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'AITA for feeling like my eldest daughter should be treated the same as my 'real' children?' UPDATED

'AITA for feeling like my eldest daughter should be treated the same as my 'real' children?' UPDATED

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Family is complicated and comes in all shapes and sizes.

"AITA for feeling like my eldest daughter should be treated the same as my 'real' children?"

When my (M45) daughter(F13) was born I immediately felt that something was obviously amiss. She was blonde haired and blue-eyed, which was extremely unlikely for a child of myself and my ex-wife(f39).

I am very Mediterranean, and I have olive skin, dark eyes, and dark hair. My ex-wife has brown eyes and relatively dark brown hair. Her skin is barely lighter than mine. The baby also clearly bore no resemblance to me or anyone in my family at all. I had been having misgivings about my ex, too, and she seemed too quick to express surprise and make excuses.

Still though, I didn't want to throw away my marriage over what could have been my own misunderstanding of genetics, and so I signed the birth certificate. I instantly knew that I was going to have a paternity test done, but something else surprised me. When I brought our little girl home, I still fell in love with her.

It felt just like bringing my son(M14) home, and, looking at her, I still just saw her as an innocent, beautiful little baby. We bonded. The paternity test came back negative, as I suspected it would, and I decided that our marriage was over. I still loved our little girl though. My then wife did everything that she could to drag out the divorce and refused to separate or move out.

My daughter's biological father (every bit as blonde and blue-eyed as I suspected) turned out to want nothing to do with her or my ex. He was already married with his own family, and his only focus was preventing the situation from blowing back on himself too much. My ex went totally nuts when both I and her affair partner rejected her, and she made some very unfortunate decisions.

To make a long story short, she ended up with prison time for crimes including identity theft, ass#ult with a deadly weapon, and grand theft Auto, when she stole credit cards and forged documents for both of us, and when she stole her affair partner's car and tried to run him over with it.

I ended up with custody of our kids, with the affair partner never even attempting to establish any kind of paternity rights. I didn't want to press the issue myself, as I couldn't deny that I had bonded with this child, even knowing that she wasn't my real daughter.

I had been shunning my ex-wife as best I could and trying to move on with life after she was finally out of the house, it wasn't long before I got together with and married my current wife(F34), and we've since had another two children. (m10, f8)

My eldest daughter is a total Daddy's girl, and we have a wonderful relationship. She always feels loved, and I treat her the same as my other kids. Even though she obviously stands out, my family accepts her too, or at least that's what I thought.

I work for my father's company, and the other day we were out talking about the future and his will, and he was talking about what money/assets etc he wanted to leave to whom, including his grandchildren, and I noticed that my older daughter had been left out, I mentioned it to him, and he said, "It's nice what you've done for (daughter's name), but you have real children, and they should come first."

I interrupted him, and I told him that she is my real daughter, and that I thought she should be treated equally. He just paused and looked at me for a moment, and he said, "I guess you feel how you feel," before he noticed I was still about to argue with him and he shrugged and moved the conversation on to things about work and my siblings.

I was too polite to try to force the matter at the time, but it sort of stuck with me. My father isn't the type of man to harp on a point, and I am certain that he's content to have said his piece and would let the matter drop. He could certainly tell that what he said upset me, and so I doubt he'd bring it up again.

Frankly, he sort of raised me the same way. At the time, I was shocked, because he's always seemed to accept my daughter as a part of the family. He buys her gifts for her birthday and for Christmas, and he makes her feel welcome, but, thinking about it, he really is just a kind, polite, and generous man in a lot of ways.

He will and has bought Christmas gifts for high school friends or significant others, if he knew they were coming, and the same for other gift-giving occasions. He's generally very hospitable to anyone his friends or family bring around, so I thought that maybe it was just that, and I misinterpreted.

My wife is Asian, and so my eldest daughter always stands out. She's thin, and blonde, and blue-eyed, unlike pretty much anyone else in my family, and she's taller than any of the other girls or even most of the women, really, so I'm aware that she might look like the neighbor kid visiting or something.

My wife loves her, and I know that she 100% accepts her as one of our kids, and she has been a great mom / stepmom. I talked to my own mother, though, and while she's definitely closer to my daughter than my father is (They interact a lot more, and she includes my daughter with the other kids / other girls in family traditions and activities) I got a little bit of the same vibe from her.

She was much more diplomatic, but it seems like she may also sort of consider my daughter to be sort of a guest / unfortunate orphan I'm hosting or something like that. She pointed out that I can make my own will however I want.

My daughter knows that she isn't biologically mine. That would have been hard to hide, even if we'd really had the opportunity. She doesn't want anything to do with either of her bio parents though. She's seen her bio dad perhaps a handful of times in her entire life, and I don't even think he can remember her middle name.

He seems to have pretty successfully kept his family together and his wife from leaving him, but he definitely doesn't want any involvement. My ex-wife continued to spiral for a long while, and she lives in another state with another man and her own new family at this point. She mercifully rarely makes contact.

I've never really tried to go after either of them for money. I don't need it, and it's not a pot I want to stir. My siblings are mostly supportive if a little bit mixed on the issue. Some of them say that they could never raise the child of a partner's affair, but all of them say that they love and accept their niece.

I just can't get over the way that I feel distant and upset about what my father said though. He's an extremely kind and generous man, and he's always taken care of his family. He's given me opportunities and a lifestyle that I could never have achieved without him. I love him and I look up to him. Maybe that's why I feel sort of, I don't know, betrayed?

