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.

Lovely speech. But...

Try reading the thread, and the one about the school trip. It's exactly what she claims.

Pure projection and a toddler’s view of the situation.

If you posted a link I might be bothered, but I don't have one and am not about to hunt the board for it. Sorry.

It’s basic psychology, but people don’t want to hear it because it means adults would have to actually put their kids before their own desires.

I have no truck with this, anymore than I would if the dad chose to spend all his income on holidays or sports cars - his money, his choice.

My dad is 63 and has recently set up his own business and is earning really well, he has £100,000 sitting in the bank now. Which he’s hoping to use as a retirement fund as he doesn’t have a private pension, but I’m seeing as my inheritance. I didn’t think I’d be getting one, so I’m very pleased. I will be asking for monthly bank statements from him to ensure that any money he spends of my future inheritance is on my list of authorised expenditure.

’Excuse me dad, your weekly groceries have gone for £78 to £89 can we give be a bit more careful in future, that’s my inheritance your blowing on Tesco finest!’

’Hi dad, sorry that holiday request has not been authorised, £2000 for a week away? That’s £2000 I could be putting towards my mortgage in a few years!’

Exactly. People are ascribing their adult emotions for their 63 year old fathers to an 18yo who has had step-siblings foisted on to him. Most kids want their parents affection and resources to be spent on them, not unrelated randoms.

How convenient, it's all on this one too. if you can't be arsed to even read the thread you're commenting on, no wonder you're advising on the wrong information.

Very bad luck on perhaps a third of the adolescents in the country, that. Marriages just do end in divorce, for a wide variety of reasons, and divorced adults do move on to new relationships. It happens.

Eighteen-year-old son in this particular set-up could be grateful his dad has paid more than absolute minimum required maintenance for him and his younger sibling, rather than grudging anything at all going to two children in exactly the same position that he is in himself, that is, not living with their father for most of their time.

Ok he’s 18 and his young emotions justify that he’s feeling jealous and worried about his dad remarrying and having two step kids. Does that mean that he’s right? That he should have any say on what his dad spends his money on? It’s understandable to feel one way, but should his dad listen to him?

It continues to be none of the eighteen-year-old son's business if his father elects to spend money his father has earned, on someone other than the eighteen-year-old as well as spending money on that eighteen-year-old. No matter what the OP may have said anywhere, the eighteen-year-old's behaviour continues to be difficult to defend. His father spent money on someone else: well, boo bleeding hoo; this does not entitle him to demand to be reimbursed for family holidays or any other sort of holiday enjoyed by someone else. Unless the other thread says that the eighteen-year-old has been living on crusts and is not getting any help from his father while at university, his behaviour remains unpleasant and dog-in-a-manger as well as intrusive and entitled.

Demanding to be reimbursed for any money spent on his father's second family is never going to be a good look, and does not deserve to succeed.

Except the actual son would have left the family home (assuming mum main parent) circa age 13 or even before. So OPs youngest, living in the family home from (how old she would have been it was on the thread but now I'm typing I can't go back and check) about age 4 will actually spend more time living with the boy's dad than he did.

Not that there's anything the boy can do about it. But you can see why that would grate on a child.

Sorry, so what? He needs to learn, as we all have to, that he can't always get what he wants. He also needs to learn that making demands of people rarely endears one to them.

Neither does claiming you have a rental property, support your own children with your work and having an "overpaying ex" as their dad.... When the truth is the actual parents can't scrape together money for just one child's single school trip and let the boys dad pay for that. Then the 12yr child old is at this boy's family wedding, not through initial invite, but because OP refused to go unless her children got invites. Her youngest played up until OP moved tables. And the 12yr old telling everyone how his new step daddy was paying for his skiing. Because he was so grateful and just needed to tell everyone that gratitude? Suuuuure...

The ex wife is chiming in about the actual parents not paying for their own kids. Cue the boy jumping on the bandwagon.

The boy sounds greedy and entitled. OP sounds precisely the same. Well suited.

“It happens” just isn’t good enough. Yes it happens that adults put their own needs ahead of their kids, hence the thousands of MN threads about “blended” families.

And no child should have to be grateful that their father is doing more than the bare minimum. Nor should be expected to have empathy for a child his father moved into their home. Neither, I’m sure is he unaware of the fact that the two children involved have a much nicer lifestyle because of his father.

What children should have for at least 18 years is their parent’s full attention.

the7Vabo
What children should have for at least 18 years is their parent’s full attention.

So that they can grow up to be spoilt brats who assume that world revolves around them? Sure. I doubt you got that, or your children got that, and I am absolutely certain that nobody in our parents' generations got that. What, no working parent giving attention to his job instead of kowtowing round the kiddies day and night?

Awkward expecting the full attention of their parents if there are two or more children in a family, though. They are not going to get it, are they: that pesky (other) kid will mean they don't get away with it.

You do write a lot of tosh.

How did that work when families has 12/13 children ?

