'AITA for not financially contributing to my son's wedding unless he gets a prenup?'

"AITA for not financially contributing to my son's wedding unless he gets a prenup?"

My husband (61M) and I (62F) are in a very comfortable position financially, I retired recently as senior VP of a tech company and my husband had a successful company that he sold very profitably. We have a daughter (34F) and son (30M). My hubby and I paid for both our kids' college degrees including masters and both kids are professionally successful.

Our daughter got married 2 years ago and she had a court wedding followed by dinner at a restaurant with less than 25 people including us and groom's parents. She and my son in law paid for it. Asked for no help. My hubby and I gave them $25K as wedding gift. They were buying a house at the time and we thought a cash gift would be helpful for them.

Our son got engaged a few months ago. He and my DIL to be (30F) are busy planning their wedding. We were considering paying for their honeymoon as gift. His fiancee works for an insurance company and my son is a doctor, currently doing his residency. They don't have a ton of money and we were a bit surprised when we heard about some of the wedding plans.

My DIL to be wants to have her "dream day" in a castle like hotel venue, with 250 people ( she has a large family) and her budget is around USD 80K not including honeymoon. She has a favorite vera wang dress already picked out.

Her family cannot afford to pay for any of this and she is still paying off her student loans. All of these were shared when they came over to stay with us for the weekend. My son was silent and DIL-to-be did most of the talking.

I shared we would love to gift their honeymoon and take that off their plate. My son was like "thats amazing, thank you Mom and Dad, we would appreciate that a lot" and dil-to-be sort of had a pursed lip expression and didn't say anything.

She was dating my son when my daughter got married and is fully aware of how my daughter did her wedding despite both my daughter and her fiance being in a significantly better financial position.

Anyway, my DIL-to-be cornered me in the kitchen next morning. She started by asking me what I thought about her wedding ideas. I said, the ideas were nice but not sure if its affordable. She goes like, it would be affordable, if my husband and I can help. I was like, how so?

She goes on to say, that my husband and I have certainly have the money to be able to pay for everything, the full 80K and then the honeymoon of course would be very nice. She adds, since we didnt have to spend any money on my daughter's wedding, we can hopefully put that also into my son's instead.

I simply said, I will talk to my husband and let both of them know. She looked visibly annoyed at this and said, you dont look like someone who needs her husband's permission to access money, that if I wanted to help my son, I can just decide to do it. I was pretty pissed at this point and left the room without responding and avoided her till they left.

This whole conversation had all my alarm bells ringing. I didnt have any issues with her until now. To be fair, we havent spent a ton of time together. My job kept me very busy till 6 months ago. I discussed it with my husband and he agreed with me. We had a private conversation with my son and shared what happened. He looked pretty sad and told us she has been asking him to make the request of us.

And that he said no, as he knew it wasn't a right expectation. My husband asked point blank if he is getting a prenup and my son said no. I said considering that my future DIL went over my son's head to ask his mom for money, he would be stupid not to get one. He kept saying we are judging her too harshly based on one incident.

He thinks we are ruining his engagement by making his wife to be seem like a gold digger. He apparently doesn't expect us to pay, just dont want this incident to get in the way of wedding plans. We didnt ask him how they are going to pay for the wedding but worry that he is going to take personal loans or something.

They haven't set a wedding date yet, considering future DIL's plans, wedding is at least a year away. We feel strongly our son should at least sit down with a lawyer and hear out the pros/cons of having a prenup. My son pointed out that my husband and I never got one.

But we both had similar values coming into our marriage unlike his fiancee and him. We proposed that if he gets a prenup, we will pay $25K towards wedding. We also took the honeymoon gift off the table. My son said we are being assholes. I said I was ok being an asshole if that means protecting my son from his own stupidity.

Are my husband and I a$$holes for proposing to contribute to the wedding only if my son gets a prenup?

This is what people had to say to OP:

Ih8melvin2 said:

If your son wants to protect his earnings from his future wife, he can ask for a prenup. If you want to protect your money from her when he inherits it, I think it should go into a trust. I'm not a lawyer, but you can talk to whoever did your estate planning and ask them.

LobsterLovingLlama said:

NTA and a Vera wang dress and 250 guests will far exceed $80k.

nolaz said:

It’s not just the gold digging - it’s also her perception that it’s ok for one spouse to commit large amounts of money without consulting the other. Maybe encourage your son to meet w a financial planner since the pre nup thing isn’t going too well?

LostInNothingBox said:

NTA. She is a gold digger. Tell your son he's old enough to make his choices and not to expect you to bail him out later.

jrm1102 said:

NTA - yet, but you need to drop it. He knows how you feel, but hes an adult and can make his own choices. But I also wouldn’t contribute anymore money to this wedding than what you already planned on. It'll likely be a waste as this marriage likely wont last.