Stepchild wants to see finances and money spent on his stepsiblings.

[Greenhairedmonstor]

My late FiL who I never met, left school at 15, fell into the right crowd while he was doing a labouring job and ended up with a little empire.

There is something in place that is not quite a trust. It allows SiL to choose to live frugally without working, and has enabled my husband and his brothers an income which supplements their incomes.

Their children will benefit after their parents’ deaths when whatever is in place will be dissolved.

My husband has his own business as well.

My stepchild is 18 and will go to university next month. I also have another stepchild who is 13.

The eldest has asked that now that they are an adult that they want to look at my husband’s finances. Essentially they want an account of any money that is spent on my children and they wanted my husband’s estate to be reimbursed from my share of the house when he dies.

Now Mumsnet always asks, no I was not the other woman, my ex meets more than his share of his financial responsibilities and I also work and rent out a house that I own in my home country that I will eventually return to. Husband’s ex is comfortable and I don’t believe this has come from her.

Inevitably my husband subsidises our life.

This has been a bitter blow to my husband and he doesn’t see how his relationship with his child(ren) will recover.

If one of my DC came to me and said that I'd be tempted to remove them from my will. Entitled sod. I don't think I actually would but I would be reminding them they're not entitled to any of my money and there is no chance I will be giving them details on my finances.

Personally I don’t think this is actually just about money

It's never just about money.

this.

the step son sounds very entitled, jealous and bitter. Could probably do with some psychotherapy earlier than later to sort his issues out.

But i would be very much, our money is ours to spend as we wish. We aren’t planning on dying any time soon, so stop ruining family moments by focussing on inheritance

I think on the surface your stepson is being wildly unreasonable.

However, i do think there may be some mitigation depending on the terms of the Trust- if it is a family trust that includes him, he might not be totally unreasonable to want to see how the trust is currently being managed. Does your have a legal right, under the terms of the trust, to see how the trust is being managed?

Though I cannot see how he can ask for access to how your DH spends his income, whatever the circumstances of the trust. That is a fairly gobsmacking over-reach.

Does he have concerns that your children are benefitting significantly, at his (and his sibling’s) expense? I.e. is your DH spending significantly more supporting your children than he ever did on his own two children? Has your DH invested more time in your children than his own? I’m just wondering if it is all simply awful behaviour on your step-sons part, or whether this is actually an expression of brewing resentment, built up over years (even if a wholly unreasonable way to express it).

No one is going without? He’s being an 18 year old twat.

OP, SS may have a point. probably not the one he’s making, but a bigger one.

First Marriage Children get shat on in wills. SS might be worried that his GF’s legacy is heading/already at your DC.

This happens too much, and it’s hideous - not only has FMC got no present dad, his/her heritage has been swiped too.

Would FIL want that? Nope. He left the £ to his relations, not another woman’s unrelated DC.

I’d explain to DS that the assets will be maintained out of their income by DH, and he’s not in any danger of losing his inheritance.

Your DC are entitled to O, incidentally. Except - depending on FIL’s wording - what DH gives them from his own income, which does seem fair.

If you think that’s unfair, welcome to the world of entailment and trusts. Keeping it to blood family and swerving complications with blended households is what they’re there for.

This sums up the situation perfectly.

Absolutely do not pander to his gross attempts at manipulation. It's not his business. End of.

Teenagers can say some stupid shit. They're like giant hairy smelly toddlers - they have all sort of notions about life that they haven't got the frontal lobes to think through. Hasn't your husband realised this yet?

I'm astonished he didn't just reply with something along the lines of 'are you fucking mad?' and leave it there.

All this handwringing!

(ETA: I understand hurt feelings in the moment, but he really does need to learn to shrug it off, it won't be the last time all these kids you're raising make some ill-considered statement that crushes your souls a little.)

The OP hasn’t argued that her children are somehow heirs to the grandfather’s property but surely its up to OP’s dh whether he ends up considering his wife’s children to be worthy of a bequest. This weird mumsnet spite towards second families is just startling to me. So unnecessary.

Im shocked that an 18 year old feels they have the right to ask this.
Your husband is in a hard spot because saying what he should say will do nothing but inflame the situation.

What a horrible situation, how did SS become this way?

It's absolutely wild tbh. Imagine being this grabby, greedy, entitled and tone deaf at 18. Wow.

He has no entitlement of any kind at all to his dad's money. And will lose any inheritance his dad kindly wants to leave him if he cuts off his own nose to spite his face.

This is precisely what should be said to him, in a message. Then he should be absolutely ignored until he starts behaving and replying decently again.

I would assume its about uni.
He maybe being expected to confirm parents money and his own. But anyhow it seems crazy he may need a loan if his dad is receiving all this money. Has he not saved to pay for the fees and living costs?

Has he not savwd money into his kids accounts for uni costs

You have presented this as coming out of the blue however the resentment your step children feel was apparent in the post you did about the wedding. You cannot be blind to that. Dss may well need income details from his dad towards his uni living loan which is fair enough. Nobody is owed an inheritance. If the grandfather left it so the money went to his own grandchildren then fair enough but if he left it to his son then it is up to him to decide what to do with it. You've stated those assets will go to his children and if tat is all set out and protected then there shouldn't be an issue.

What dss doesn't get to do is dictate how his dad spends money he earns and if it was my child I would be telling them that. Your dh needs to be firm in telling his children that he loves them but they don't get yo dictate to him how he manages his own income.

