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.

Kindly funding a school trip isn't necessarily treating children "exactly the same", it's just funding a school trip.
The reality is, if children have a wealthy stepparent then they will likely benefit - it would be weirder and more awkward to determindly penny-pinch.

The SS is feeling rejected. I assume most posters calling him a scrote or anything else haven’t had to watch their Mum or Dad and their new families enjoying themselves with Dad (or Mum) paying for it all. It’s not hard to see he is feeling insecure and rejected.

I’m in my late 40s and have similarly aged brothers. We have a dad who was quite shit and didn’t do much for us as kids and we can see that when he dies, he will leave everything to his partner. I don’t need any money and wouldn’t care from a financial point of view but I would see it as another act of rejection - rightly or wrongly. In mine and my siblings eyes, we’ve been constantly rejected by him for years in one way or another - his new (not new now) partner was always more important than us and leaving her everything would just confirm that.

I don’t think it’s about being grabby. Obviously I could be wrong but he’s an 18 year old kid who perhaps can’t really explain why he’s feeling like he is.

There is no right to see the finances just because he is 18, who on earth does he think he is- if your DH so chose he would not see any of the finances until he died and the probate was granted, DH should tell his son that like everyone else he has to wait and see what he will inherit, if anything- it is never certain.

I think due to the cost of living, the poor job market and price of property these days, young people are increasingly having to cling onto the idea of a future inheritance to ever have any hope of a secure future. I think that's why we see so many entitled child/stepchild inheritance threats lately.

However, I do struggle to feel sympathy for this lad. I feel sympathy in the sense of it must be hard having your dad live with a second family, but he seems to be making it all about the money rather than addressing the true emotions.

This trust fund is clearly massive, I presume well into the 6 figures. He will get plenty upon the death of his father. OP has said that her husband ensures to have big expensive holidays with his children as well as his immediate family. He presumably got child maintenance paid to his mum and is being supported through uni. He is absolutely fine, is being supported by the DH's generated income, and is just being grabby.

It's shit that people are piling on OP for her husband having paid for the ski trip. The son is awful for thinking that every penny spent on OP's children needs to be reimbursed from OP's assets upon her death, when he is benefiting from a massive trust fund. I presume OP's children are teenagers but I'd be fucking devastated if I were them. It's absolutely fucking vile. Of course the husband is angry that his son is sniffing around the assets of his wife who is alive and well! What's he going to do if his dad dies first and OP needs care fees in the future? I guess he expects an amount to be ring-fenced just for him and when the funds deplete the OP can just fuck off into a council care home?

It's classic Mumsnet that everyone is acting like the son is hard done by here.

So many people don't inherit anything. My dad inherited 40k from his parents and spent it on an extension to his council house (terrible idea) without getting planning permission and it ended up demolished. I knew it was an awful idea but it was his money. He did provide me with a £2000 loan from the inheritance to cover conveyancing fees so that I could get on the property ladder, and I was presented with a contract and a payment schedule to repay the loan. And I'm the child of the "second family", not the woefully hard done by "first family" stereotype on Mumsnet. His first 2 kids did bloody well because he was a decent bloke and left their mum the house that he had provided the deposit (and years of mortgage payments) for upon the divorce as he wanted to support them. He felt so guilty about the divorce and the effect on his kids hence why he left her the house. He was never able to buy again. His ex wife went on to have more kids with a new partner and those kids will benefit from that house (which my half-sister delightfully tells me is now worth £500,000) whilst I get fuck all.

I don't go interrogating my dad about that decision though, because I'm not a grabby, privileged little so and so. So the son here has got a massive nerve the way he has spoken to his father after essentially being provided with a lifetime of support and security.

Tiny violin comes to mind. If the thread had been about the stepson feeling pushed out then I'd be more understand but it's all money money money.

It actually has everything to do with second family dynamics - and I think it might be pps not in that situation who are taking umbrage and answering so nastily without considering that broader context.

As you say, dc do not own their parents assets, and they are not keeping them warm until inheritance (though in many, many case the parents have themselves inherited and imo that does mean it is a very normal parental instinct to do your best to do the same for your own dc).

However, here there is a second layer of complexity in that the money has come from a grandfather and is being, effectively, partly used by unrelated dc. That isn't the boy resenting his father spending on himself. There is a different context here. Yes, people will argue the father can spend it where and as he likes, but the choice to spend inherited money on dc unrelated to the grandfather is a different context from a parent simply looking after themselves, and I think it is a bit disingenuous not to allow that.

Quite honestly, in the OP's situation, I'd feel embarrassed for my dc to be benefitting from money inherited from a grandfather of other dc when mine were presumably outside the active contemplation of that inheritance. Money earned by her partner is a different story - though again often still a source of tension in blended families.

This.

It's the pps being harsh on the boy who are in fact the ones seeing everything through a monetary lens.

Do not mention the word "subsidised" and refute it's use if they claim your lifestyle is subsidised. You are married therefore the money in the marriage belongs to both of you and it is none of their business how you both choose to use it.

Draw a line under the matter and refuse to engage with the topic any further.

You're massively projecting

I think SS is grabby. Particularly one of your previous posts op where you said you’d been asked who’d paid when your aunt had taken your DD to a show! That is a weirdly inappropriate thing to say and if my DS had asked me anything of the sort he’d have been given short shrift. How adults spend their money is their business and since your SS knows the terms of the Gf will and knows the assets can’t be depleted then that’s all he needs to know surely? Your H could be spending his income on the horses and other frivolities and that would also be fine - it’s his money!

That was my point. His father is funding him (however that may be) and his son still feels it’s not enough, so he wants to see his father’s finances or thinks it’s ok to question his step sister about who has paid for her theatre trip. That is entitlement

It sounds like his behaviour is veering somewhat into bullying towards OPs kids. He's certainly picking on them. It will escalate.

