You are here

Just wish I could take it all back.. just venting

ESMOD's picture

I guess I'm posting here because I really don't feel like I can put voice to these thoughts without causing irreparable damage to the relationships with my DH's family.

I am 50 and have been married to DH for 10 years and together for 13 years. His Bio girls were 6 and 9 when I met him. He had been separated from his ex for 2-3 years when I met him. (divorce wasn't finalized, but they had an official separation agreement for years and there was no illusion or thoughts of them getting back together.. just more of a formal paperwork thing).

Now the girls are 18 and 22. I always (thought) I had a pretty close relationship with the younger SD.. the older one was always a cordial but I don't think I would say "close" relationship. She always held people (not just me) at arms length. There are whispers of her mother and some inappropriate things possibly happening when the girl was younger, but nothing was ever looked into.. but I just got the feeling she was just not a super trusting child. Anyway, I let the girls have the relationship with me they wanted. I didn't try to be "MOM".. but would give advice, affection and correction.. when appropriate (by correction, if they did something wrong, I would explain to them what they did was wrong and why.. usually in conjunction with Dad, but when I was the only one present.. I didn't wait "until daddy comes home" to tell them to stop jumping on the furniture..)

I guess at this point, I feel like I have just been used by these girls and that nothing I did meant anything to them at all. I was always a big advocate for them and was the reason their dad would often do nicer than he planned things for them (like spending 1000's more on a car for the older one than we had planned)

I was the one who helped the younger SD open a checking account.. I'm the one who would put extra money in for her when she needed help paying for a brake job or tires.. from MY money. But.. who gets all the praise and undying love "mama". The one who makes her kid pay her for her cell phone bill.. the one who borrows money from her kids.. the one who threatened dad multiple times with going back to court (yes he paid his support). The one who wouldn't drive 5 minutes up the road to meet their dad for drop offs when we had to drive 2 hours each way to pick up ad drop off. The one who made it very clear that the girls were "none of my business".

Sure, I got the "omieee I love you" when I would give them something they wanted.. but that was it.. it's pretty clear that they both could not give two "f's" about me personally. I have done so much for them.. tried to help them.. done things that neither their parents did for them to be honest but I don't get any real appreciation.

I wish I could take it all back.. the caring, the advice, the money & the time. I really almost wish that I hadn't even met DH.. I mean I love him dearly, but the stress of having to deal with a toxic Ex and ungrateful kids makes my life really unhappy at times.

The latest issue is a house my DH and I bought to fix up and rent.. rent would normally go for about 850-900/month. DH (without really clearing it with me) discussed this with the younger girl that she could rent it for 500 (I was open to renting it, but wanted to get at least 650 which covers our monthly cash outlay for the pmt and ins). But the SD wants to "do what she wants there" which includes having the Boyfriend stay overnight and wants her MAMA to stay there at times too.

The BF.. well that is her choice and we never said she couldn't but the MAMA is a different issue. MAMA has been very much a problem historically and she is currently having issues with her long time BF. What we don't want to happen is that mama starts staying with SD occasionally and it morphs into MAMA is living there for free.. I mean we are willing to rent it for way less than market but DO NOT want to be the EX's landlord! We never said Mama can't visit (like come see the place.. come over for lunch.. whatever).. just we didn't want her staying there. We never said that her BF couldn't stay there either, but I did caution her that being probably one of the first people of her friends to have her own place, she will have to be careful because people will come and take advantage of not having any rules and it is her friends who will tear the place up and cause her problems.. and she has to be careful that she doesn't get taken advantage of. Now, she doesn't want to rent it because she basically wants "no limits" and wants it to be "somewhat hers".

Full disclosure, when we bought this place late last year it was a mess and I have personally worked every weekend for the last 3 months busting my ass to make it nice and I don't want her to let it get trashed and I don't want to have done it for mama's benefit.

SD is not always 100% straight with us.. especially when it comes to her mama... (who has real interpersonal and other issues). But we just don't want to be in that position. We do want to help SD and this house would be really nice for her, but I don't think it's going to work out because she thinks she should have 100% freedom to do whatever she wants.. and can't respect our boundaries when it comes to her mom.

