AIBU to be upset he has cut off my eldest daughter?

[GeorgeClarkefan]

I initiated a separation from my husband, the father of my youngest daughter two months ago. He has been the only father figure in my eldest daughter’s life and they had a good relationship.

He has engaged a solicitor who has now sent me a letter re: shared residency of our joint child and our house which I can stay in until our joint child goes to university (or is 19) no surprises.

I have to acknowledge however, that my eldest (other than a quarter of my assets) has no claims on any marital assets and there is also a line which says that in the event of my husband’s death my stepdaughter will not assert her rights until younger daughter goes to university (or is 19).

None of this bothers me but I am shocked and distraught that my husband never asks about eldest or includes her in any outings he has had with youngest.

When I challenged him he says he misses her but it would be too complicated to include her as the law is brutal and she could establish some rights if he continued a relationship with her, a child he has known for over eight years and who he saw more often than his eldest child. I am shocked he can walk away from her so easily.

But you weren’t
otherwise you wouldn’t be divorcing

You broke up your marriage because you didn't like the inequality between your DDs. Fine. But you surely can't have been mad enough to think a split would improve the inequality?! It was only ever going to make the division worse and cement the fact your eldest DD isn't part of your XH's family.

This really nails it. Along with the issue of
not allowing SD and youngest DC to see each other without the eldest.

This was pointed out to you by numerous people when you made a post announcing you’d decided to separate over your eldest not doing the same hobby.

It was always going to happen.

You made it worse by trying to force his hand and trying to force your daughter on his family, when it was obvious they were not interested.

I honestly don’t know how you can be surprised at this outcome.

Wow I have just read the OP’s past threads!

The OP’s opening claim that “none of this bothers me” about the financials is a load of cobblers

Ahh op your getting a bit of disagreement on this thread . For what it's worth after having had a brief nose through your other threads I understand you . I've been in this position and it's hurtful especially when you wouldn't behave that way yourself. I think you've done the right thing ending the marriage and think of the quality time you can spend with your eldest daughter whilst your youngest has nice times with her dad and other half sister . When it happened to me I had a oldest son and 2 shared sons with ex ,when we split I took the decision that my son wouldnt be involved as I didn't trust he'd be treated fairly or appropriately (I'd observed things on a family holiday with his parents esp his mother ,,and things she'd done and said had hurt me to the point I had to fight tears that made FIL look devastingly uncomfortable (he was lovely )and contributed to the relationship ending ) .I do t know what ppl get our of leaving certain children out especially when the cost isn't a issue ,,step kids/grandkids being excluded under these circumstances is designed to make a point and it's shit but some ppl are pieces and lots of them exist . Just be grateful your not one of them . I'm in a lovely relationship now ,,I have 8 (😬)kids of my own and 1 step son . I will inherit significantly more than my partner all WE have will go between OUR 9 kids cos I love my step son not as strongly as my own my own but I believe in fairness and he's not just my step son he's 2 of my daughters brother . Blended families only work with acceptance and fairness across the board . These ppl where not your ppl ♥️BTW my partners family don't give or even really acknowledge my kids anything and that's fine too . Me and my partner have vowed to do better and forge our own family .

The OP is being remarkably quiet about the role of her own mother. She insisted the OP and her husband marry although the husband didn't want to get married.
There is an awful lot being omitted from these threads from the OP. As the previous poster wrote, it was all about the financials. She wanted as much money as she could from her ex to give her own daughter somewhere to live. She has managed to keep the house. No wonder the in laws saw through her.

Some posters are remarkably sentimental about stepchildren unless it is the husband's children and the woman's step children. In which case the same posters drop any pretence at sympathy for step children.

@GeorgeClarkefan
She's not his biological child
So she's not really his concern even though you all had lived together
Another thing?
Could she really "assert rights" because he showed her some compassion/awareness?
Utter tripe
He just wants well rid;
Sorry.

I remembered your previous threads when I read this post, it looks like you went ahead with the divorce to "protect" your older daughter and I remember you were told repeatedly that divorcing would be depriving your older daughter from the only father figure she had and yet you went head and now you're upset he isn't maintaining a relationship with her.

I think divorcing was the wrong move but its your decision, your daughters will still have different paths and material opportunities irrespective of the divorce and now your older daughter has lost the relationship to the father figure she had and she still doesn't have her own father in her life. And your younger daughter also has to deal with the consequences of a broken family and potentially more step parents and siblings in the future if either of you get into other relationships or marriages creating a further complicated mess.