Wonder if their dad reduced CMS payments when OP moved in?

From what I understand- the grandchildren have inherited a property/business. But the income from the business is paid to the children of the grandfather, with a condition when the children die, the property/business is sold and the profits go to the grandchildren.

if the step son owns a share of a business/property but can’t get any income from it or sell it, it still might effect what he can borrow, OP has this come up while ss is applying for uni finance?! did FIL expect the money from the income be spend on his grandchildren, not someone else’s? Your Stepson asking about finances would make sense if there’s a condition this money should be spent on housing and keeping him not someone else’s children.

It’s an action that is likely being perceived as parental, the same as shoehorning them into the wedding. He’s seeing his father take on a parental role to OP’s children, and resents it.

Even if there is a stipulation in the trust fund that the income generated should only be used for the benefit of the biological children and grandchildren, I imagine the step-son would still find issue with his dad spending money generated from his own business on his step-kids. £4000 on a ski trip is £4000 on a ski trip whether it's come from the trust fund or whether it's come from money his dad has earned himself. There's clearly plenty to go around, the son gets an incredible amount of support as does his sibling. They get significant financial support and their dad ensures to have holidays with just his kids and not the blended family. Despite all of this, there is clearly some surplus to treat OP's kids to some nice life experiences too, and that's bloody lovely.

Well no, it isn’t. Not for his actual children, anyway.

But he can resent it all he likes. Nobody gets to have the perfect life. We all have stuff happen in our life that is a pain in the arse or upsetting. It doesn't give him the right to start eyeing up OP's assets when she is alive and well. OP or her kids could end up in an accident at any moment and end up disabled, unable to work and needing permanent lifelong care. Would he still expect a large amount of OP's share of the assets to be ring-fenced to him in this situation? I presume he would, all because his step-siblings got to have a few nice holidays at the expense of his daddy.

did FIL expect the money from the income be spend on his grandchildren, not someone else’s? Your Stepson asking about finances would make sense if there’s a condition this money should be spent on housing and keeping him not someone else’s children.

The answer to your first question is almost certainly yes: the GF would have envisaged the money would be supporting his son and his bio family.

As to the condition, I wondered something similar, but this would be more likely in the case of a trust distribution direct from the corpus of the Trust, rather than in the form of dividend (if that is what is even happening), particulary in the case of a discretionary trust.

But the ss isn't wrong to have questions around it all.

I think the DH should sit him down and put him clearly in the picture. After all, he is a beneficiary of the Trust of his GF's estate. This would be a gentler - and more mature - way of addressing the attitude as opposed to "telling the little scrote where to go" and other low emotional eq approaches suggested on here.

It may also give the DSS an opportunity to open up about any feelings of rejection he may be experiencing in the new family set-up. Given the dribs and drabs of info about trips he was not included on, being asked to move from the family table at the wedding and the very fact OP is on MN starting threads canvassing for criticism of his behaviour, I should think this might be a key issue at the heart of these developments.

Once again, tiny violins. Hopefully he grows up and matures a bit. Maybe one day he'll have a marriage go wrong and fall in love a second time. Hopefully nobody thinks he's the scum of the earth for it.

Of course we all do. But for the lucky ones, those things are not inflicted on us because our own parents haven't looked out for us.

That is very emotionally different from misfortune in the general course, and has a destabilising effect for which I think it is unfair to then turn round and blame the child for.

I expect this is all coming to a head because as he comes of age he feels finally able to voice that hurt. Yes, he has chosen money as a topic through which to raise the issue, but no doubt he subconsciously feels it looks more grown up and factual, which would be an attractive feature for someone with very raw feelings.

Our parents are our most critical source of stability and love as we develop, and people are far too swift to downplay the damage of having that disrupted.

And that's the nub of it: people get defensive and would rather blame a child than accept they need to manage these transitions with the child's needs foremost.

That's the responsibility - and constraint - you take when becoming a parent.

I see what you mean but there is no indication here that this lad's dad hasn't looked out for him. He has supported him and his sibling financially - very significantly. OP has implied that. There's clearly significant funds to go around. If a large portion of it has gone on the biological kids (as it should), then what's the problem if some surplus is spent on a treat for OP's kid? I imagine what has been spent on the OP's kids is a drop in the water compared to the biological kids (as it should be).

If the dad was trying to split everything 4 ways between his kids and the OP's kids I would understand the issues. But that does not appear to be the case. The son appears to feel entitled to every penny that is spent by his father, and is veering into actively picking on the OP'S children every time he hears that they have done something nice. I am curious if the OP's children are aware as to what is going on. They seem to be younger than the step-son and I would feel quite intimidated in their position.

How am I projecting? What a stupid thing to say.

Those of you who are claiming an 18 year old to be grabby or think he should be told to fuck off seem to have completely overlooked the fact that he may be coming from a place of insecurity. It doesn’t take a genius to work that out. Christ, that’s the main issue in step families.

Sure, he can feel however he feels. I’m not arguing as to whether how he feels is right or wrong, because either way it won’t change anything. I’m also not saying that he entitled to demand anything when it comes to his father’s personal finances. He isn’t.

What I am saying is that ignoring and dismissing him isn’t going to make this issue go away, or make him feel how OP’s DH would prefer him to.

If the DH values the relationship with his son and wants to ease the strain on it, then he would be wise to listen to what is being communicated. While he doesn’t need to give in to his son’s demands regarding hanging over financial documents, he probably should stop doing things like asking for invitations for his stepchildren and paying for school trips.

Again though, you are straight into the financials.

Parenting is a lot more than paying...