What would you do in our position? She is 18 YO is going to have a good paying (30K plus a year) job and doesn't drink or do drugs. We know she is prob sleeping with the BF and she stays at his parent's house a few nights a week. While we don't think she personally would destroy the place, we do have a concern she could let things get out of hand. She is not always 100% good with follow through. I mean, if we specifically ask her to do something.. like go make your bed, she will do it. But, if we give her an ongoing task like please bail the water out of the boat cover when it rains.. she doesn't ever remember to go do it and every time I go down to the bay the boat is full of water. Or when she was going to start staying at the house we use next to her grandparents (where she is living now) that my DH and I stay when we go to visit the family.. and we left the water on for her (normally we shut it off when we are gone).. and ask her to check the house daily (it's an old house and there was a leak we hoped was fixed.. but wanted confirmation).. she didn't check it and as a result we ended up with thousands in damages when a shower faucet came on and no one was in the house to notice it. So.. she "can" be responsible.. but often is just being lazy and doesn't do what she should.

I am thinking maybe we are better off with strangers than dealing with her because she will probably just sneak her mom into living there etc..

ESMOD's picture

No.. the house is actually owned by the Grandparents. It will be my DH's when they pass.. and we stay there (it's next door) on the weekends etc... We are fixing everything ourselves so it's not so much money as it is the time that it is going to take. It's mostly needing repainting and some wall repair.

The Grandparents didn't get but so mad cause "she is only 18".. She gets to play this card either way which is irritating. If she screws up or is irresponsible it is because she is "only 18". If she decides to stay overnight with her BF or do some other thing or spend money she earned frivolously.. "she is 18 and make her own decisions". My feeling is that it IS our business that she blows her money when we still have to bail her out for things like new tires or a brake job.

Don't get me wrong, she is not the worst kid in the world. She isn't doing drugs or drinking and isn't overtly rude. She just does what she pleases and expects everyone to do what she wants. She also hasn't put any "sweat equity" into the rental, so I know if she doesn't know how much work it was she may not care about keeping it nice.

ESMOD's picture

SD was going to move into the house next door to the Grandparents (it's GDad's father's house). That is the house my DH will get as his inheritance.

But, once we bought the rental house.. she changed her mind when she got the big job and wanted to rent the house DH and I bought to fix up.

So.. yeah.. two houses one owned by Gparents but is used by us (we also pay all the taxes, insurance and utilities on it currently) and one we bought last year as an investment.

The Gparents house is set up so we could have shared it easily... it has two BR and a bath upstairs and two living rooms, a DR and a kitchen downstairs along with another BR with bath. We would have used the downstairs BR and LR.. shared the Kitchen and she would have had the upstairs and the other downstairs LR to use. Since we are only there on weekends (and then not every weekend).. she would have had the benefits of having her own place but would have still been close enough to the Gparents if she needed a meal..lol.

The rental is in the same town but we own that ourselves.

ESMOD's picture

You are both right.. part of the problem is DH works away from home (offshore) for a month at a time so 50% of the time all we can do is text or maybe phone if the signal is ok. So, it can make these discussions difficult. I think what prompted the cheap offer of rent is that SD started talking about renting a place that he knows isn't filled with very "quality" people (drugs etc..) and he doesn't want her living there. She could always stay at our weekend house and pay her grandparents some token rent, but MIL has stated "NO OVERNIGHT BOYS".. so since SD wants her BF to stay over, that makes that unappealing. I get that her dad wants to protect her from getting in a bad rental place and she IS young and has a lot to learn. I did blow it in him for agreeing to a price without my input and he was sorry for that. I actually would be semi ok with her renting for less but def don't want mama moving in and given the fact that mama has a problem keeping a job and has been living with her boyfriend at his house for the last 8 years.. and doesn't even own the car she drives.. I am afraid if she gets booted out the SD would feel like she had to "save" her mom. I understand why she would want to.. but I also don't want to have that woman live in our house. She has been a nasty person to both my DH and me. In fact, just a couple months ago she was threatening to take my DH to court for "reserved spousal support" ... never mind that they have been apart for almost 15 years and she has been living with another guy for almost a decade!

