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.

Not answering for the poster but my observation is that a lot of people post solely from their own experience and a lot of bitterness and lack of responsibility gets projected.

for example - your parents may have stayed together, or you stayed in a miserable marriage in the belief it was best for the child. You may firmly believe that every divorce is devastating for the child. But that belief doesnt make it true. There may be (there definitely are) many families that navigate divorce well. The problem comes from people who don’t seem to understand that there are other valid options.

I also find that there are people who don’t want to take responsibility for their own actions. It can be easier to blame your parents for messing up your life than accept that you are making choices all the time and you have options. Depending on the level of fucked up your parents were, the process of dealing with it may be longer, more complicated, and more painful. You may need help with it. And it may be an ongoing process. I am in no way downplaying that. But it’s too easy to keep blaming parents or others and some people love the victim role because it absolves them of all responsibility. Holding bitterness only damages the holder - it does not change the past or improve the future.

a lot of people on this post misread what OP said about her husbands fear about the impact on his relationship with his son. That’s projection. Lots have bashed OP. That’s also projection and a lot of bitterness. There are even people adamantly stating what the GF would have wanted. It’s not just simplistic, it’s being blind in some regards and says more about those posters than the actual situation.

"The income from these assets is not your inheritance. It is my money to spend on whatever I like.

When I die, then you will be inheriting your share of the assets and associated income. Only then will it be your money to spend on whatever you like."

Hm what? Your husband’s money is now your money and it will go to you unless there’s a will in place specifying something else?

What will happen if he calmly tells his son that his own finances are his own affair and he chooses not to share them? Parents often have to say “no” to children. The children are often annoyed, but it’s not the end of the world and things move on. Why will this cause such a backlash?

Has he never said “no” before? Is his son unusually angry and mean-spirited?

How on earth does an 18 year old get so entitled that he thinks his father needs to justify his own spending to his son?!

OP has DH spoken to his son properly and told him that it’s none of his business and how dare he be so outrageously rude??? why is he afraid to have that conversation?

Absolutely none of your step childs business. And he should be firmly told so. Its also not his business how your husband and you choose to spend your money. I would think this is a badly behaved teen who is legally an adult but is still very much a child. I have 6 kids. Eldest 39 youngest 19. My husband is stepdad to my elder 4, one of the other 2 is his and mine and I have a stepdaughter. He has his own business. Not a single one of our kids would dare to ask to see our finances. The younger 2 work for my husbands business but what happens in the future with our finances is absolutely our decision and not any of the kids. Someone hasnt set rules and boundaries with your stepson and he is stepping right over the line and needs closing down until hes actually grown up and understands this.

No, hes just a child and needs putting in his place. You dont write a child out of your will for being inappropriate. We would all be disinheriting several of our children of we did. But you make it absolutely clear how inappropriate it is.

The dad is not worried that he's going to cut his own child off FFS. The dad is worried because the child is going to cut himself off because he's not used to hearing the word no.

If the dad says, quite rightly, sorry you are not entitled to these demands, he's predicting the boy having a tantrum of great severity. That's what the dad thinks is going to "ruin the relationship." Then the boy will potentially lead his siblings down the same path, with the help of his ex wife who's already instigating similar behaviour. (See other thread re wedding.)

I don't think the dad needs to worry too much though, about "the relationship will never recover.". The boy is too money orientated and greedy to stray too far from the bank of dad for long. He'll be wanting his uni hand outs.

Then we've got OP who insists she has her own money and an ex who provides "over and above" for her children, yet between them couldn't afford one school trip for their child, and this "new dad" bankrolled that too.

I think OP and her step son have a lot more in common than she'd like to admit. Both buzzing around a honeypot they feel entitled too.

I think it’s reasonable if by your kids you mean your children that aren’t with your current husband. Presumably your FiL didn’t work to set up a fund to spend money on children who weren’t related to him. If your husband wants to save the relationship with his son I suggest you butt out and he arranges a meeting with his children where he listens to them and their concerns.

No, it is not even vaguely reasonable.

The income from the "not quite a trust" is OP's husband's to spend how he wants. He could spend it all on alcohol and drink himself into an early grave if he wants and his children would have no say in that. He could give it all to charity and his children would have no say in that. The fact he chooses to spend some of it on OP and her children does not magically give them the right to dictate what he does.

The capital in the "not quite a trust" will go to OP's stepchildren when her husband dies, in line with FiL's wishes. That is the only money they have any right to.

A son wanting to know what is going on about the capital he expects to inherit from his grandfather on his father's death is reasonable, if in exceedingly poor taste. Since he already does know about this, though, he has no need to enquire further; but he is clearly a bit neurotic and in need of reassurance that he is not being stolen from by his father. (This is obviously not an insult to his father at all, no, no, not even slightly.)

