he’ll work it out in due course.

Not if someone has benefited from that and their proxy is posting about being disadvantaged

OP, many posters here are focusing on the history, how much childcare your DH did, etc., which is not really relevant to the issues at hand. There is no benefit to raking over the past on this thread.

The main issue is that DSS is over 18 and (I assume?) living with his mum as the main residence when not at uni. This means that as an adult he has a duty to pay for his keep at that address, it being his main residence.
So the money he gives his mum is correctly due (as long as it is a reasonable amount for food and share of bills and she is not financially abusing him).

The money you give him is a separate thing - you are correctly supporting him through uni, to minimise the loans he would otherwise have to take out.

It is a mistake to think of the money you give him being passed to his mum as being you indirectly having to support her. Wherever he lives, he has to pay his way, so if not his mum he would be paying a different landlord for lodgings.

I think it would be best all round if you helped him move out into his own accommodation on a permanent year-round basis, by giving him a deposit and being guarantors, for several reasons:

• It would clarify things financially, so that no-one has to be paying his mum, not DSS or DH.
• As she lives further away, it would minimise his commute to uni, and/or stop the need for term-time-only student accommodation.
• It would help him detach from her emotionally and give him space to grow into adulthood without guilt over not supporting her enough. This last point is important, as his mental health will have suffered.

He may also benefit from counselling, which DH should be glad to pay for.

Most uni addresses once out of halls, are year round.

if I were Dss and a parent was expecting me to pay my own rent and bills, plus a share of her rent and bills for at least 4 months of the year, I’d stop coming home.

i’d be suggesting he spends his uni holidays at o/p’s and visits his mum. Then she will need to stand on her own two feet.

he isn’t paying rent at uni only when he’s there, then paying rent at his mums instead when he’s there. She’s effectively asking him to maintain 2 homes. As a 19 year old student.

he shouldn’t be on the lease. He can switch his main residence to his uni flat/house, and visit his mum when he wants to.

I should have got so much more but quite frankly I wasnt going to sit about thinking about that. Shirker ex went abroad to avoid maintenance so I decided Id make my own luck.
At any rate you know your child is going to leave home some day and then what are you going to live on? A career is essential. Im disgusted that she expects a 19 year old to work to support her.

We don't actually know that she does expect this though. We're taking the word of the father's wife. Traditionally not the most reliable character witness for their husband's ex.

It sounds as if DSS is upset about the disparity between his Mum's living conditions and his Dad's. We don't know that she's bothered about this, we don't know that she expects her son to contribute. She's obviously taken the step of moving further away from him in order to have cheaper rent, so she's obviously not just expecting him to support her and this is also not the action of a smothering parent inserting themselves into an adult child's life. Having taken that step presumably it wouldn't be a total surprise if her son decides he no longer wishes his main residence to be so far away from Uni.

@StandingDeskDisco's suggestion is actually really excellent. Give DSS the chance to entirely separate from his mother by providing independent year round accommodation for him. This will then give her the chance to downsize again to a more affordable rent (not needing to keep a room for her son) if she wishes to. They can then visit each other as much as they want to and their relationship can be free of any sense of obligation.

If DSS doesn't accept this offer, then it's likely because he also gets something (support as well as a sense of obligation?) out of the status quo. But at least he's been given the option, which means he's not trapped in the situation and it's a free choice.

Lots of kids grow up in broken homes. Lots of parents end up hating each other. My brother and I did. We lived in a council house with a narcissist mother. My father left, remarried and became a millionaire with houses in London , apartments on golf courses and houses in the country in Portugal, so he could have friends visit but have them stay in apartments rather than in his own big house, which had another cottage in the grounds and a pool. He gave a London house to his Step daughter, a house further north to his step son and nothing to us, his bio kids. My brother got his Rolex when he died. I was willed a painting , painted by my great uncle, but it was chucked out by the wife first, so I got nothing. Her kids got the life…we got an occasional appointment to see him for lunch. He paid almost nothing to my mother and resented every penny.

My mother is now worth over a million. She worked and saved…at her kids expense. She doesn’t share either 🤣 She will probably give it to her church..one of those happy clappy modern groups. She was no mother. I hated her from age 6 .
He was never a parent, would not have dreamed of giving us a private education, though he did make me go to the Grammar in the next county rather than the local comprehensive when I passed the 11+. 2 buses away. A nuisance…I’d have rather gone to the local school. He was a stranger at home and more so after he left.

Anyway, my abusive mother stood in the way of everything I wanted to do, but I don’t blame him for leaving, or for leaving us. The DSS is 19, an adult and should understand that millions of kids have broken homes and imperfect lives.

Parents staying together for the children is the most stupid thing I’ve ever heard.
The fighting, the anger, resentment, atmosphere is destructive and unpleasant. It invades life, even when you’re outside because you know you have to go back to them. I was a kid in primary school when I told my younger brother our parents should divorce. If there had been drugs and alcohol involved, too , well, I already envied the kids in the care home and wanted to live with them.
The DSS had a better life than many. He has at least been given the education to make his own wealth and with druggies / alcoholics, they don’t get better if propped up. They need to hit rock bottom to accept they have a problem. He should get on with his life. He owes her nothing as she let him down.