At least the article doesn't play into the evil stepmother syndrome!

DH and I wrangled this one for ages, finally he agreed that our estate gets divided 50/50, 50% goes to my kids and 50% goes to his. I worked too hard for too many years to have my life's finances be shared with the evil skids!

This poor lady. By some miracle I knew to get a pre-nup and, after observing DH's always-accommodating behavior toward his son, I know I've done the right thing by setting up a trust that will take care of DH and allow SS to fend for himself, which he's very capable of doirg. DH swears he would respect my wishes in distrbuting my property, but I have seen no evidence that he's consulted an attorney about how to do so and every evidence that his crotch fruit comes first. Nope, nope, and nope. The nottion that the lady in the post should split her wealth among the new adults in her life is nuts.

Making the decision to set things up as I have was not easy, It's too late for this lady to demand a pre-nup, but she certainly can woman up and establish a trust that will distribute her wealth as she sees fit. In my case, I cannot let DH know what I've done, and anyone contemplating a move similar to mine should consider keeping quiet as well.

It's refreshing to see this advice. These types of questions are edited from the original and it might even be more than one question combined together. So I do take it with a grain of salt. 

I wonder if the advice would be different if the letter writers son still had a father that was alive or if she had met her step kids when they were younger. I also wonder how the husband and his kids would react to this advice. 

There is definitely a cut off between love them like your own or leave them alone depending on the step kids ages. Maybe the cutoff is 18?

I can see the husband looking at the relative benefit that his kids would get vs hers....

Let's say the estate is total 2M.. her son would get 1M and his kids only 250K each.  Not that 250K is "nothing" but it is definitely a lot less than the other boy would get.  Unless her husband can justify/show her that his income/assets/effort have made their estate more valuable than her income/assets/effort, it seems fair that they are each able to allocate half to whoever they wish... in her case, it sounds like she would not be inclined to allocate any of her half to his kids given the lack of relationship.

The situation might be much different if they had been married long term... that there had been an imbalance of earning.. possibly due to one of them being a stay at home parent caring for joint or skids.. Just disparity in earning in itself isn't a reason to not allocate fairly... but in this case, it seems like both were fairly even in contributions prior to and even during the marriage... even to the point where the wife actually has been making a bit more than her spouse.  

I know this is a tough topic for people to discuss... but it's really important if there is any kind of estate that the agreements are in place so that everyone knows where things stand.  

If the writer wanted to in any way try to compromise further.. I might see if it were possible to see where the estates stood at time of their union and only split 5 ways any change from that?  but certainly.. that would still be more generous than she really needed to be.

The husband in the article is clearly looking out for his kids. If the circumstances were reversed, I doubt he would think a five way split was fair.

Prenups are your friend. Although it's unromantic to hammer out financials before the marriage, it makes things run much more smoothly afterwards. My lawyer said that there's nothing in your prenup that says you can't add skids to individual financial things afterwards, but it might prove almost impossible after marriage to remove them if you add them in immediately.

We had our lawyers, one for him and one for me, hammer out the details. It was well worth with the cost. 

One thing I noticed was that the wife in the article said was that her son didn't get anything when her husband/ his father died. Mine didn't either. But I did, as I'm sure she did, inherit his assets, and anything left of those assets should go to my children/her child -- and none of that to skids (or current husband).

This appears to be a common theme.  I had to wrangle long and hard to work a deal out for my children.

My Step Child has the benefit of real estate being left/and a other assets long before our primary estate will come 

into the division picture. 

Each case is different and there is no cut and dry formula.

If I had just folded, then one of my children, whom would be badly in need later in life would have been compromised.

It's really difficult since I did not come to the relationship with the same level of investments, but on the other hand my husband did

not have to disturb his nest egg with my high income, therefore those investments of his were left undisturbed.

 Husbands child/my step child has pursued getting more and getting promises for more all these

years, to the point that it would for the most part all go to her at the end of our lives.  

Fortunately husband said to this adult child/ too bad.  That is the way it is...

If there are funds left after our deaths, then all will receive. 

Step Child/husbands child, didn't and still doesn't like that, but life is sometimes not how you like it.

