AITAH because I didn’t make sure my son has an inheritance?
I (55M) have one biological child (29 M) and two stepchildren (16M) and (12F).
My wife’s first husband was killed in an accident while on his way to work offshore. Her husband had a very large life insurance policy which she was the sole beneficiary of. He traveled overseas at times and one of the oil companies he sometimes did work for required it, so his employer paid for it. It was for 1 million pounds with triple indemnity. She ended up with slightly over 5 million dollars from that policy alone. They had a ‘smaller’ policy (which they paid for) worth nearly a million which she was also the sole beneficiary of. She and her children got settlements from his company and she also gets monthly social security survivor benefits for her children. She has all this money invested and gets periodic payments from it. All that is her separate property.
My wife bought and maintains the house we live in with her separate money, so it is hers alone. We spend our salaries on our cars and living expenses and vacations and stuff like that.
About a month ago my son mentioned that he was expecting that he’d get half of our house and her kids would each get 25% when we died. He also thought that I (and therefore he) was entitled to part of her separate property. I explained to him that the house is hers, paid for by her income from her separate property and that her children would inherit the house. And that all of her investments are also separate and I have no claim to them.
He initially expressed concern for me, in the case that I outlived her. She has granted me the right of use of the house and that I would get a monthly income from her investments but that her children would inherit the house and money after we both died.
I explained that we keep our salaries separate. She pays 100% of the house and upkeep. Anything that benefits us and the kids is split with her paying 3/4 and me paying 1/4. If it benefits only her and I, we split it 50/50. Sometimes she pays everything if it’s something that is mostly for the kids benefit (like if if we go on a vacation, she’ll pay for the accommodations and activities and we’ll just split the food). If you count all her income (salary, separate property and social security), my salary is only about 20% of our combined income.
He blew up and said that I should have insisted that we use our salaries to pay for the house and put it in both of our names and ‘made’ her spend her money on other expenses. He’s very angry that I’m ‘pissing all my money away’ on my stepchildren, and he currently isn’t speaking to me and is refusing to come over at all during the holidays.
AITAH for not negotiating with my wife to make sure he had a bigger inheritance. He will get something. He’ll definitely get a whole life policy (25k) and whatever cash I have in my checking account (usually a few thousand dollars).
Edited to add: My annual salary is about 60k. Before I married my wife, I lived in an apartment and drove a 12 year old car. My life is drastically different since I’ve married, but I like to pay my own way as much as I can.
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