Before they were six or so, they saw their mother in the nursery for half-an-hour each morning if she were a devoted mother and they were middle-class or above. Then they were sent away to school, or spent all their time with a governess, once they had left the nursery behind them.

If they were not middle class or above they were out at work themselves from age six or so, and saw their parents occasionally.

"If they were not middle class or above they were out at work themselves from age six or so, and saw their parents occasionally."

Please, come and talk to some of us on the Genealogy board. I would be glad to disabuse you of this notion - certainly at least as far as my own family are concerned.

Although, to be totally fair my grandparents didn't actually have 12/13 children. My father was one of seven children and my mother was one of six.

My paternal grandfather was one of seven children and my paternal grandmother one of nine.

Similarly, my maternal grandfather was one of nine children and my maternal grandmother was one seven children.

I can keep going back to earlier generations as well.

"...they were out at work themselves from age six or so, and saw their parents occasionally."

This is just so wrong that it's ludicrous. My parents and their siblings were born in the late 1930s/1940s.

My grandparents and their siblings were born between 1901 and 1928.

I can go back further if you wish.

Absolutely none of them:

"...were out at work themselves from age six or so, and saw their parents occasionally."

You're just making this up aren't you?

Perhaps you're thinking of life prior to 1880 (the Elementary Education Act 1880)?

But even prior to then, it was very common for children to be in education beyond the age of five.

For example, at the time of the 1871 Census, one of my great great grandfathers was an engine driver. Their children were at school and the oldest was then aged 12.

Or another great great grandfather who worked as an agricultural labourer and his wife (my great great grandmother) who worked as a laundress. In the 1871 census their children were at school and the eldest was then 11.

You know I didn’t mean that, that’s illogical.

So that they can grow up secure.

And yes me & my sibling did get my parents full attention when it came to parenting. And I intend to do the same for my kids. And yes I have more than one and I work. But I’m not moving a man & two kids not related to them into their family home.

But of course people want to think thats a load of tosh because they don’t want to put their own need for a relationship aside & commit properly to their kids.

My grandparents had 8 kids, one committed suicide, one died completely alone in his flat in London estranged from his entire family. But I’m sure lots of big families with committed parents get on very well. The key is committed which no one could have accused my grandmother of.

Parenting matters. You can’t just move two kids in with you & expect no consequences. Thats not fulfilling your duties to your children.

Sorry; I should have mentioned in parenthesis at the end that my post was not intended to be taken as factual any more than a claim that parents should give (each of?) their child or children their full attention should be taken too seriously.

A friend of mine made a poster for her first baby's nursery wall which read "Parents Are People Too" in handwritten blackletter. The notion that parents ought to subsume themselves utterly in their children is both ludicrous and destructive.

Jesus the drama 😂😂😂

The notion that parents ought to subsume themselves utterly in their children is both ludicrous and destructive.

And also not remotely what the poster meant.

How about look after your own kids as a bit more of a priority than someone else's, as a basic concept.

Oh, I did. They were utterly furious, turned out, that I didn't get a divorce until the last of them had left university; I ruined their lives, apparently, by staying around and being there for them pretty-much full time.

I note though that it is being assumed that the father both walked out on his children AND introduced a new wife and her two children into HIS CHILDREN'S home. It's entirely possible that not only did he not walk out, his ex left him, and that she kept the marital home because she retained primary care of their children. That last bit we do seem to have an inkling of from the OP saying the younger child "visits frequently"; I think that makes it certain that she and her children are not living in the younger child's main residence. For all we know to the contrary, his children never lived in the house where his new wife and her to children live, because that has been bought since the divorce.

But since the father is a divorced man he must be entirely despicable, and since the OP is a stepmother she must have been cruel to his children by his previous wife; this is Mumsnet, after all.

I don't think the issue is a "despicable" father.

It's the people round him and their motives. The boy has become that way because he sounds a bit spoiled, and he's watching two random kids suddenly take over the place he held, ie living with his father all/most of the time.

Plus the lovely new wife whose kids have to be invited to weddings or "she won't go" then starts moving who's sitting where at the wedding because her youngest won't do as she's told and sit down. Also claiming she's supporting her kids with her ex, but actually using her new hubby to fund their school trips and multiple holidays. She and the ex as the actual parents can't afford this at all. Then the kid makes sure he rubs it in shows his beautiful manners and gratitude directly to the existing kids, at this wedding he shouldn't have been at, sitting at a table he shouldn't be on (but OP decided otherwise by moving him to suit her daughter who she can't simply parent and tell to sit down) that "your dad's paying for my ski trip."

Grabby, crass money centred. That's the kids and OP.

Wow. I would stipulate that i am very much alive right now son. Inheritance from grandad is a given. But Inheritance from me isn't.
How about im not an atm. Why are you more concerned about how much i am worth when im dead over how much time you can spend with me whilst I am alive.
To be honest. He's jealous over the younger step kids.
There is much more going on there