AJanie's picture

I don't think your DH is an asshole I just think he made a selfish decision. These knee jerk decisions about their kids aren't uncommon, of course he is not going to hesitate to help his kid out. It isn't fair to you, however. At this point I think you should have a talk with DH about what is and what is not acceptable. Maybe let SD pay $500 for now but let her know that the price will be raised in a year or so, as she gets more established. If her mom is such a low life that she would go live with her daughter in a house her ex renovated... that is a whole other issue. How pathetic.

I am sure you are very stressed but I would try to look at is as a temporary solution for your SD. If she is a semi normal, well adjusted human then she will not live there forever.

In regards to you feeling unappreciated, your skids are still young. I didn't start appreciating what my parents did for me until I hit 30's.

twoviewpoints's picture

" Now, she doesn't want to rent it because she basically wants "no limits" and wants it to be "somewhat hers". "

Smart girl. Now be as sensible about it as she is. Don't rent to her or any other relations. The young lady will be making $30,000 a year, she can afford an apartment herself or perhaps a small rental home. She doesn't need the 'break' being offered her nor she need her Daddy Landlord putting any boundaries/restrictions on the place that wouldn't be implemented on any other tenant that may rent from you.

Put it on the rental market for the $900, screen your potential applicants and move pass this.

ESMOD's picture

Actually, we would have an agreement with anyone who rented it that there could be no "off contract" tenants (mama or anyone else).

I think I am in agreement though.. we are better off with purely landlord tenant relationships.

I don't think it's unreasonable to say that her mom can't live at the home.. just like other landlords wouldn't want extra people living in their units (extra wear and tear etc).

The other stuff was just advice not that she couldn't have friends over.. just to be careful because people will take advantage.

robin333's picture

Exactly. It's a rite of passage.

OP, you do not want to be SD'S landlord. That is a disaster in the making.

ESMOD's picture

I had one with two crazy guys (literally) who lived downstairs.. one night one of them was apparently "off his meds" and was standing at my door talking about girls getting raped when they didn't behave etc.. crazy seriously. I called my landlord and told him I was calling the police if the room mate didn't get him back to his place.. yeah.. the place had roaches so bad I couldn't move in the day I was supposed to either. but it was near where I was going to grad school so I stayed there till I got a Full Time job after graduation.. then I was out of there..lol.

robin333's picture

I once had a guy open the door naked except a tube sock over his wand of love. He knew I was coming so it was planned. Not sure why I am remembering that. Maybe because it was a white tube sock?

robin333's picture

Nope. I was 19, still naive. I was delivering a roll away bed (working at a hotel) and had to get back to the front desk. It made me very uncomfortable. Now, I'd ask to see the goods to see if it would be worth my time.

ESMOD's picture

My ex husband owned a small house in a kind of shady area and it was vacant for a while because it needed a lot of work. I went in there with him to start the renovation and we got to the kitchen and there was a pile of tighty whiteys on the floor in front of the refrigerator. I just had this mental picture of some joe dirt reject standing in front of the fridge saying to himself "oh.. ya know I don't smell so fresh, I'm gonna shuck these week old unders right here".. and then he would shuffle back to the living room with a colt 45 with no pants on.

that house was actually a crazy magnet cause he had a contract to sell it to someone (a city councilwoman no less) when we lived out of state. So he gets a call from one of his friends.. "congrats on selling your house".. whaaaaaat? The closing hadn't happened yet and in fact kept getting delayed by the buyer for one reason or another. Turns out the lady RENTED the house to someone and moved them in. She told our realtor she neede a key so that contractors could access to give her bids and then she rented it.. Of course she claimed it was a big misunderstanding with her investment manager when she was caught, but she had to give us all the money she had collected..lol.

ESMOD's picture

Full disclosure here.. the rental house does have a avocado green stove, dishwasher and wall oven..lol. They work so we are planning on keeping them in for the moment. The brown refrigerator does keep stuff cold but we are replacing it cause it just isn't sanitary..haha

hereiam's picture

I loved my first, cheap, crappy, in a sketchy neighborhood apartment (although, there were mansions just blocks from where I lived).