Unfortunately you can't force him to maintain a relationship so just focus on your daughters and move on.

It’s how the cookie crumbles.

He cared about your child while he was sleeping with you. Now he doesn’t sleep with you she doesn’t matter.

You’ve known for a long time your oldest wasn’t seen as their family. You’ve knew he didn’t want to marry you. You knew his daughter wanted no relationship as a family with yourself or your daughter.

Your youngest should totally be allowed to do things with just his daughter they are siblings and also even in a fully biological family at times different sibling groups go off together to do things that are their interests.

I think a lot of men tend to be very focussed on what is present right now and can be reasonable step parents to DSC living with them full time (often more so than to their bio DC living elsewhere).

But then if they leave the home, they tend to just leave that relationship behind.

A lot women seem determine to believe in blended families and the dream that you can create the perfect family unit with step parents and children but in reality its so rare. Most people aren't really interested in taking on a parenting role of DC that don't belong to them and only really do it (or feign doing it) to perpetuate their romantic relationship with the child's parent.

Pressure came from extended family.

Pressure came from you.

You got in the way of sibling bonding by trying to force your SD to interact with your eldest. You got mad when your husband took youngest to his arent's house and SD was there. You got mad about the activity. You got mad when SD tried to get your eldest to back off when she was trying to play with her sister.

You were the one getting upset and causing upset in the home and your marriage when your in laws wouldn't pay for eldest to do the same activity your SD and younger were doing. Did you secretly think he'd cave and ask his mom to pay to keep your marriage? Your husband stuck by you even when he was getting bypassed for family money because of you. You've been here multiple times being upset about some situation or other and I can imagine your home is a place of great tension because of your discontent and feelings of entitlement for your inlaws to do for your eldest what they do for their grandkids. You felt like your eldest should be everywhere the youngest was and that was extremely unrealistic. You initiated the split because they wouldn't pay for some activity for your eldest. That's entitlement.

Your in laws saw you coming and while they were pleasant to your eldest, they didn't see her as their granddaughter and you couldn't see past that, even though your mom did not regard your SD as her family member and you seemed somewhat snide about her. I think you low key resented her because she didn't want to be besties or pretend sisters with your eldest.

Now there's going to be even more inequality and there's not a thing you can do about it. You got the house, but it sounds like he's ring fencing his and his daughters' interest in that and that's as it should be. A lot of posters warned you that his relationship with your eldest would change and now, again, you're upset when you knew this was going to happen.

He’s avoiding any claim of OP’s eldest being legally considered a child of the family.

I also imagine that he, rightly, has no intention of indulging the same constant dramas that blighted his marriage. Even if he wanted to keep some type of distant relationship, it’s hardly like he could trust OP to not expect and/or push for more. So it’s better to make a clean break on that front.

OP’s daughter isn’t his, and he never claimed her as his or led her to believe that he did. According to OP, she didn’t call him dad, and was quite aware that the relationship he had with her was entirely different to the one he has with his children.

You’ve had daughters by different men, and hat do you expect? It’s not the step-fathers job to level the playing field. You are a mother to both and very much able to step up and ask the father of your eldest to help or get things sorted yourself.

Ah have now rtft and remember your other thread. You wanted your husbands family to include your eldest in everything your youngest was involved in even though she wasn't related to them. Your youngest missed out on things with her dad's family because you didn't like that your eldest wasn't included.

And you are surprised now? Your husband was never going to stay involved with a step daughter post separation. The people you should be cross at are your eldest's paternal relatives. They are the family she is missing, not the step dad you married.

It’s tough for your eldest daughter, just proves like many men he went along with things, played the game while it suited his needs, he’s love for your eldest was conditional.

As a step child too, my experience was the same. Lots of lip service to ‘loving us all the same’ but the reality is that it was a virtue signalling narrative that they sold themselves to make themselves feel better. There were and are never there for me or my children when we’ve needed support - emotional of financial. And for the same reasons I would also avoid divorce and never have remarried and, having got my kids to adulthood/uni, I still wouldn’t ever remarry especially where there were step children. Fortunately my DH feels the same. We’ll suffer each other [fortunately we’re are very strong after 34 years and 24 of them married] but never remarry and muddle our lives like this.

