WWYD - ex-wife and husband funeral

[TuxedoMoggy]

Not me, but posting on behalf of a good friend who knows I am doing so.

Friend’s DH recently passed away. Friend was second wife, was not OW. Is SM to her late DH’s 2 DC who are in their early-mid twenties, and both have partner / long term gf/bf.

The WWYD is about the funeral - her SDC want their mum, the late DH’s exW, to come. Friend would rather exW did not - exW caused lots of trouble when SDC were younger, was difficult to communicate with, tried to turn kids against their Dad, repeatedly messed up agreed arrangements etc. exW ended the marriage following an affair that she had (SDC don’t know this).

My friend’s late DH did his best to rise above exW nonsense and never let on to his DC how hard their mum was making things, didn’t create difficulties or call out her lies in front of the kids. So they don’t know how hard she made things. Once they were out of school things got better as he could communicate with them on their own terms and therefore had very little interaction with his ex for the last few years.

So now sadly he has died and there is a possible conflict as the SDC have talked about wanting their mum coming to the funeral. She’s the last person my friend wants there. But she knows that although she is the widow and NOK, executor etc so probably gets to call the shots, the kids are also bereaved and have rights and feelings about being supported at the funeral. They do have their partners though.

She’s really torn about what to do or how to do it - she gets on relatively well with the SDC but their mum was always on a pedestal for them, she can’t (and wouldn’t expect to) compete but it’s not an easy thing to broach with them of course if she were to say no to the exW coming.

any thoughts very welcome please.

I was in a similar situation - except my DH died during lockdown and his kids are middle-aged.

They asked that his ex be allowed to represent them at the funeral. By then, we were on reasonable terms, but there were many problems previously. (Example: when DH and I got married, she and her boyfriend attempted to gatecrash our honeymoon.)

I agreed that she could be at the funeral and she was mentioned in the eulogy. I told the kids - truthfully - that I'd expected her to want to attend and had no problem with it.

However...I discovered that it had been her idea that she should represent the kids. 3 days after the funeral, she turned up on my doorstep asking what I was doing with my husband's ashes. (She's currently with her 4th man if you count my husband. DH and I were married 27 yrs.) There were other things.

She lives in the next village. She claimed she was just out walking the dog...I think she got her latest man to drop her off. (He took her too and from the funeral.)

I later found out that her plan had been to persuade me to place DH's ashes in his parents' grave - close to where the ex now lives with her latest man for half the week.

I had DH's DIL telling me how "devastated" the ex was.

About a month after the funeral, I had a bit of a meltdown. Kids have gone NC.

I expected the ex to want to attend the funeral, and I think I did the right thing letting her...but I should have set clearer boundaries with other matters. If I hadn't been so poleaxed, I'd have blown up sooner.

I don't know what to advise your friend, OP.

If the ex attends, the wife might not want her to sit down the front. Have family or friends ready to move her if necessary. (That wasn't an issue in my case - only 20 allowed at the funeral and the ex sat the other side of the crem.)

Does the wife have children of her own to support her down the front? (I have no children of my own. My cousins supported me.)

Not quite the same situation but my DH's exW came to my MIL's funeral, even though they had been divorced for 25 years at that time. She was still her children's grandmother and was her own MIL for 15 years so I felt she had a 'place' there. I would have preferred she hadn't spent quite so long at the wake but it was not worth worrying about.

The reality is she doesn't get to unilaterally invite or not invite people to the funeral. The family can include anyone they want to. The family being her and his children.

Funerals are open events so she can turn up with her children regardless of whatever she says.

Best not to make it a hill you die on or it will cause more distress at a difficult time.

Well, she can stop the adulterous ex if she's organising the funeral. I'm guessing that you mean "morally". That was the attitude that I took - I let DH's ex attend - and I regretted it in the end, in that it gave her the idea that she could interfere in other matters.

The OP's friend needs to be ready to put firm boundaries in place if she allows the ex to attend.

For example, is she going to allow the ex to sit down the front with the children? Will the ex, therefore, be in the party thanking people for attending?

They might not know that she's a cheat. My husband's kids certainly weren't aware of their mother's behaviour. She painted him as having walked out on her for no reason.

Honestly I'd let them have their mum at the funeral - they've lost their dad and probably need all the support they can get.

What I would do in your shoes as her friend is attend and act as a barrier - if the ex wife tries to talk to your friend or upset her in any way, you can divert that or put a stop to it - allowing your friend to grieve her husband.

It is a show of respect and she should absolutely be there as he exw and the Mother of his DC.

I don't think it's a tough one at all. Of course the kids can invite her if they want to.

