agonyaunt | (no subject)

My husband and I, both 70, were married two years ago after living together for 20 years. When we shared our plans with his grown children, then 25 and 28, they were angry. His son demanded to see my husband’s will, which my husband showed him. In it, he leaves his entire estate to me, just as I leave mine to him. His son had hoped to inherit my husband’s New York loft and pay me an allowance. Eventually, the loft will go to his two children, and our upstate property will go to them and my daughter. Still, his children accused him angrily of not putting family first. It has now been two years since they spoke to their father. In their last conversation, my husband said he loved them and was always there to talk. Should he reach out to them, or is the onus on them to apologize? Also, should we tell them we’ve decided to sell the loft?

You probably don’t need me to tell you that your husband’s children behaved atrociously — both by counting their father’s money as if it were their own and by disrespecting your relationship of two decades. I am not shocked by this story, though. Inheritance often brings out the very worst in people.

Now, I don’t say this to excuse his children, but I also remember being in my mid-20s: It can be dispiriting to be a young adult without many financial prospects and with everything costing a fortune. So, I empathize (a little) with their grasping at a loft they had long expected to inherit. I am also surprised that your husband has let two years lapse without reaching out to his kids. They are still his children — bad behavior and all.

If I were your husband and wanted to reconcile, I would call them to re-establish contact. Be the adult! They may be embarrassed by their bad behavior or may have dug into their greed — or somewhere in between. If the calls go reasonably well, he can invite them to dinner and start rebuilding his relationships with them. Pro tip: Leave out the loft for now. It’s been the source of enough drama already.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/17/style/stepchildren-wills-estates.html

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Wow. So, on the surface, LW's stepkids - who have been her de facto stepkids since they were children - are obviously appallingly rude.

And that may be all there is to this.

However, in the two years since this happened, neither child has had a conversation with Dad about... anything? Neither side has called the other to smooth things over? And this even though in the end, the kids get the property anyway, though they may have to wait a few years?

I wonder if that complaint about "not putting family first" actually has some weight behind it. I mean, it shouldn't, because his partner of 20 years is family - but I wonder if there's some backstory where he was not an involved parent and this is just more of the same.

Not that it justifies that particular tantrum, but it may explain where the heck it came from.

Yeah, if they've lived together 20 years, they've lived together since the kids were 5 and 8. So "what has your relationship been with these kids you've known since they were in grade school" seems relevant to, well, literally everything.

I initially missed that -- that this woman has always been their de facto stepmother in the kids' lives.

And if he wasn't a present parent (and it sounds like he wasn't really, because LW doesn't talk about them like kids she watched grow up or in any way parented) then they have even less reason to count on an inheritance.

Exactly. The phrasing makes it sound like they don't know one another well, or met as adults, until you do the math. Of course it's possible they've had less contact against their will, but the rest of the letter doesn't really give that feel.

The kids were probably also pretty rude, unless half the conversation was left out, but I'm betting it didn't come out of the blue.

Edited 2023-05-23 15:51 (UTC)

I also wonder what's being left out. Something like "dad had affair & moved in with affair partner and vanished from kids' lives" has a different feel than "amicable divorce and involved dad, stepmom serving as primary mom figure" (and those are possible extremes; it could be anything in between). Or if dad had promised the loft to his kids (possibly in "exchange" for being an active dad) and then decided otherwise without explanation.

Or the kids are just rude entitled people ...