Wanting to know all the details of what is spent by his father on his stepmother and step-siblings, with the requirement that an accounting be kept and every penny spent on them be taken from his stepmother and given to him and his sibling when their father dies, is not reasonable and I do hope is not going to happen no matter how much he may threaten to cut his father off. (Which also isn't going to happen because, as pointed out, Bank of Daddy.).

Then we've got OP who insists she has her own money and an ex who provides "over and above" for her children, yet between them couldn't afford one school trip for their child, and this "new dad" bankrolled that too.
I think OP and her step son have a lot more in common than she'd like to admit. Both buzzing around a honeypot they feel entitled too.

May a stepfather not give his stepchild a gift? If he'd given the same amount of money to buy the child a new laptop or whatever, would that be acceptable?

We read a lot here about how children in blended families should be treated equally, and now here is a child being treated equally and his mother is accused of being a gold digger and his stepfather accused of making his own children go without in order to 'bankroll' a stepchild.

what is MILs take on this ?

Whose mother-in-law?

You miss the point.

It's not that the stepdad shouldn't. It's that OP wants to pretend she's not equally there for the money and is paying her way, with an ex who pays plenty, over and above.

Turns out between the pair of them, they can't afford one school trip for just one of their children and the stepdad had to pay for that too.

God why are posters here so awful to second wives? “Buzzing around a honeypot” “equally there for the money.” ?? Absolutely disgusting way of talking about another person with no basis in the text.

MademoisellePraline
Turns out between the pair of them, they can't afford one school trip for just one of their children and the stepdad had to pay for that too.

"Had to"?

Maybe the poor man wanted to treat his stepchild to something fun.

But I forgot; he isn't supposed to spend any money on any of his current family, and if he does it all has to be reimbursed out of his wife's money after his death.

FIL Is deceased But MIL Is mentioned on another discussion.

In this case, I remain convinced that it's because OP mentioned that she's from another country. She has to be a gold-digger, apparently.

Thank you. I haven't read the other discussion so didn't know about her.

I do hope her grandson has had the grace not to have a go at her about her husband's will! She may have no opinion at all about his behaviour to his father – because he hasn't got the gall to try to explain to her why he is being such an arse, and his father doesn't want to bring sorrow to her by telling her about the son he must be more than a little ashamed of.

Oh please.

She reckons she's got a house she rents out, earns plenty, got some ex who pays "over and above"

Then claims all of that with her ex combined couldn't cover one of her own children's school trips.

Guess who pays....

MademoisellePraline
She reckons she's got a house she rents out, earns plenty, got some ex who pays "over and above"
Then claims all of that with her ex combined couldn't cover one of her own children's school trips.

She made no such claim, if you read her posts. What she said was "My husband paid for a school trip for my son which my son spoke openly about, with gratitude." and "Any money spent on my children like that ski trip and family holidays is resented bitterly."

I ask again, why should this man not pay for a child living in his house to go on a school trip? It might be possible that he did this as (for instance) a Christmas present to the child, or just because making that child happy gave him pleasure, not under duress of any sort. Some people actually take pleasure in giving presents rather than totting up costs for them and expecting to get reciprocal gifts of an equal monetary worth. It's positively out of St Ignatius Loyola's prayer: https://www.theologyofwork.org/book/work-in-worship/prayer-material-for-services/closing-prayers/st-ignatius-loyola-teach-us-good-lord-to-toil-prayer/ "to give and not to count the cost".

In any case it was none of his elder son's business that his father chose to pay for something that was not for his elder son, and certainly not the business of that elder son to make the younger one unhappy about it by quizzing him and implying it ought not to have been paid for by the man who treats him as a son.

I wonder how the elder son proposes to subdivide the utilities bills so that their cost can be extracted from his stepmother. How about the use of the washing machine: that would be complicated, what with washes that contained clothes belonging to each person in the house, not to mention whether the charge should be at launderette rates or just for water, electricity and depreciation on the machine....

Give him a break, he’s an 18yo watching his dad spend money on things that the child’s own mum and dad should be paying for and can afford.

That would rankle for many teens.

Watching his dad spend money on a child who lives in the same house as his dad and towards whom his dad is acting as a father really ought not to make an eighteen-year-old unpleasantly jealous.

For all we know the father actively insisted on paying for the school trip: "no, no, please let me, I love to make Johnny happy". Where does your "should be paying for" come from? Are people not allowed to buy things they want to with their own money? It has been made clear that the father has also paid for expensive holidays for the eighteen-year-old.

I mean, goodness, whose money is it? Not that of the eighteen-year-old, any more than my father's money belonged to me when I was eighteen.

I do not forget that when the OP's younger child was taken out to see a show by the OP's sister who was in the country for a visit, the eighteen-year-old was unpleasant about that and quizzed the child to find out who paid for it.

If it would rankle with many teens that their fathers spent their fathers' own money, many teens should wind their necks in and not show everyone what nasty people they were being.

People keep same “child living in the same house”. SS wants to be the child in his dad’s house for goodness sake!

I would absolutely have hated to have had two kids in my dad’s house. He was my dad. They have their own dad.