'AITA for not wanting to contribute to my stepson's college fund?' UPDATED
"AITA for not wanting to contribute to my stepson's college fund?"
My (39M) and my wife Emily (38F) have been married for 12 years. Emily has a son James (17) from a previous relationship with Dan. Em left Dan when she caught him cheating with a co-worker. They shared 50/50 custody of James. I met Em about a year after he had left Dan. A year later, Dan married his affair partner, and Em and I got married soon after.
James never really bonded to me. I admit that I tried a little too hard initailly to get him to like me, but backed off when I realized I was trying too hard and it was having the opposite impact. Over the years, we've built a tense acceptance of sorts, if that makes sense.
Em and I have three kids (10F, 7M & 4M). James doesn't have a good relationship with them either. He bonds well with Dan's sons, but doesn't like spending much time with our kids. He isn't mean to them but just ignores them mostly. The eldest two now just avoid him when he is home.
Em and I both have well paying jobs and early on, we decided that I would contribute 80% to our trio's college fund, and Em would do 20%, cause she would contribute 100% to James' college fund. We didn't know if Dan was making any such arrangements on his end, but we thought that at least this way James would have something instead of nothing.
Em recently sat him down to talk to him about his college fund. He seemed happy with the financial help he was going to get. He went off to Dan's for the weekend and when he came back he asked Em about our kid's college funds.
When he learned that the amount was fairly higher than his, he was upset. When he asked about the disparity, Em told him about our college fund set up. He was furious to know that I hadn't contributed to his college fund. He said that I was just pretending to play "family" with him all these years. That I really didn't care about him and was a heartless AH.
Em suggest that we could take some money out of our youngest's fund and give it to James and that she would add it back overtime. But she said that it's my call. That she won't pressurize me either way and would accept whatever I decided.
Quite frankly, I don't want to do it. James idolizes his pathetic father, even now that he knows he cheated on his mother. I could deal with his crappy behaviour with me, but I never understood his attitude towards our kids.
We even tried going to family therapy, he refused to go because I wasn't his family. Now when he needs money, suddenly I am family. I know I am perhaps being petty, but I don't want to give him the money. AITA?
A few hours later, the OP returned to provide more information.
I think some clarifications are in order. I don't hate that James idolizes his father. I hate that he blames his mother for their family breaking up. When James was 13 he had heard from one of his older cousin (Dan's side) what his father had done that lead to Emily leaving.
When he confronted her about it she explained. We tried for therapy then but didn't happen, will explain later. Last year, he told his mother that he believes she was responsible. That instead of leaving Dan, she should have forgotten about what he did and continued to stay with him.
Em was expectedly shocked, but when she asked him if the situation was reversed and she had cheated on Dan and he left her, would then Dan be blamed for the family breaking up?He said no, that would definitely be her fault and made no further explanations.
This was not as a results of an argument or heat of the moment statement, ironically, this was a casual dinner table conversation. The other kids had to be excused from the table.
When Em and I had gotten together and things were starting to look serious, she had wanted to take him to a child therapist who could help him adjust better to the changing situation around him.
Since they shared 50/50 custody, Dan's consent was needed, he refused. When we were going to get married, we tried for therapy, Dan said he got married before us and James had no issues. We were overreacting, he didn't need therapy. When the above incident happened, when Em was pregnant with our daughter, and most recently after last year's incident.
This time we asked him directly. We thought if he agreed to family therapy then we could speak to our lawyer and work around the custody arrangement since he was almost an adult. This was when he refused therapy saying I wasn't family.
For all those saying that I am treating a teenager like an adult. That I made him feel like the other and not one of us. We tried. When we both starting earning well, we wanted on splurge on our kids during birthdays and holidays, James was never excluded.
Whatever our kids got, he got too. In fact, as he as older, he got to pick what he wanted. For his 11th birthday, he wanted to go to Disney World. Both of Dan's kids were invited. His youngest son and my daughter are the same age. He went, she wasn't invited. We stayed home.
We started the college funds about a year after our daughter was born. Em couldn't start one for James earlier since she was a SAHM when she was with Dan. It took her a while to get back on her feet. She wasn't in a position to immediately start a college fund for him.
What a lot of you pointed out is right, he has been short-changed. Em will rectify that and make up the deficit he should get by the time he starts college. But that will still not make it as much as he remaining three. We have decided to sit and have a chat with him this weekend about everything.
Here is what readers had to say in response to the OP’s initial post:
He has two parents to contribute to college. They can fund him. Sounds like Dan had better step up.
Fun_Elephant_6393 (OP)
I doubt that would happen. Dan has never been good at keeping a steady income flow and his wife is a SAHM. They aren't desparetly struggling to make ends meet, but I could make an educated guess to say Dan has probably not saved up for any of his kids college funds.
NTA but why in the world did your wife tell him about your other kid’s college funds? It’s simply none of his business and giving him the details was just going to upset him. He was perfectly fine with the arrangement before he knew the younger kids are getting more than him.
Your wife is the AH for opening up a conversation about money with her 17 year old son, and even more of TA for suggesting you take money out of the other kid’s funds to make James happy. I don’t blame him for getting upset, but your wife needs to contribute more to his fund if she wants to make him happy.
Four days later, the OP returned with an update.
It’s been an eye-opening weekend. Thanks to everyone who weighed in, even the aggressive ones. I knew what I was signing up for posting. Before the update, a couple clarifications because gaps in info turned into wild assumptions.