Thanks all - just to be clear again that this isn’t me but my friend, who is grieving and devastated and working her way through her new reality. So the sense check is helpful as I didn’t think she could really say no to exW attending the funeral (and agree this would only create issues with the SDC and be unfair to them) but I agree that a compromise of not coming to the wake might be ok.

I can be the wingman at keeping things in check if needed. I suspect / hope that in reality even if exW does come to the wake she and the SDC will take a corner and not mingle. But there will be people exW knows so I imagine my friend is worried that somehow exW will be chatting away with old mates etc rather than doing the decent thing and keeping a low profile.

Funny how people assume that if someone ever cheated they will be forever shunned. I’ve known quite a few couples split up because of cheating and after the initial shock wears off the reality is that the adulterer isn’t actively removed from society! And no one is rude enough to comment or gossip openly at events where previous partners pop up. I imagine for many people her affair isn’t common knowledge - not everyone announces a separation by also telling everyone that someone cheated!

That's not the case. Particularly if it's a crematorium, people can be excluded from a funeral. The person in charge is the person who organises the funeral with the funeral director.

Having said that, as I stated previously, I welcomed my husband's ex to his funeral and I had her included in the eulogy.

I later realised that I'd possibly been too kind. I should have paid heed to a couple of the barmier things that happened prior to the service.

I did mean morally… although thinking about it, depending on where you’re having the funeral you may not be able to exclude someone. I don’t think you could stop someone turning up at a church for a funeral could you? I guess my general point is that a funeral is for people to remember and pay their respects, I don’t think anyone has the right to choose who does that.

Thank you for acting as wingman. That's exactly what is needed.

Were I live it wouldn't even be a discussion anyone attends a funeral and they aren't invite at all.

Personally I would want my SS to have who ever he feels he needs to support him. Dh might be my husband but he is his father. I can remarry. He won't have a father ever again.

And so what if she mingles. Unless she is weeping over his coffin its hardly inappropriate. She was a part of his life & history. Funny how one of the biggest challenges people have with blended families is accepting that and it even extends to death.

Of course the ex wife should be able to attend the funeral. The dc have as much right to decide who attends their dad’s funeral as his wife does. I’m surprised this is even a question being asked.

It's certainly difficult to exclude them from a burial.

Some years back, I attended a relative's funeral. To my horror, I saw a former of friend of his - a criminal (who later died in prison) sitting on a bench in the cemetery, watching the burial.

That's what I mean. Why are adults kids not told the truth and just allowed to believe that their other parent just left?

My DSS treated my DH like shit because he believed the lies his mother told. He's now an adult and figured a lot of stuff out for himself but we also didn't lie or cover up the truth about his mum.

It depends on how it's done.

It sound like your friend married a true gent. It would be an honour to how he lived his life to let the ex come. It calls for extreme generosity to allow the dc to retain the image they have of their mum but one which he created.
I'm not sure I could be that good myself tho tbh

It's quite possible the ex wife didn't cheat and that's why the husband told his new wife not to mention it. It's very common for men to claim a marriage broke down because the ex cheated when actually it was him.

Whether ex wife cheated/was awful to her dh/lied go the kids, now is not the time to explore it.
It's really hard but i think if the friend follows her dhs lead and rises above, extends the invite that would be the right thing to do.

Possible, I guess.

In the case of my husband's ex, he was trying to be civilised. However, his ex had shared a room with her boyfriend at a work do - work colleagues knew all about the situation. The only people in the dark were the kids. (They thought that a "friend" had become her partner.)

More than 20 years later, exasperated that his ex had painted quite a different picture, DH tried to tell one of the kids what had actually happened. Her exact words were "I don't want to know that."

If the mum's on a pedestal, it's hard for the kids to shift that mindset.

Unless they post bouncers at the door you really cannot stop people from attending a funeral even if it's in a crematorium. If you try to get them ejected it would make you look very petty, especially with the bereaved children of the deceased and would cause a big scene. So in reality it's not a good idea.

Funeral directors are unlikely to want to get into throwing people out despite what they say. They are a business after all with social media reputations to think about.

So reality is, you don't have any experience of actually doing it you just think you may have been able to.

If he worked hard to conceal their animosity in life, then your friend should continue that for him in death.

Easy to say though. My DH is the only thing standing between me and telling the SDCs what a twat their mum has been to us over the years.

I concede that it might be difficult.

A different situation, but for my husband's lockdown funeral the only people who were allowed to enter were the people whose names and addresses had been given to the funeral director.

At the beginning of the recording of the webcast, there is actually footage of my husband's ex leaving after being spoken to by a council Bereavement Services employee - she'd walked past the notice telling people to sign in at the door. (She came back in straight after doing that.)