Hi everybody,
First time posting on this site so please bear with me. My partner has 3 adult children, 19 year old daughter, 20 year old son and 30 year old daughter. Son and 30yo daughter are from his first relationship, and 19 daughter from the second. However things didn't work out with 19 year olds mother and she took her away when she was about 3-4 years old, never spoken to her or seen her and only got back into contact in March, 2020. The other two kids had always been in his life.
So 19 year old got kicked out from her mothers and started living with us July, 2020. I'm not going to lie things weren't great with my stepdaughter and me. Since first time meeting her I just had the weirdest feeling about her that if it was somebody I met off the street and wouldn't be my stepdaughter I would never see them again. I'm not sure if it's her energy fields that are incompatible with mine (if such thing actually does exist) or it's just maybe me, which I have accepted, we can't all be really good friends after all but I am a grown up and I respect and care about her and her opinions, I offer advice as much as I possibly can on whichever subject, its just our views are completely different on the world. But it would be boring if it all was the same :) Also there might be some resentment towards her (which is completely not her fault at all and is all on my partner) about how I got to find out about her existence. This doesn't really matter anymore as she's part of the family and me and my partner(her dad) both try to help her as much as we possibly can, I found a university which accepted her with the grades that she got from college but up until then she just kept saying I can't get into university and we just kept telling her to keep looking and she will find something. Anyways I physically showed her a universities that she can apply to and she did out of rage to prove me wrong (that's what she told her dad) and got accepted, started foundation year last year and obviously there was covid-19 so she studied from home. Fast forward to this year, she's decided to find a place to live where she's studying with other 3 girls from university. The only problem with that is rent starts from 1st of July so there was no maintenance grant in place for that so her dad payed it. I did try and tell her it was a bad idea moving out in july as where is all the money going to come from and she assured me that even if it is a mistake it is her mistake to make. So after paying out for her deposit and rent £1894.99 and spending extra for all the stuff that you would need to start comfortably living by yourself around £1500. Agreement was that she was going to pay few hundred pounds towards the rent and deposit initially paid by her dad after she received student maintenance loan (while we were just going to put it to one side for when she does need money for something, like a new phone etc.). In the meantime July she received £345, August £ 215, September £190. There are no extra bills for her to pay. She has a part time job since end of july which is great as it gives extra cash for herself and independence. Now she received her maintenance loan grant 16th of September. She received full amount of the award which is £9488 plus £1000 bursary from university for a year as household income is low under 25k yearly so she gets a full amount. We have asked both of us to clarify how much she got, but this was never revealed. So by my accounting she should have received £3496 of which £1494.99 was transferred for her rent as its quarterly rent which left her with £2001.01.Her dad asked her to send over some money towards the rent that he already paid but she refused and said she knows how to budget. I only few days ago became aware that my partner has transferred her money towards end of October which was £40, some people may say oh it's only £40 but only if they can afford it which we currently are just about able to do this. So we finally realised yesterday that all the money she's received has gone. There is no more left. She hasn't said anything to us but on Saturday she messaged her dad saying her mum told her to pay for her own phone bill as it come out at £62, to which we were horrified to hear that someone can rack up a bill like that. And it needed to be paid today as otherwise her phone would be cut-off the next day. And there it was again my instincts screaming at me that this is bs and after having conversation with my partner we reluctantly agreed to pay for her phone bill and made it clear it will be first and last time. So we asked for her mums bank details and transferred the money. Come Sunday evening my partner receives the message from her mum asking what was the money for, he replies its for the phone bill as you told her she needed to pay it this month due to it being so high again. Response he gets from mum that she has always paid her bill and been getting her shopping in due course hence she wasn't able to go and see her as every spare penny she has she sends it her daughter. So my partner then asks what happened to the money that he has sent for the phone bill and mum tells him that she sent it over to her.
I'm not surprised, I am just sad that daughter would lie like this to both mum and dad. We had plenty of situations where she was lying last year but thought we got through to her that all the lies come out and it only makes the situation worse.
So, she's spanked all the money and is lying about it to both parents. Also her mum mentioned that she gets money from her nan (mother side) as well. We all had chats with daughter about budgeting that it should be more than enough to spend £50 on a weekly shop and plus transport expenses which would be about £20 weekly bus pass. So she got the maintenance loan on 16 of september and until second week of january it would have been £117.70 weekly more than enough in my opinion. But now it seems its all gone in 6 weeks. Me and my partner have spoken about the fact that she's lied (so deceitfully) about her phone bill to get money from him is absolutely unacceptable and there needs to be consequences for this and not only that we simply can't afford to now start giving money towards her living expenses every week at best we could probably scrape extra £70 a month until things start getting better for us but at the same time why should we pay extra and on another note don't want to see her going hungry. Either way, we are both taken aback and really unsure of how to deal with the situation and how to even tell her that we know she has been lying, I'm not going to lie my partner wanted to call her there and then as he was so angry and now thinks that he is his daughters mug (this really broke my heart), but I have asked him to wait and speak to her mum first as now more than ever they need to be on the same page and nip this in the bud before its too late and for al we know it may be too late.
Please anyone how to deal with this? Maybe someone has been through the same?
Thank you so much for reading this xxx