When I said I “came on a little too strong” with James when we me. I was nervous and acted like an idiot and used an over-the-top baby voice because I’d barely been around toddlers. Emily later said I sounded like a circus clown on two cartons of Red Bull. Cringe? Absolutely. Malicious? No.
Many called my wife the AH for sharing the college fund amounts for our kids. I showed her the post. She explained James came back from Dan’s with questions when the fund started, how much, etc. He said (paraphrasing), “So mine is XXX and theirs is YYY?” with his XXX higher than our kids’ YYY.
Without thinking (yes, stupidly), Emily corrected him: “No, yours is AAA and theirs is BBB.” That snowballed into what I wrote earlier. It wasn’t a diabolical plan to make me pay more; it was a thoughtless correction.
With that out of the way, Emily, James and I sat down for a conversation yesterday. James didn't want to talk to me, but I told him that if he expected me to even think about contributing to his college fund then I've got loads of questions he needs to answer.
It was an extremely long conversation and many revelations came to be. So, I am going to give a summary of the things we finally found out from James. Even before Emily and Dan had broken up (not divorced, they were never married), Dan had occasionally brought James to his AP's place, so James was familiar AP.
After the break up, Dan immediately moved in with his AP. Em who was a SAHM till then, struggled initially to get back on her feet. Needless to say, James' home life with Em was a little more chaotic than at Dan and his AP's.
Em hadn't told James that she had left his father since he'd cheated on her. Telling that to a toddler wouldn't make any sense. But apparently, in the early days, Dan used to tell James that Em would eventually come back to him. I think he may have been holding out hope for reuniting with Em.
And that's where I came in. Dan told James that as long as I am around, I would not let Em go back to Dan. When Dan married his AP, he told James that it was temporary. It was a way to make Em jealous.
When we got married, he told James that it was my way of making it even more difficult for Em to get back to their family. When James had found out from his cousin (Dan's side) that his father had cheated on his mother which was the reason for their break up.
When James had asked Em about it, she had been open and honest about everything. When he confronted Dan about the same, he told James that Em had left him for a long time and his loneliness made him miss her alot and so he found some comfort with AP.
Emily's father had met with a car accident and she was with her parent's for about three weeks to help them. And that's all the alone time Dan could handle before he needed to dip his wick in something. But it was a resonable enough explanation for James absolve his father of all sins.
When Em got pregnant with our daughter, Dan told James now that I have started "pumping my spawn into his mother" (exact words James used) James' family was destroyed forever. He told James that Em and I had been wanting to take him to therapy which was actually a ruse.
What we were really trying to do was take him to doctor who would declare him a problem child and then we would ship him off to boarding school so that we could continue to play happy family without being bothered by him. Only Dan and his family was fighting to keep James with them.
James admitted that he had hoped his detached behaviour around my family and happy and joyous behaviour around Dan's would convince Em that my kids and I were evil and she would eventually leave us. But sadly, I kept "knocking up his mom" making it harder for her to leave.
Expectedly, Emily was beyond distraught to hear everything. To be honest, in the moment I couldn't wrap up head around it much either. I asked if Dan had a college fund saved up for him and his sons. James said AP's parents have set up a trust fund for Dan's sons, but that does not include James since he isn't their grandson. Dan's not saved up anything for anyone.
I asked James why he suddenly thinks I should contribute to his fund when he has turned down every opportunity for us to be a family. He said he was actually ok with the amount that Em initially told him about, but Dan made him realize that we were undercutting him, so he came back to demand more.
I asked if I pay the money will that then make us family? Even if he can't accept me as a step parent, can we be friends? Can he be a little more friendlier with my kids when he is around? He straight up said no.
He said that after all these years he knows me or my kids are not the evil beings his father made us seem. But he still feels I am the reason his parents could never get back together again and for that he will always hate me. And since my kids are well my kids, he's never going to like them either.
And since now he knows that Emily isn't going to leave her family, he said his plan was once he was off to college he would cut off contact with all of us. He does plan to eventually get back in touch with his mother when he feels he is ready to forgive for breaking up his family, but he can't do that right now.
Emily and I have had a long and honest discussion. I have decided that I will not be making any contributions to James' college fund. Emily will continue the contribution that she was already making and hand it over to him once he turns 18.
We will no longer be pursuing family therapy with James. We will not try to change James' mind about going no contact with us after he goes off to college. We've done all that we could do, we're going to stop now.
If James is happy with Dan's family, then we're happy for him. It's going to be hard for Emily, but even she has accepted that after James' recent revelations, she's having a hard time reconciling her little boy with this cynical teenager.
We have both taken individual and couple's therapy before. Mainly due to the stress and anxiety James' behaviour used to put on us as a family. We are looking into starting again. Hopefully, we'll be able to be overcome this in time.
Here is what readers had to say in response to the OP’s update:
Man this is so sad and infuriating. I don’t envy you. Dan is a piece of POS. I’m sorry James can’t see the light, and I hope in the future he’s able to grow and see who has actually loved him.
James is POS too. Sorry but he wants graciously forgive his mum for breaking family when it was his own father who was knocking a coworker. There is trauma and there is straight being awful. And James is AWFUL.
Well, Dan sure influenced James to be an entitled AH. "I don't even want a relationship with you but give me money!" The nerve! Take care, OP.
What a twisted monster. Yes his dad has manipulated him but he consciously recognizes everything that’s gone on and still behaves this way? Sorry you and Emily have to deal with the ungrateful POS.
I’d kickstart his passage to adulthood and send him to live with his father full-time from now on. James has gone full-on toxic, and you don’t need to subject your other children or your wife to that BS.