DSD’s new partner is now telling DH to get legal advice about our house

[BetLynchsEyes]

I can't believe how quickly my last thread filled up. I woke up to find it at 1000 posts which was a bit of a surprise.

Thank you to those posters who were supportive. It has been a difficult time.

Things have taken a downward turn. I honestly thought this couldn’t get any more ridiculous, but apparently it can.
DH has had another message from DSD early this morning. She said she and her partner have been discussing the situation and have decided they are going to get legal advice. Apparently he thinks the agreement we have in place “might not mean what I think it means” if DH and I ever divorced. Her partner is not a solicitor, by the way. He works in finance, I think. But apparently he “knows enough to know Dad shouldn’t just accept this.”

So now the man who has been in her life for about five minutes is apparently advising her on my marriage, my house and my legal arrangements.

DSD has told DH he needs to get his “own independent legal advice” because she thinks he has been “stitched up.” She also said that if he divorces me, he may be able to get more than his current share and “at least protect something for the future.”

I cannot believe I am typing this. This has gone from a nasty dinner joke to his daughter and her new partner discussing whether my husband should divorce me to improve her future inheritance position.

DH is livid. Properly livid this time. He has replied saying his marriage is not up for discussion, his financial arrangements are not her partner’s business, and if she continues down this road, there will be no conversation until she can speak respectfully.

I feel sick, but also weirdly relieved because at least DH can now see exactly what I have been dealing with. This was never about a joke. It was about entitlement. And now her partner has poured petrol on it.

They both sound like entitled little shits! How awful for your husband OP, to find out his daughter is vile.

I work in contentious probate and if you don't make up with your step-daughter in your lifetime, I imagine she will cause your children endless headaches and enormous legal fees when she puts in a caveat and disputes their entitlement to the property upon your death.

Unbelievable!

This isn't a prenup. It is to do with property title and who has what percentage of an interest in it.

A family member of mine bought a property almost outright with an inheritance. Her partner put in something like 5% to pay the remainder. His interest in the property is protected, but only up to that amount based on changes in property prices. So if they split up, that's the percentage of the property he would get.

Unfortunately it seems that she is a very grabby person mixed with a huge amount of entitlement.

You and your DH have burst her future wealth bubble and she is unraveling.

Has she always had a very easy life, things handed to her with very little graft?

Sorry to say but it sounds like she is not a very nice person which must be hard for you and particularly your DH.

@BetLynchsEyes well done on legally protecting your DC. There are so many threads on here where DC miss out on vast amounts of money as everything goes to the step-parent when their parent dies first.

Really?

It's no-one's place to know what money will be left to them and there's no reason to know it anyway. So much can happen - people can outlive their children, have care home costs, find a new partner, or a multitude other things. And it's beyond crass to have a conversation, the starting point of which is, when you die what do I get?

I just wanted to comment that numerous posters have stated that if the OP died before her husband, then he would have the right to stay in their home until his death. This is only the case if that provision is made in the will. It's not an automatic right.

There are a number of posters who clearly don't believe this thread (or the last one). I suggest they report it to MNHQ instead of dropping thinly veiled hints and comments.

Oh dear. Maybe catch up a bit next time before posting.

Calling out entitled bratty behaviour from an adult was the right thing to do and clearly from the daughters actions it was way more then a joke.

The OP isn't in the wrong here entitled behaviour from a 27 year old is.

@YoBetty depending which country you are in that doesn’t always count in a divorce. If you aren’t married and split that sort of ownership does usually stand, but if married and an inheritance is put into the marital home then it could be seen as a marital asset and split per financial settlement in divorce

Bloody hell. Your DSD needs to wind her neck in big time. I'm not surprised you're DH is livid.

It wasn’t a joke though , was it? It was part of DSD’s financial plan.

Unfortunately this kind of money grabbing behaviour over wills is not uncommon in my experience. In some ways it is helpful now to understand just how bad family could be have before you get to older age. You have clearly focused on a will, also be careful on power of attorney. My son got DH with dementia to sign a power of attorney without his knowledge so that he could access his assets and it took court action to remove it. I would make sure you have both health and wellbeing and financial power of attorneys in place. Make your own children your own POAs and make then fully aware that your SD has designs on your money so that they can manage this difficult situation. I would also recommend a period of limited contact and reflection.

“Well, don’t get too attached, half of it will be mine one day.”

What absolutely shocking thing to say to someone. The implication is that if your DH were to pass first she would throw you out of your home so she can have whats 'hers'. I would never speak to someone again who made threats like that to me at my dinner table.

