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.

This. I never meant that a parent shouldn’t have a job, other kids, hobbies etc etc

But if you are going to move a new partner plus her two kids in with you while your own kids are still kids you need to proceed carefully. Because a child who wants to be with their dad may feel he now can’t relax in his dad’s home, and may resent the step children and feel that dad has created family 2.0 and feel pushed out.

And the way OP behaved about the wedding wasnt ideal. The whole, I couldn’t go to a wedding my kids aren’t. Her invite to the wedding was as a plus one to the groom’s brother. There was no obvious need for her children to be at it, but the Op seemingly can’t accept her DC not being as much as part of the family as the groom’s nephews. And then asking SS to swap seats away from his own father & aunt at his uncles’s wedding because a 9 year old who wasn't originally invited couldn’t sit down.

It’s not that surprising he’s lashing out.

I am unsure I would classify unjustified (and unjustifiable) demands to see his father's accounts and to be reimbursed, after his father's death, for any money spent on his father's wife and children as "lashing out". It's too calculated.

It's also stupid unless what he wants is to cause his father to stop helping him financially. Perhaps he wants to make a martyr of himself....

Such a weird way if looking at it. The poor dh. His life is not a zero sum game. He is married to OP and wishes to share his house, life, food, money with her and the people she lives with and loves. Thats as it should be. If he didn’t want to do that he wouldn’t have married her they would have kept everything separate.

There is a real weird fear of the OP’s children as sort if cuckoos in the nest pushing out or cannibalizing the dh’s first family. But what if he just loves them and doesn’t want to live with class distinctions in his house. Doesn’t want to treat his wife and her children as jumped up second class passengers who snuck into first class?

Its his money. Earned or received from the trust after his first marriage ended. Why all this rage at OP and no contempt for the first wife for not earning enough after the divorce to gratify her son’s greed?

Agree it’s stupid, I struggle to see how it can be stupid & calculated at the same time. He’s 18, he doesn’t have life experience, he’s probably needs help dealing with his emotions and figuring out what is reasonable to expect and what isn’t.

The Op is well into adulthood with two children of her own, yet she decided she couldn’t go to her partners brothers wedding because her children weren’t invited. I don’t think the 18 year old is the only one at fault here.

The 18 year and his mother are no doubt very aware that not only the Op but also her kids have had a lifestyle upgrade thanks to DH which she describes as “inevitable”, and want to ensure that his biological children are protected. That’s not entirely unreasonable.

And the way the grandad set up the financial arrangement it seems keeping an asset in the family mattered to him.

They all want a piece of DH.

Maybe she didn't want to leave her children (of an age at which they ought not to be left alone) to their own devices and didn't want to dump them on a childminder. We know her residence has been in another country; it may be that she lacks family in England on whom to foist her children.

There are quite a few people who prefer not to go to family weddings without their children, particularly if as second wife they will be made to feel sub-standard by their husband's previous family. I wouldn't want to myself, come to that, with or without my children.

Making demands and trying to police someone really is not the way to persuade them to look on one with favour; picking on members of his present family in an unpleasant way is rather more likely to incline him against the person or people doing the picking-on. And pushing someone around about how he is allowed to spend the money he has earned is objectionable in the extreme; I think the husband is saintly for not telling his bratty son in short words what to do with his demands and indeed himself. He clearly must care a lot more for the son than the son does for him: it's easy (as we read here all the time) for a man to walk away and do the minimum for a previous family, and he has not done that.

The son knows the terms of his grandfather's will; he knows the income from that "not-a-trust" is not his, only the capital. He needs to pull his neck in, apologise for his intrusive unpleasantness, and hope he has not made his father resolve to give him the money that has already been promised but not offer anything more.

Oh, and "And the way the grandad set up the financial arrangement it seems keeping an asset in the family mattered to him.": it has never been suggested that the asset (the grandfather's assets) will not remain in the family: it will be divided among his grandchildren. What the son wants is money that was not his grandfather's.

No one suggested she leave her children alone and people use childcare every single day of the week in a completely BAU non dramatic manner. And they have their own father.

The OP is well able to make her own demands including ask step son to leave his table at a family wedding because her 9 year wouldn’t sit down while hot food was being served.

There is plenty of bratty & entitled behaviour to go around.

That's a very telling response.

OP is greedy. The boy is greedy.

But all you see is "rage at OP"

Interesting...

Why interesting? Greedy is not an objective statement here but a subjective one. Interesting!

There are clearly two schools of thought here.
Some are views of a current wife and some are views of an x wife.

And some are the views of someone who is in neither position with regards to children, but has strong feelings about invasions of privacy and gross bad manners....

I quite agree with you.