It really is a touchy subject, particularly if you have an agressive child in his/her drive to receive later.  It makes for divides throughout the 

marriage, with a relationship with that person. Very likely funds or not, inheritance or not, if it were not this topic/issue, there would be 

other divides.  It's more about the discontent of not having mom and dad still married, and having to put up with a new person in their 

parents life.  My children never had that issue and in fact have forged a relationship of care with my husband.  Like I said it is all about the 

person's (stepchilds) personality and character challenges.  It certainly doesn't help if that person is bowed to or babied as a result of the 

guilt that their parent feels or fear of upsetting that then child and now adult.  

Very odd dynamic, and quite frankly had I been aware that this personality would not mature beyond those teen years, I would have looked for 

partner elsewhere.  Most of us really believe that the situation will improve as the person matures.  Sadly what is created and permitted in childhood endures, 

for good and bad. 

We're just about to redo our wills. I've always had more assets than DH, and I earn more than he does. Plus I've received a sizeable inheritance from my parents. (He received a modest inheritance from his, but he blew through that long ago.) So I need to set up a trust to take care of him on the off chance that I pass first.

I don't care if the proceeds from the sale of our house or other marital property is split among the kids, and I don't intend to do anything to manage from the grave. But there is NO WAY the rewards of my parents' hard work, and mine, will go to skids. I don't dislike the skids, but I am also just "dad's wife" and that's fine.

My Mom tried to befriend the skids. SS was outright rude to her, and SD was polite but cool. And then SD had children and sent my Mom birth notices. For each, my Mom was puzzled and asked my siblings and me "who is SD Name?"  I'll admit that I am like Smaug guarding the lair.

I have 3 kids; my DH has 2.  I have money I inherited from my parents estate and my kids are the beneficiaries on that account if I should pass before DH.  DH legally has to be the beneficiary of my 401K but my kids are secondaries if he passes before me.  My life insurance through work names DH and my 3 kids.  This has upset DH "what about my kids?" and my answer is always the same...they have a mother that will make sure they're taken care of when she dies.  I'm doing the same.  I also don't want to leave everything to DH because if I pass before him, he'll be re-married within 2 years (needy man). I don't want the next Mrs. BobbyDazzler going to the spa for treatments on my family's money.  I understand you'd both be responsible for $$ if she doesn't make the payments she has to so, YES, I'd be pissed about that too.  His response "it didn't cost us anything' is a BS answer and Gaslighting 101.  Good luck!

... b!tch, but leaving everything to a spouse's good graces and sound judgment seems like a dangerously bad idea to me. Maybe it's just me, or maybe something's badly askew in my marriage, but I do not trust DH to do things the way I wish. (He's actually neglected to take the very simple Step One to do that.) Moreover, he has a son who I've no doubt would simply disregard my wishes if he gets control.

I believe that, while SS will let things be as long as his Dad's around, he will actively try to push me out of my home if I survive DH. I've set up a trust so that DH will be well provided for if I die before he does, but nobody's kids--not mine, not his--will be touching anything I've worked and sacrificed for. (Yeah, I'm leaving nothing to my own kids. See Jackie Chan, Sting, George Lucas, Nigella Lawson, et al. Disinheriting your kids is a thing. Like I said, call me a nasty b!tch.)

Anyway, FEH on that idea of letting your spouse take care of things. Too many parasitic mockingbirds around.

I'd leave everything to my husband.  That doesn't mean I don't love him.  I am, however, realistic and there's no way I'm going to leave to chance my kids getting screwed out of money I inherited and I invested wisely.  Period.

I don't agree with the husband but I don't necessarily think he's just looking out for his own kids, either.

I think this because my husband also wanted to split everything exactly equally among his daughter and my seven kids. Moreover, the vast majority of our assets are actually what he and his deceased wife earned. He has an excellent job, she had a very good job, and they invested wisely from the start. I on the other hand never had more than a part time job because I was raising a large family.

So his daughter would have gone from inheriting 100% of a VERY large estate to inheriting 12%. I'm actually the one who suggested to him that this might not be entirely fair to her, since the majority of the estate comes from him and her mother, to suddenly give 88% of it to someone else's kids.

I love his generosity and he truly loves my kids and wants to be a real father to them. But I also don't want her ever feeling that my kids as adults got a huge chunk of her parents' money.

NOW...as I continue to grow my business, if some of my work produces the fruit I hope it will and reaps large monetary reward, if our estate someday is more of an equally monetary contribution from both of us, we'll definitely revise that.

At the moment, I think what we've done is something like a third goes to his daughter and the rest is split between my kids.