"AITA for cutting off my son after his mom passed away?"
I have been my son's dad since he was one. He is twenty seven now. I was friends with his mom for years before she got pregnant and the bio dad took off.
I was around helping her with stuff and one thing lead to another and we got together. It wasn't really planned or anything it just happened. Her and I cared for each other deeply but it wasn't some huge romantic story. We were a partnership.
We got married when Mark was three and I adopted him when he was five. Tammy took care of Mark, me, and my house. I worked and paid for everything. It was a good life.
I had never wanted kids but I loved Mark and gave home everything I could. Not just material goods. I was there for him growing up. I attended all his extracurricular activities that I could.
I taught him how to ride a bike and how to change his oil. We took him my on vacations. I made sure that when he graduated from university he was debt free.
He was always a good kid. University changed him. He became distant. He would call to talk to his mom but not me.
It turns out he met a girl who had been adopted and she had baggage she decided to share with him. He had contacted his biological father and I was being displaced.
Mark was everything to Tammy and she supported him in everything. As his mom I would expect no less. But it still hurt to be cut out of his life.
When Tammy got sick mark and I would see each other when he came to see her but we would barely talk. When she passed away I saw him at the funeral and then only heard from him to settle her estate.
Which was not much. She had a very small life insurance policy that she left Mark. Everything else was mine.
Her bank account only had the money we budgeted for her. There wasn't much in it because she had been subsidizing Mark's life since he graduated.
Like clockwork every month I would deposit her share of our budget and most of it went to him.
Tammy and I had a separate life insurance policy that we set up. It was more substantial than the other one.
We originally set them up in case anything happened to us the other could have money to live and take care of Mark. I was the beneficiary since I was paying for it.
Now that his mom is gone and not helping pay his bills Mark is calling me for help. I said no. I said he had the money from his mom's life insurance. Everything else is quite literally mine.
Even the car she drove was leased by me. He is upset with me and said that I obviously had never thought of him as a son if I was willing to do this. I told him to ask his bio dad for help since that's who he wanted in his life.
His wife, Sarah, the girl from university called me and said that I would be cut out of their lives and that I would never see my grandchildren.
They don't have kids yet but I suppose they are planning on a family. I told her that I was okay with that.
And I am. I miss Tammy but I'm okay. I have my dogs and my job. I see my sisters and their kids and grandkids. I'm involved in their lives.
So am I the asshole for cutting off financial support to a full grown man with a job and a wife?
Here’s what people had to say to OP:
No. Think about it 'we will love you if you give us money and hate you if you don't'. Who needs conditional 'love' like that? Let them go. It's none of their biz how much money you have or received.
I can understand Mark wanting to know his bio dad. But he could have done that while still maintaining a relationship with the dad who raised him. It didn’t have to be a mutually exclusive thing.
If all he wants is financial help, you’re not wrong to tell him to ask bio dad for that. Mark is an adult. If he’s old enough to be married, he’s too old to expect an allowance.
I'm sorry for the loss of your wife. NTA. He has a lot of nerve making that remark about you never thinking about him as a son. He obviously never thought of you as a father either if he was so willing to start ignoring you once bio dad came back into the picture.
It's good that you have other family members. Situations like this are sad, but you need to live your life for you now.