To feel like my bro’s fiancée is being golddigger-like?

[worriedsstr]

My brother lives abroad and has done for a while. He met his fiancée there, they are getting married, and that is the country they will continue to live in after they get married.

My parents are planning to buy him a flat there. The laws in the country they live in / where the flat will be are such that, broadly speaking, anything you own before marriage isn’t divisible in a divorce, whereas anything bought, earned or gifted after marriage will considered marital property and divided. So, in very simple terms, if my parents buy my brother the flat before he gets married, it would remain his if they were ever to divorce. If they buy it after he gets married, it could potentially become a marital asset and be divided between them.

His fiancée has asked him to wait until they’re married before the flat is bought, because she wants to feel financially secure and wants half of the flat to be hers in the event of a divorce. My brother is completely happy to go along with this, so that’s where the situation currently stands.

I have to admit I’m quite concerned and I find the whole thing bizarre. I completely understand wanting financial security within a marriage, but I struggle with the idea of deliberately waiting until you’re married for a property that is being bought for one spouse by their parents, specifically because that means it could become divisible if they divorce. It’s a gift from HIS (our) parents to their son, it’s not something he has “earned” with her support or they’ve earned as a couple. They haven’t yet been told this but I know my parents will feel exactly the same way.

Maybe I’m looking at it completely the wrong way, but AIBU to think my parents should just buy their son the flat before he gets married, rather than waiting until afterwards when, under the laws of the country they will actually be living in, it could potentially become a marital asset?

Parents buying the house themselves - sensible.
Help with wedding bills and school fees to be repayable at 50% in the event of a divorce (which could be due to your brother’s bad behaviour) - completely unreasonable. Vindictive, as an earlier poster said.

It's not unreasonable to want financial security and she has been open and honest about her reasons. Plus, this is her home. She should own half. Everyone should own their own home. However, if the parents do want to gift their child something, they have the right to and she can always buy her half later / pay each month towards her share, surely? Then again.. I don't know. I wouldn't want to marry a man who didn't want to provide for me anyway.

School fees probably not as that would be for grandchildren.

The wedding, also probably not as Id see that as a gift to the couple not just my child.

There's a big difference in protecting or wanting to protect material money and giving money thats theres no material return gained.

No I don’t think that at all. I do have a problem with the OP laughing at the thought of her future SIL being responsible for 50 per cent of all debt like some gotcha moment. It’s crass and vulgar. And I stand by my comments about the brother. If he felt his future wife was a CF then what does that say about him that he will go ahead and marry her? It’s gross.

OP very sensible of you to be asking the question.

Unless it's a country where it's also illegal for non-residents to own property, the parents should buy it for him now, but keep it in their names and wait to see how the marriage pans out/how the couple manage with young kids before transferring title. I mean, things could go wrong in the marriage at any stage but the sensible thing to protect your brother would be to keep it in his family of origin.

If he tells her this now, he'll find out if she's just after a flat and security, or whether she really cares.

Wow.

A decent man out there who wants to enter marriage as an equal to his wife and isn’t considering how to screw her over through divorce before they even marry.

You should be proud of him - not against his decision.

That was the original plan! Just helping them with the wedding as a nice thing to do, no loans etc but the DIL’s greed at wanting a “guaranteed” half a flat has led my parents to structure it as debt. After all, she wanted to have something divisible in case of divorce, so she got it - debt! It’s their way of nipping her gold digging tendencies in the bud

It’s bizarre to me that you are treating this woman (who is soon to be your sister in law and may well become the mother of your niece and nephews) with so much venom. It isn’t very emotionally intelligent.

My paternal grandmother tried shit like this with my mother. I never met her. My dad didn’t bother to pick her ashes up from the crem. Good luck 👍

Please god the future DIL runs for the hills (and future ones too). I wouldn’t want anything to do with this family

OP seems to really dislike her future SIL. Such nasty comments about her is quite telling.

I agree, it’s all really quite nasty. OP will be back here in a few years posting about how they never see her brother and his kids (and it will be all his wife’s fault, of course).
Not really the way to welcome someone into the family.