I lived there for 13 years and saved a boat load of money to buy my house (back to the 'burbs I went!).

I saw a lot of wierdos and freaks come and go. It was interesting, to say the least.

We knew it was time to go when SD came over for her weekend and DH took her outside, just in time to see to two prostitutes in a cat fight in the street! Oh, good times.

LostinSpaceandTime's picture

Just say no to your DH. Send him a text. No SD cannot rent the house. It is for our retirement investment. Sounds like you did most of the fixing up since he works out of town. No way would I want BM even visiting a house I sweated to fix up. The property is an investment property. You need full amount of rent for it.

If you let SD move it before you know it the boyfriend and BM will be living there and it will be a nightmare to get them all out. Meanwhile they will thrash the place. Better to have strangers living there.

If DH will not agree then he can buy out your share and move in with the lot of them.

IMHO of course. Find your power woman and stand up for this. You know what is right here and just the thought of it all is causing you a great deal of stress.

ESMOD's picture

You get me.. lol.

No.. I don't want that woman near that place. BUT, I specifically told SD that I knew she would want to show the place to her mom etc.. and that was fine but that we didn't want her staying there.

SD is very sensitive about mama though. A LOT of people talk her down (rightfully so, it's not just us that have problems with her, she has her own business that currently has a 1 star Yelp rating due to her interpersonal and responsibility issues). We do know EX has issues with her BF on and off and if SD had a place, she might be tempted to take advantage.

The thing that kindof sucks is that it ends up being like "I" am the one that is preventing SD from having some benefit. Just like when she wanted a car of her own.. DH and I discussed (ex was not contributing) that she should save 1/2 and pay her own insurance. Her Gparents got irritated with us that we just didn't "give" the poor child a car. Mama said we should buy her a car and would take the girl shopping and find cars that WE could pay for. SD tried to get everyone to manipulate us into buying her a car... (DH was slow to want to do it at all cause SD has epilepsy which has been 100% controlled.. but he still worried). We finally found one and when I reminded her that she owed us the money for the car and insurance, her Grandpa blew up at me said we should just "take the car back". Seriously, since when is expecting the kid to live up with her end of the bargain a bad thing. I think when she realized what a big deal she had made it and how mad her Gparents got at us she showed up the next morning with the money. (she had it.. just was being slow to pay it maybe hoping we wouldn't take it).

She isn't a horrible person and I don't think she realizes how much stress she causes when she does these things.. but I am getting to the point where I understand that she only appreciates me when I can give her something.. and that now that she is older and wanting to be more independent, she doesn't feel the need to compromise or put in effort.

It's just hard since I am often the "voice of dad" since he has limited communication 50% of the time so I am involved whether I like it or not.

hereiam's picture

If she wants to be more independent, she needs to get her own place that is not subsidized by Daddy.

This needs to be handled ASAP, it will only get worse and be harder to fix later.

ESMOD's picture

Yeah.. it was not right for him to do that. I think he just kind of knee jerk reacted when she talked about renting the apartment.. and he knows where the apartment is and he doesn't want her to live there. She may be 18 and can "act" mature when she wants but honestly is a little naive... and I mean probably a LOT more than I was at that age. When I rented the shady apartments.. I did so with full knowledge of needing to be careful... I also knew that if I let my friends trash my place I would be on the hook. I am not sure where I get this having "mommy" over for sleepovers though.. I didn't have sleepovers with my mom when I was 18.. which makes me more nervous because I think she thinks her mom needs to get away from her home situation some... which could be a slippery slope. The older girl already has Mom's number after a few unrepaid loans. etc.

notarelative's picture

Check the IRS rules for renting below market value. There are tax consequences for renting below market value.

Renting for less than your monthly cost is not something I would do. At a minimum your costs need to be covered.

ESMOD's picture

That's a good point.. I'm a CPA actually.. but I am not practicing and never did in the tax area.. It looks like it might make the place considered a 2nd home.. which we already have another 2nd home so it would make the interest non-deductible.