I would actually go to a lawyer to look into the best way to ensure she could not cause trouble for my children when they inherit. A trust is probably the best bet. Be extremely wary of this woman she sounds quite unhinged and dangerous.

I think Littlecrake is right. If your husband is neither very ill nor very elderly an inheritance is not a matter of urgency. I think the boyfriend in finance has suggested asking her father to equity release in order to provide an "early inheritance" of a chunky house deposit. And the "don't get too comfortable" comment arose because if OP is younger and has the right to remain in the house after her husband's death this might be harder to arrange. Finding out that OP's house isn't going to be sold if OP's husband dies and even if it was half the money isn't earmarked for his daughter has seriously thrown a spanner in their planned property purchase

This is fucking wild OP.

Shes basically wishing away her dad’s life so she can get her hands on what she feels she is owed and has spat her dummy out that it’s less than she thought.

Maybe she should earn her own deposit?! I’d saved my own deposit by her age (a couple of years ago so houses weren’t massively cheaper). What a cheeky grifting cow.

Hopefully your husband has a spine and won’t give her and her entitled parasite of a partner a single penny. Crossing my fingers for you.

In my relative's case - England. The paperwork is watertight, especially since the inheritance didn't go to her direct, she received it via a Deed of Variation. Her parent inherited it, and signed it over to her before the estate was distributed. The deeds are in her sole name.

You are right that it is very difficult. The problem is that it is also very expensive and very uncertain, specially if the person contesting the will is prepared to lie through their teeth. I went through this after my mother died, leaving everything except £30,000 to me. My horrible sibling contested on the grounds that they were actually in contact with our DM 'secretly because Andouilette wouldn't have allowed it' (they were not), that they are disabled (they are not), that DM had been supporting them (nope), that DM was senile (not when the will was written) and that they were cut out because DM was homophobic (not in the slightest).
Unfortunately defending a will can be uncertain as it is utterly at the whim of a single judge and no appeals are allowed. On that basis we went to mediation. My sibling was claiming 60% from the estate of a woman they had not spoken to for 20 years (their choice). There was also no evidence of anything they had claimed. Ultimately they received around 7%.
So all that for a not very good return. The whole thing almost broke me because of the level of utter foulness and lies.
OP I am so glad that you have taken every step to protect your assets and so sorry that you and your DH are going through this. As I suggested in your first thread I think the two of you should take a little holiday and go somewhere really lovely. All my very best wishes to you.

It is best to have this all out in the open now.

In a close friends family, they lived in a big house owned by the maternal grandparents. The mum died and the dad remarried. He didn’t tell his new wife or her children that he didn’t own the house. When he died, it was a huge shock to her and her children that she didn’t inherit the house (by that stage it was in a trust fund managed by my friend, her brother and her aunt as the maternal grandparents had died).

The second wife and her children were very angry and tried every legal route to get the house (it was worth a few million).

[musing vaguely]..... one of our neighbours was obsessed about what he would inherit from his father. To the point that whenever his father spent any money on anything (carers, adapted shower, wheelchair, day trips) our neighbour would get really upset and tell him 'you are spending my inheritance'. He would also talk about what he would do with 'his inheritance'. Which amounted to putting on a wraparound veranda on his house and buy a landrover. A decade later he inherited, and put on his precious veranda, and bought his precious landrover and refused to buy his father's grave a headstone because it was too expensive. Then his early 20s son -when our neighbour was speculating about taking a cruise- snapped at him 'You are spending MY inheritance' and our neighbour was aghast with horror and distress.

Reap what you sow. The DSDs' greed will hopefully come back to bite her. If I were the OP's DH I'dtell her his small % is now going to the cat's home.

This saga is exactly the reason I would never put my assets and my children’s future at risk, over some loser bloke with nothing to show for himself, with grabby, resentful kids with unresolved issues over their parent’s divorce in tow. Better to stay unmarried and not to co-mingle assets and finances. All the watertight legal arrangements in the world don’t stop chancers trying to make your life a misery, wearing you down until you just pay them to go away. Best not to give them any kind of foothold in the first place.

I think that rather than admitting the she was wrong to make a bad taste "joke", you DSD is trying to prove that her "expectation" was not misplaced, effectively doubling down to avoid an apology.
Of course what she is doing is placing a value on her relationship with her father and his happiness. She has also admitted that she has placed him on the conveyor belt to her inheritance!
I hope she has many, many years to grow-up and rebuild her relationship and not just marinade herself in resentment.

Exactly. What OP and many people don't realise is that even frivolous legal proceedings brought by the step-daughter against her kids will cost an enormous amount of money to defend and often there is nothing to inherit after all the legal fees are paid. Proceedings take years to resolve.