I’m sure the IL’s disinherited the DH at one point and he still stuck with OP - they definitely had the measure of this situation.

The home is only until the youngest is 19/finishes FT education. DH will probably go back to inheriting a share of his parents house again now there’s no OP/DSC on the scene, and the youngest may end up with even more now.

I know, and when the dad, SD and youngest DD went to in-law's to spend quality time together OP would rock up with her oldest child pretending to be all offended when they weren't thrilled that they also joined.

I really feel for OPs oldest DD. If OP had acted more level headed she wouldn't have had all this heart ache.

I remember your past thread. Your equality was always at the detriment of your SD. She was never asked if she wanted to share her dad with a random kid, he doesnt want dd1 during contact now so that dsd and dd2 can actually have some alone time. Your in laws saw that you saw yourself as a foursome plus dsd as an outsider and tried to remedy that. It is fair that they prevent their grandchild from being the overlooked one.

You ended the marriage - you signalled to Dh That you didnt want to be a family anymore, you chose this!

I for one am relieved that there won’t be yet another thread from this OP about her infuriation that her child from a previous relationship isn’t treated identically by her husband’s family

and the OP’s disdain from her SD was so off putting

💯 this.
According to OP she even showed up and foisted herself and her eldest DD upon her SIL when the poor woman was grieving the loss of her father only 5hrs ago and wanted some comfort from her brother! Why did OP show up at that time, knowing that his family don't see her and her eldest DD as their family? She even had the bare faced cheek to be upset at being asked to leave.

OP you're coming across as a controller.

"We always visited as a family" - why? Why couldn't XH and shared DD visit his family just them sometimes? Why couldn't DSD and shared DD spend time alone just them two, whether alone or with other family members? Why were you surprised to find DSD at her grandparents house when you visited? They're her family, why wouldn't she be there, they can invite whoever they like to their home whenever they want? You're coming across as someone who wants to be the centre of attention, who doesn't want to share the limelight. You wanted to be the only visitors.

You initially found yourself in a situation you didn't like, where XH's family didn't accept you and your eldest DD into their fold. (I'm beginning to see why, TBH. If I was faced with a control freak in-law I wouldn't accept them as my new bestie either and would continue trying to see my blood relatives without the controlling interloper). Perhaps they knew he didn't intend to have more DC or to marry again? Perhaps he discussed with them his reluctance and being pressured into it by your family? It really doesn't sound like XH was "in" as much as you wanted him to be, with this relationship. Perhaps his biggest mistake was in failing to take full responsibility himself for ensuring you didn't get pregnant.
Then instead of realising this situation wasn't working out for you and breaking up with your partner before the relationship really got going, you stayed with him because you wanted to and tried to force his family to accept you and eldest DD because you wanted it to happen and believe your way is the only "right" way of doing things. It's pretty batshit behaviour TBH.

All this nonsense about being "happy together in our house". As if your house and your nuclear family existed in some kind of vacuum and the rest of the world and the people in it, including your in-laws and DSD, did not exist.

You say his reluctance to marry wasn't about his feelings for you. If that's true, his reluctance to marry probably stemmed from wanting to protect his inheritance for his own DC, which he risked by marrying someone and especially when that someone also had a DC.
So it should be no surprise that now he's divorcing he's returning to Plan A, which was to protect his DC inheritance as much as possible. That includes not having a relationship with your DD so there's no way she can challenge the will at a later date by claiming that he was a father figure to her and arguing that he should have provided for her in the will. Even if she was unsuccessful it would still mean heartache and headache for all legitimate beneficiaries, at a time they're busy grieving.

I really hope this thread is brought up when a stepmum posts about treating the stepkids differently to her own....seems like there is a double standard here where a woman and her family would be ripped apart.

The reason that you and your DH separated is because although his family were civil and friendly to you and your older daughter, they excluded your older daughter from many social occasions and holidays where your younger daughter was invited. This exclusion understandably upset both you and your older daughter.

Although it is unkind of your ex-husband to decide to cut off your older daughter and never see her again, it should have been pretty obvious that this would happen when you separated as his family didn't ever really treat you and your older daughter as family and now your ex-husband is behaving just like his parents have always done.

I have known my step children for over 15 years. If I split up with their dad I’m not reaching out for a relationship with them