Pixiegardener's picture

Yep one room, tiny kitchen/bath - I survived it and I was proud of doing it. I would just say no if you can. Or at least put in writing your serious reservations, so you can say "I told you do"! LOL Smile

ESMOD's picture

I want to thank everyone for their input.

I know the best thing to do is keep the rental relationship separate from the family one. I guess DH was just trying to help SD and he figured that renting her the apartment at a little bit of a loss wouldn't be the end of the world since we can "afford it" and it would offset the current situation where we are spending money and doing work on it with no money coming in. H really thought he was working out a win-win situation.

SD is just going to have to figure out what her priorities are. Once she starts her new job and is getting a steady paycheck, she will have to save her money for her first month rent and security deposit for wherever she decides to live. She has options

1. She can continue to live with her grandparents who allow her latitude on spending the night at her BF or mom's house whenever she wants.. ie they really honestly don't know where she is.. so that is pretty much freedom to do what she wants. Cost FREE

2. Her grandparents will let her live in the house next door (shared on weekends by DH and myself) for $350 a month including utilities. Her Gparents don't want her to have overnight BF.. I might be able to get Granny to compromise that he will sleep on the couch downstairs and can only stay nights I am there to "chaperone".

note:.. the reason why the BF staying over is mostly an issue is that he lives about an hour away.. so it is a lot of driving when he comes over to see her.. or she goes to see him. (we don't like her driving rural roads so late at night alone)

3. She can rent the tiny craptastic apartment with the less than savory neighbors for $ 400/month plus utilities. She gets full freedom to do whatever she wants.. when she wants but will have to put up with neighbors that are not exactly the cream of the crop.

4. Is pretty much off the table but would have been renting our rental house which is a 2 BR 1 Bath with laundry home that is in a quiet waterfront community. The property itself has a little waterfront with a tiny private beach and it would have been furnished and has about an acre of land and has a new cool deck we are building. Dad was going to let her rent it for $500 plus electric. No pets and No Mama staying there were the only real rules.. other than "don't destroy the place and don't let your friends destroy the place". Honestly, we don't live locally.. in fact we are 2 hours away so it's not like we would have been there on a daily basis checking up on her.. but we would have expected to be able to drop in to make sure our investment was being taken care of.

Yes.. the last option had a couple strings.. but it also had a lot of benefits that the others didn't.

Anyway, when DH gets home off the boat, we will have some more frank discussions. Honestly it really sucks when we have such limited time to communicate that we have to argue about stuff like this. I know he really wants to help and protect her and I totally get that. I also get that the SD wants to be her own person. Where it gets twisted up is that she wants to be an adult when it is convenient and wants to still be the kid when it benefits her (like needing car repairs). I don't in theory mind helping people but when she is blowing ever dime she makes on fast food, fake nails and clothes.. then asks us to pay for big ticket items.. I start to get heartburn. I know most kids will push for whatever they can get.. I just hate that sometimes I feel like I am being used.

TwoOfUs's picture

I hate to break it to your SD...but even when you rent from total strangers the home is NOT "no limits" or "somewhat hers" -- it belongs to the landlord, and there are very clear limits in most leases...along with a hefty security deposit to cover any damage.

Those limits usually include (but are not limited to): No loud parties, no drugs, no illegal activity, nobody living there who is not on the lease (i.e. not liable for damages), no subletting, no painting or renovations to the home without prior approval, no using the home as a hotel / airbnb. Most leases I've seen even state that you can't have visitors who stay for more than a week out of the month / no recurring visitors.

Man. She's in for a rude awakening if she starts looking for an apartment or rental house and thinks she can just do whatever she wants there.

IMO...if you let her live there...which you shouldn't...you should make her pay a security deposit equal to one month's rent ($850 or $900). You need to make it clear what the rules are...and that only the people named on the lease are allowed to live there. Break the rules or damage the property, you get kicked out and you forfeit the deposit. She needs to have some skin in the game or, you're right, she's not going to respect the property.

My real opinion = you should just tell DH no. Try to explain some of the resentment you're already feeling and where it's coming from. Explain that this will add to your resentment...and you don't want to dislike or resent his kids, if you can help it.