It feels wrong that she's the only one of his grandchildren to be left out of his will, apparently because he doesn't consider her a "real" grandchild. Intellectually, I can accept that he's technically correct, but it feels wrong. She is my daughter. Am I wrong though? Am I just being entitled and unreasonable here? AITA?

The comments started coming.

jacobydave wrote:

I get why members of your family might consider you foolish for raising the result of you ex-wife's affair, but honestly, it speaks well of your character that you treat her as your own. I wonder if your parents would be similarly non-accepting if you had adopted a child, because, practically, that is what happened. I wish you and your family the best. NTA.

RobertTheWorldMaker wrote:

No. You're a god. D*mn. Saint.

Problem is, you're thinking other people will be saints too, and they're not. Their reactions are understandable, but it makes me sad for her when she eventually learns the truth of how they see her.

Agile-Wait-7571 wrote:

My step mother did this for me although I wasn’t an affair child. My father died when I was 15 and my birth mother spent most of her life institutionalized for mental health concerns. My step mother, like you, was a saint. You will probably never really fully know the good you have done.

CatJarmansPants wrote:

You're not an AH. You're a good, solid, loving father. You're the one who loves her, who helps her with homework, who holds her hand when she's happy or sad, who reads bedtime stories, who puts a plaster on her knee, and kisses her good night. You are her father, and she is your daughter.

Personally, I don't think it's entitled to expect people to treat your children equally - if you say she's your child, then she's your child, and anyone who quibbles can quite simply get to f-k.

Four days later, OP shared an update.

Just a small update. Thanks for the comments and wishes. It really put a lot of things into perspective and it confirmed to me that I needed to say something. Some people seemed surprised at the way I let my daughter's bio parents "off the hook", so to speak. The main reason I've never tried to go after my ex or her affair partner for child support is that my daughter is more important than money.

I'm not struggling at all, and I have the support I need. More importantly though, I have my daughter. Even though the affair partner didn't apparently want anything to do with her, my lawyer did mention way back in the day that either he or my wife, being her biological parents, could have a strong case for seeking custody.

I know I'm biased, but her bio dad seems like a huge AH, and I know he doesn't care about her. I wouldn't put it past him to try to get custody just to duck out of paying child support though, if his hand was forced.

And the idea of her having to go stay with him is just something I don't even want to think about. Kind of the same thing when her mom got out of prison. She seemed like she was very quick to go shack up with her new guy, and she seemed willing to let the matter lie, so I did the same.

The fact that neither of them tried to get her, or, in my ex's case, the way she hasn't even bothered to keep much contact with our son either tells me more than everything I need to know about the kind of parents They are / would be. They only seem interested in their pre-existing/new families respectively. I wouldn't want to try to back them into trying to take custody.

With my daughter being 13, it's possible that we've sort of "run out the clock" on that matter, but it's still not drama we need or a risk worth taking. In better and more important news though, I talked with my dad. I met with my father for lunch, which was easy enough, as he's around most days and we could sync up some time.

I mentioned that I wanted to talk about my daughter not being in his will, and I told him that even if it meant dividing what was being left to me or my other kids, I felt it was really important for her to be included. I also mentioned, as I felt, and as a lot of people pointed out, that it would be devastating for her to find out that she'd been excluded after his d-th.

My father agreed that that was a really good point, and he said that she is a lovely girl, that he does love her, and that he wouldn't want to add extra pain or bitterness to her life, especially at such a time. Also, it had gotten around to him that I'd been sort of poling My siblings a little bit, and I think my mom talked to him some, and he said, "This is obviously very important to you.

You're my son. I can just change it. It's not so much money anyway." And he was right. The amounts of money being left to individual grandchildren aren't massive, but the gesture and the thought are what's most meaningful. Mostly everything is going to my mom and or us his kids anyway.

Really, there was no reason for me to expect him to have been stubborn or hard-hearted about any of this. It was just something that we needed to talk about. My father reiterated that everyone loves my daughter and that she'll always be family and always have a home.

He has a gold bracelet that he has worn somewhat occasionally over the years, and he mentioned that my daughter thought it was pretty. When she was very little, she noticed it on his wrist and said that jewelry was for girls. He laughed and explained to her that sometimes boys wear jewelry too.

She thought it was nice and he let her try it on even though it was way way too big for her wrist. She was a little toddler then. I didn't know about that moment between them, and I thought it was really sweet that he remembered. He said that he was going to leave her the bracelet and a note and that as far as money goes she'd get the same share as the rest of my kids.

So we had a nice lunch and we both felt better for it. Nothing too dramatic, but really the best way things could have gone. Thanks everyone, for confirming that I wasn’t being crazy and confirming that I needed to talk to my father and set things right.

The comments kept coming in.

AppropriateArea1716 wrote:

This is a happy update. Your father is a good man and he raised you to be a wonderful man.

Boring-Cycle2911 wrote:

This is such a beautiful update 💜 So glad you were able to talk it out.

ConfuseableFraggle wrote:

So happy to read that both of you were able to clear the air! It is a great gift to be able to work through things. Blessings on all of you!

Sweetwaterfall0579 wrote:

I’m so happy for you and your family. It seems that everyone except your parents was absolutely team All Children.

How often does an old man change his tune? And your mom, too. A wonderful update.

gobsmacked247 wrote:

You were raised by a good man. He just stutter-stepped a bit.

Sources: Reddit
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