DP wants my teenager to contribute for food

[Anuta77]

I have a 16 year old son who was abandonned by his father (no maintenance) et lives with me full time. He recently started working, a few hours Saturday and Sunday on minimum salary.
My DP has 2 adult children (18, 22 and 24) for whom he still pays maintenance. The 18 year old still visits us EOW.
We have a 7 year old together.

We have a common account where we contribute 50-50 and the common expenses come out from there, so my DP considers that he pays for my son because his contribution covers half of his food and electricity bills. I pay my son's other expenses from my personal account. I also pay some of our common child's expenses myself and sometimes pay for some of DP things, just because I'm the one who likes shopping. DP never shops for anything interesting for me, so I never get anything personal from him. I also invite us to restaurants occasionnally and contribute more if we go on vacation. That's sort of my contribution because my DP pays for my son. I also contributed to our common son's study account all by myself. DP says that he has no money to contribute because he pays for my teenager (doesn't matter that his 24 year old should have been financially independant by now, but he's taking his time travelling instead of finishing his diploma and still needs at least 2 years to get it and the 22 year old didn't even enter the uni for the same reasons).

I also agreed to buy an expensive electric car so that my DP could go pick up and/or visit his children in another town and he still uses it for work purposes and discounts expenses on it as a freelancer. I use it too, but only when he doesnt need it. We paid for this car 7 years 50-50.

I also can't imagine how we would calculate my son's portion of food and electricity. Not to mention my DP's daughter's, even if she comes less often, if my son would pay for his expenses, why should I pay for my SD? Just by principle. I think it would be super messy and ridiculous. And disgusting.

My DP always made somewhat more than me, but this year has been more difficult for him, however when I made less than him, I just managed.

Any advice on how to manage this situation?

Personally I couldn't imagine living like this. In my view, all income goes into a pot, essentials are paid out of that pot, some is saved and whats left we spend. I trust dp to not go overboard and anything over approx £250 we will discuss begore spending.

Dp and I both have kids, mine are here more than his but I get maintenance from their dad and ofc he pays maintenance for his. As the higher earner I pay the lions share of the bills but dp has greater flexibility so picks up more of the 'running around/activities' type stuff but there is no 'tally' of 'you owe me for this, I paid for your child's that' it would do me in.

He sounds resentful of your DS, is there a wider issue? Do they get on?

All of our kids get an allowance in return for a rota of basic chores, except the eldest who pays (a small amount) of board as they are an adult working full time.

So you’re not married.
And he is freaking out at paying for his own younger child, despite still paying maintenance for the older ones.

I think you need a review of how much you are each spending on what.
Put in all the bits you’re paying for people ‘out of good will’.
Calculate a rough amount that your ds costs you in food (if you’re been generous 1/3 of your food bill).. I’m absolutely sure you’re going to be better off properly going 50/50.
And you’re going to stop him from moaning about him paying for your ds food.

fwiw I imagine the 22 and 24yo are working. Is he still paying maintenance? Does he not see the difference between an adult working full time laying a contribution (totally fair) vs a 16yo who is paid less and is doing only a few hours?

If he is freaking out about his finances, he can’t take it out on his step son. That’s just unfair.

I can only imagine the misery your elder son has had to endure living with this "man". What possessed you? Kick him to the curb and try to make it up to your boy.

I could understand this from 18 years old as some sort of general family rule - but not at 16.

16yr olds should not contribute. He is earning peanuts and it'll just be pocket money.

Your dp sounds absolutely awful op, sorry.

Exactly, I couldn't agree more. Preparing him for the future? No, the DH is being mean.

OP, pretend someone else wrote your posts and read back through them, looking for the red flags.

You tried to have a discussion about finances, and your DP deflected on to your child.
You paid 50:50 for a car he uses, you also pay for meals out, to make up for the fact that he pays for your son. That's been going on for 7 years; so for 7 years he's been making you feel beholden to him.

If he is having money problems then unless he has signed a legally binding contract from the courts stating he has to pay maintenance whilst his dc go to university he doesn’t have to, so he can lower payments or stop altogether.

It depends if your DS is still in school/college for me, I wouldn't expect my DDs to contribute at 16 while they were still in education even if they had a part time job.
If they decided to drop out then that's different, I'd expect them to be looking for a full time job and contributing a bit towards bills (mostly to teach them about budgeting and value of money)

When you were 16?!

