<p>I can’t recall which post, but she specifically did say 50-50%</p>
<p>But, it is what it is. I don’t mean to offend with blended family.</p>
<p>The family I grew up in never really “blended” very well, at all. What can you do? What would be a better word for it?</p>
<p>Actually, you know? Let’s be honest, ALL families have such strange challenges. :)</p>
<p>Poet, OP said in #12 that she paid “50% of what they paid for” – I asked for clarification, she disapperead.</p>
<p>I assume you did not mean to offend. </p>
<p>All families may have challenges, I would suggest that based on data, children of remarried fathers get less support for college. </p>
<p>[A</a> Hidden Cost of Divorce: College - The Juggle - WSJ](<a href=“A Hidden Cost of Divorce: College - WSJ”>A Hidden Cost of Divorce: College - WSJ)</p>
<p>I’ll answer a question that nobody else has. Our old neighbors tried the “just a legal divorce” for almost the same reasons – to keep his income from being tapped for his stepson’s college bills. Two years in the “legal divorce” the wife decided that since they were “divorced” she could have a fling with a co-worker without it being cheating. He sued her, she sued him, it came out in court that the first divorce was a sham, they both got nailed with a fraud conviction, and he ended up paying back tuition sums for the kid. And he had to pay her a settlement, since she was able to document that the whole “divorce” fraud was his idea, for his benefit. Major tax implications as well. Cost him a whole lot more than if he paid full freight for the kid from the get go.</p>
<p>I haven’t read the whole thread, I’m sorry, but the first post made me cringe. I just feel so incredibly sorry for the kids you share together.</p>
<p>I say that as a ‘biomom’ and a ‘stepmom’ to use your terms, who is also married to someone who is now the stepdad of one of my kids too. I am most definitely financially supporting my stepson through all of his college because his ‘biomom’ could not be counted on to do that. And my husband would not think twice about fully supporting- emotionally and financially- my biological daughter, even though her father provides a lot of support too. And HER stepmom (my ex’s wife) has always been entirely open to paying half of whatever our daughter’s costs would be. </p>
<p>To me it is simply the package deal you sign up for. No one asked you to married into this family - you are an adult and could have CHOSE to save all your assets for yourself. And really my worry isn’t even what amount you give them, but rather this view of some as YOUR children and some as NOT your children…its the mindset that I find so troubling. </p>
<p>I know it is not easy to be a stepmom (especially the emotional stuff). But our kids deserve it and yes they ARE your children just like the guy you married is your husband. Divorce is hard enough on them, and they don’t need to be and did not ask to be stuck in an ‘us/them’ situation. They aren’t assets to be divided up.</p>
<p>You may have a ‘right’ to do whatever you want, I just want to say that the underlying mindset seems pretty horrible for the kids involved. Them affording college is actually probably the least of their worries if this is what they live under day to day.</p>
<p>People are being too hard on Calimity4e, in my humble opinion. There are three adults involved, and she seems to be the only responsible one in the group.</p>
<p>It’s not uncommon for adults in second marriages to segregate their assets, and it seems that was the agreement upfront. Yes, she made the mistake of not researching the odd rules for college finances before the second marriage, and she also failed to ask the hard financial questions for her husband. Who among us thinks of all the right questions ahead of time, every time? </p>
<p>But it does seem that she walked into a tough situation, and found herself to be the only responsible adult - and she’s been working since then to help lift up the others. So please cut her some slack, OK?</p>
<p>Just the other night I advised my friend to not marry her long term boyfriend. Her kids are in 10th & 11th grade. She agreed she probably wouldn’t until they were through with school just for the FA piece. I think that is awful that marriage is penalized like this. But there are lots of terrible things that happen with FA. What about the kid whose parents can afford, but won’t pay for college. They’re stuck as well. Not to mention those who planned and saved for their kids will also get penalized over those who chose to spend and not save anything. FA is a mess, but I can’t think how it could even be made more equitable for individual situations.</p>
<p>MisterK, for 20 YOs not to ask these questions when they are engaged is understandable. For us older folks, mmm, not quite the same thing.</p>
<p>Sometimes when we are in the middle of a frustrating situation, we just need to vent. If we vent in the heat of the moment, sometimes we express ourselves in a way that sounds more coarse or angry than we actually mean.</p>
<p>That’s why I would never advise anyone to vent on this board unless they have cooled down and crafted a first post that shows themselves in a sympathetic light. I’d like to think I could rewrite the OP’s first post in a way that wouldn’t have had so many of the posters here jumping down her throat, and yet would still be true.</p>
<p>Yeah, maybe she’s a selfish b**ch. But maybe she’s just a frustrated person feeling like everyone in her family is suddenly expecting her to solve problems she didn’t create, and having a rotten day.</p>
<p>Your assets could very likely be holding them back from better financial aid… it seems like your resentment towards them is less deserved than if they were to resent you for lowering their potential FA. Maybe the divorce is the right decision here, because at least in that case you’d actually be helping them out. Also, the fact that you threatened to divorce your husband (for real) if he took out loans to help his kids go to college ( which, without loans or $ help from you it seems they may not be able to afford) suggests that perhaps you are just looking for some reason to get out of this family. Idk, but I find it very odd that you very seriously are considering that. Perhaps your subconscious is telling you something?</p>
<p>For the sake of those two teenagers who seem to have already had it rough in some ways, I really hope everything works out to help them.</p>
<p>well said skyhook!</p>
<p>I don’t get the separate finances thingy - why did you even bother getting married in the first place?</p>
<p>Who knows whether the OP is selfish or frustrated, the underlying post has everything to do with my (kids), my (retirement), my (money) – how else do you read it? Ick. Somewhere the OP lost sight of the fact that when you marry it become our (family), our (kids), our (money) not our (family), his (kids), my (money) my (kids).</p>