Because he saw his step-sister getting something nice and his immediate thought that his dad must have paid for it.

As hard as I try to cut him some slack, I keep coming back to him being greedy, selfish and resentful

he is 18 and acting as a jumped up little dick with an overblown sense of entitlement - but that’s 18 year olds to some extent. It is for your DH to explain that DSS is not owed a living by his father, by you, by his grandfather’s estate or otherwise. I don’t see this as a relationship ending conversation/situation with a young adult child to be honest / there often need to be frank discussions about finances.

also / inheritance and stepchildren is a tough one. My DH came into our relationship with very little and has hugely benefitted from my income and existing assets, similarly I have befitted from his inheritance (many years into our marriage) - I think it is fair to divide our shared assets and wealth that exist in the marriage (cash, family home, property etc) equally between our joint children and my stepchildren and that things belonging entirely to me (such as copyright over my works - I make a living as an artist) go solely to my children.

Asking to inspect personal finances and demand reimbursements from an estate feels quite overstepping, especially right before starting university.

He definitely needs to be put back in his place. I have to wonder what sort of vile behaviour he generally shows for the husband to be worried about "backlash" and being "terrified" of the result that might come from telling the cheeky little fucker - who "bitterly resents" his father spending his own money as he chooses - to back off and mind his own business.

This maybe isn’t about the money. Your SS sounds very resentful and may feel cast aside in some way.
Your DH should find a way to broach this subject. Your SS is still young and may need validation about perceived slights and some healing before a being told that he needs to have more respect for his loving father and forebears before presuming to inherit anything.

Extraordinary that an 18-year old has the audacity to demand to go over his father's and step-mother's finances. To demand reimbursement from the stepmother to the 'estate' is outrageous.

He is already thinking ahead to the death of his father and stepmother - at which time he wants some of the proceeds from the house to go into 'his' inheritance as 'compensation' for what he perceives as 'his' money being spent on OP and her children by his (perceived) overly generous father.

It sounds as though he has possibly been put up to this. Plus, he is carrying massive resentment towards his step-siblings and OP. This resentment has led to this nitpicking accounting of his father's spending.

It's for his father to take him aside (even take him alone out to lunch or dinner perhaps) and sort out the facts with him. Fearing backlash is a nox̌nstarter - this son is being supported at uni and by the sound of things, he's dependent on his father to some extent. Father needs to bite the bullet and OP should back out

Explain:
a) son has No rights to father's financial information - it's private

b) how father spends his income is up to father, not son; there will be no
reimbursement from OP's share of house or in any other way

c) the assets left to the four siblings are inviolable - the siblings receive income from the assets but cannot touch the assets; these assets are not affected by father's day to day spending of his cash income

d) the assets will eventually be sold off and then GFs descendants will get equal shares

e) the shared house of OP and husband will... explain the intentions eg house will be occupied until death of both OP and father, sold and proceeds split accordingly, no 'reimbursements' to the 'estate'

f) father loves his sons, supports them fully, but at the same time is going to continue to show care and support to his stepchildren

g) father has a partner and they as a couple decide on arrangements, with consideration of all four children in mind; no further discussion is to be had about finances

OP needs to ensure her children are not antagonising the stepchildren and fueling resentment

Well I get op's point. She massively benefits from husband's estate/income and from the sound of it from previous posts so do her own children.
DSS would also upset me if he inquired as to why he is left out/undercut by his dad's spending and he threatened me getting less.

From my time on MN I find that women tend to always prioritise their own children in a way that men don’t seem to. And there does seem to be some hypocrisy on MN around this where women are told to keep their assets.

I think what happened to SS at wedding was awful - he was asked to move seats away from from his own father & aunt at his uncle’s wedding. This was to accommodate his 9 year old SS who wasn’t originally invited. Then his step-brother arrives at his table and announces that his dad has paid for his ski trip. Why couldn’t the kids just have stayed with their dad?

How exactly is a 17 year old supposed to feel about his dad playing happy families and funding other children?

And I think he has a point about the inheritance income. FIL presumably meant his money to go to his own family.

And as someone else said it’s never just about money. It’s often also about what it represents.

"He possibly doesn't understand how a 3 year marriage trumps his 18 years as this man's child."

It doesn't, but that does not mean that the DH cannot spend any money at all on his second family which is what the DSS is looking to achieve.

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"There's also the slightly weird thing of why not show him the finances?"

I'm sorry, but what???

If anything, the father sharing with the son exactly what he spends his money on and having to account for how much is not spent on the child, his full brother or his mother is really quite bizarre.

I would never dream of asking my parents to show me their finances to check what they are spending their money on.

Likewise if my own DC demanded to know what I was spending my money on then they would not be told.

"What is motivating the much older adults who can't fling enough shit at this kid they don't know?"

I think it may be because he is demanding that a parent account for how they spend their own money and also demanding that any money that is not spent on him or his sibling is accounted for and reimbursed to him at the time of the parents death.

I certainly wouldn't use some of the language used here, but if a child of mine tried to do that to me then I would very definitely think much less of them.

There is huge, huge 'mumsnet spite' towards children of first families who are supposed to suck up unfair treatment at the hands of one, or both, of their parents, who put their all into new relationships. Posts where a new family inherits everything leaving first children with nothing at all are not uncommon. The OPs DH would do well here to reflect more broadly on his actions and behaviours before declaring his relationship with his children destroyed. It seems unlikely this has come out of the blue, even if crass and unpleasant