Maybe it's when people left school at 16 and earned a full wage. Otherwise it's awful!

My mother took 50% of my salary until the day I got married when I started working.

Before that my weekend holiday job money was mine to buy my own clothes, go out with friends etc. I never had any pocket money. I remember sweet money on a Saturday when I was little.

I have 3 DC and my DH doesn’t have any DC of his own. All our money goes into one pot and is shared. When we first moved in together I started trying to figure out the amounts so that he was only paying a fair and smaller contribution, and he told me not to be ridiculous and that he would share bills and food etc and the DCs costs and everything else (the DC also get some maintenance from their DF but not much).

My DH currently earns more than me and has done for most of our relationship - but I brought much more to the marriage in terms of house deposit. I currently only work part-time to be there for DC too, but I supported DH at one point through sickness when I worked and he couldn’t - that’s just the way it is, we support each other through good and bad.

Your DH sounds grasping and unpleasant.

Why is he still paying towards his 2 eldest? I think he needs to look into this.

What costs are there for youngest. Is it just general living expenses or is it private school fees?

I don't think he is being a good step father. Presumably DS can now buy stuff for himself from his wages. He could also start saving for driving lessons, uni if that's what he wants. So best he does that?

It’s sad he has picked on his step son. I don't think I would want to stay with someone who treated my child like an outsider whilst subbing elder kids age 24.

I will never understand how a parent can put a partner over their child. Your son deserves better not that he'll get it because he clearly is not your priority.

Things like this piss me off, your son needs you and he should be your number one priority, I couldn't get past this mealy mouthed grasping behaviour from some wanker who wants to dictate terms,it doesn't take a genius to realise what sort of man he is and if you put up with shit like this then I'm sorry but you should be ashamed of yourself and if you let this go and your son distances himself from you in the future then it serves you right.

Any advice on how to handle the situation? Yep. Tell him to fuck off and dump his sorry arse.

Just remind everyone, the DS is like to be earning little over £6 an hour for a handful of hours on a weekend.
That is pocket money, even if he handed over ever penny it won't make a dent in household expenses.
Let him spend it on treats, hobbies, travel and socialising.

This

He's gaslighting you when he tells you to "stop asking for more money". You haven't. What you've done is tell him that your joint expenses have gone up and you both need to contribute more to the joint pot.

Your shared DC education fund and other expenses should be coming out of that joint pot too.

He should accept the joint expenses have raised and happily contribute more. If he can't afford it, he needs to raise the necessary money by stopping funding his two adult DC or selling the car.

It absolutely takes the piss that shared DC uni fund and other ad-hoc DC-related expenses are paid solely by you from personal spends. Yet the expenses for a car, which you can only drive on the few occasions he doesn't want to drive it at that day/time, including purchase and repair expenses, all come out of the joint pot! That car should have been his personal car paid for by him, that he lets you borrow from time to time and you put some fuel in it when you do. That would have been reasonable.

He's definitely getting the better end of the financial situation and now he's twisting it round on you to make out you're grabby and also is refusing to discuss the finances with you unless your eldest DC starts paying towards family finances. It's totally unreasonable and doesn't match with the statement of him being a good/kind/fair etc person.

He's none of those things, he's treating you as a cash cow, which is appalling, and now he wants to do the same with your DS and he's using emotional abuse tactics to achieve it. He's not a good man at all. He may do some good things, but his underlying beliefs are that he gets what he wants even if everyone else loses out and that this is fine.

Your DS no doubt knows, whether DH has made comments to him or not, and has got a weekend job to get out of the house he's not entirely welcome in as much as to earn some money.

It all depends on what he's doing the rest of the week? Is he in eduction?
In our house ( blended family) there's no rent for our adult children whilst they are at college/uni but once that stops we expect them to work full time and pay rent to us.
The context is what else he's doing is important

At 16yo, he has to be in some form of education (until he is 18yo).
He is only doing some bits of work at the weekend - on a much lower wage than an adult MW too.
Which is why asking him to ‘pay his way’ is so crap.

I can't believe what I read on here at times.

He's 16, don't be ridiculous.

He clearly resents paying for your son and therefore does not love him.