<p>
One of the reasons most couples don’t do the “separate money, 50-50” thing is because there comes a time where it no longer works. Over the past 18 years I have only worked part time, having chosen to stay home with the kids as much as possible. I could never have done that if I had to pay half the mortgage, utilities, food, car insurance, etc. And H is now the one with the 401K, since none of the jobs I’ve held in that time had benefits.</p>
<p>And what happens if one partner starts making significantly more than the other? (H: “I’m taking a vacation to Hawaii, dear. I see that you can’t afford to come along, so have a nice week here at home.” ) (W: “How do you like my new Jaguar, darling?” H: “Lovely dear, I hope someday I will be able to afford to drive something besides this 20-year-old jalopy.”) </p>
<p>There is a lot more to a marriage/family than money and stuff and counting every penny to make sure that I didn’t (gasp!) pay for an apple that H actually consumed.</p>
<p>You indicated that you started funds for the SS and SD, but didn’t see the point in contributing to them. Does that mean that there is no money in these “funds”? </p>
<p>It seems to me that you and/or the H will be contributing to funds for the 2 bio D’s for, say, the next 18-ish years. Why would you not be willing to contribute (or let the H contribute) to funds for the SD and SS for the next 18 years as well (albeit in the form of paying off loans rather than saving for future expense)? It just seems lopsided to me.</p>
<p>Lopsided is a good word. Whether you are married never divorced or remarried with kids older and joint kids younger most families can’t save as much when they are young as they can during the power years of ages thirty through forty so in some respects the kids are caught in the wake of whatever is happening at whatever time they “get expensive.” And yes, even if you are in a marriage that is your money, my money there are chunks of time because things happen where one partner supports the other. Nothing is ever a smooth curve. I would suggest the OP and her husband engage a financial counselor to help them figure out a budget that supports the older kids as well as the younger kids over time and their presumably “joint” retirement.</p>
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<p>I do get the separate finances thingy – but not when teenagers who want to go to college are penalized as a result.</p>
<p>I have seen separate finances in married couples twice in my family, in both cases involving people who married after their children from previous marriages were grown. In both instances, one person had substantially greater assets than the other, and they wanted to make sure that their children – not their spouse’s children – inherited those assets. So they set things up to make that possible. I don’t know how either couple handled their day-to-day expenses. They may well have handled them jointly. Their main concern was not the routine bills but rather that their separately held savings and investments would go to their own children.</p>
<p>But these cases involved grown children who were no longer entangled in their parents’ finances (except for their eventual inheritance), not teenagers with a FAFSA in their future.</p>
<p>I have to say that I have some sympathy for the OP here. My ex-H recently remarried (and he did not have a clue that this would impact D2’s changes of getting need based FA, sigh). However… I have no expectation that his new wife (who is, by the way, loathed by my children as she is the one ex-H cheated with before we divorced) will pay any of our kids’ college education. I would like to get ex-H to chip in some money for D2 (he paid zero for D1’s college, I covered it all… we had saved some, but not all that was needed); I am angling to get him to pay the amount he pays annually in child support toward D2’s college, since he does not have to pay child support after she is 18. He has tentatively agreed to this, with some caveats. It only makes a small dent, but since he made no dent for D1 it is progress. But I do not assume his wife will be paying anything. It is frustrating that the colleges expect that she would, honestly. I would not if I were in her position.</p>
<p>Most parents are concerned about college costs, future retirement monies, younger kids’ college costs, and the like. </p>
<p>I believe kayf summarized the options when parents are divorced and remarried. </p>
<p>The financial aid calculation guidelines are clear. They are not a secret and they cannot be “bent”. They are what they are. When a custodial parent remarries, the new spouse’s info is required on the FAFSA whether that parent will be actually be contributing …or not. Those are the rules.</p>
<p>So the thing to do is figure out how college WILL be funded, checking for things like merit aid options, and looking at schools with a cost threshold that is going to work.</p>
<p>
I really can’t. It seems to me that her kids might be young because she seems to have recently found out about this. If that’s the case, then, no, I don’t see the difference. It seems to me that she is in exactly the situation of not having a lot of money because of others’ choices and because she still has little ones at home.</p>
<p>Also, she specifically said that she is setting the same rules for her bio kids, the only difference being the amount of time spent savings. And her references to putting away what she can makes it sound like we’re not talking about full pay at NYU versus paying nothing toward community college.</p>
<p>I also think some posters are being overly harsh with the OP who is willing to contribute to her stepchildren’s college education. It’s really nice that some of you with stepchildren have provided full support for them but every family’s situation is different and in my experience, step-parents rarely provide full college educations to the children of their new spouse when said spouse and the other biological parent have made no effort to save for their own children’s college years.</p>
<p>I do wish that those who keep urging her to get a divorce because she isn’t conducting her marriage/step-parenting the way you think she should would please stop. It’s nasty and I can’t see how any of the children would benefit (apart from better financial aid) from having their family break up. I know this is cc but there really are more important things in life than college money.</p>
<p>Joblue…the OP was the one who first mentioned getting a divorce…as a way NOT to have to include her assets/income on the financial aid forms for these older kiddos.</p>