Herein lies your problem. You have viewed and continue to view unconditional love as giving up rights and money. You made a foolish gesture to “prove” something that you cannot prove.
What you tried to demonstrate with the prenup is something that only a relationship with the children could demonstrate. I would not be surprised if the children lost a lot of respect for you just because you did something so foolish.
Bottom line, your immediate problem is not the prenup or the marriage but rather your relationship with your husband and his family. Your view on what it means to be a family and to be married needs to be adjusted. I suggest counseling. The broken relationships are the problem, not the contracts.
You cannot make someone like you or trust you, but if signing legal documents that favor them make them lose respect for her, they are some piece of work.
To take the part of the devil’s advocate, though, the “conditions”
are different. The children see their father’s wealth–past, present, and future–as something to which they are entitled. Wrong, but they had that in their heads, and their father lets them think this. Their “condition” is that his marriage not
cost them anything that they think belongs to them, including the future growth of his estate.
By giving up claim to that odd sense of entitlement, her condition is to not claim something she says she did not marry to get in the first place: her “condition” is that she is willing that the marriage not *enrich *her of something she didn’t have except by the marriage, anyway. Yes, the children are grasping, because they think their dad’s wealth belongs to them even though their dad is still very much alive and has every right to do what he wants with his own stuff, but to be fair: she is using “conditional” and “unconditional” to describe quite different “conditions”.
Now that she has been through thick and thin for 7 years with this fellow, she is thinking, “you know, it would really irk me if he dies and I find that my own assets aren’t enough to keep me out of poverty because his children were too grasping to miss so much as a salt shaker that belonged to a man who was both their dad and my husband”. Well, her “conditions” have changed, whether she likes to admit it or not. She’s not just being “enriched”; she has a lot into this marriage. Gee, that has a way of changing your outlook. IOW, I don’t think she has changed from charitable to grasping. I think she’s changed from having an unrealistic view of marriage to a realistic one. It is natural for spouses to care what happens to each other in the case of untimely death of one of them. Why, seven years into this marriage, does her husband still take this view?
The immediate problem is with her husband. The children are out of her control. I’d really suggest she get counselling of her own. If she wants to stay married, though, she had better pick her battles carefully. This whole situation is one big minefield, and her husband is not helping that.
BTW, there is a compromise that could be sought, here. Her husband could write an estate plan that puts at least part of his estate into a trust that will be available for his wife’s maintenence, should her own assets be exhausted during her lifetime. When she dies, the assets in the trust go to his children. The terms of such a trust could be very specific. If the children are going to get their nose out of shape because they have to wait for assets kept aside so that their dad’s second wife isn’t reduced to abject poverty, ol’ Dad needs to look at what that says about where his priorities need to lie. The wife might likewise consider such an arrangement. You’d have to talk to an attorney, but it might prove a lifesaver if one of them is sued into financial oblivion.
He might also write something that allows his wife to stay in their home until she dies as long as she likes after his death, after which the home becomes the property of his children. This will keep his children from having the locks changed on her during the funeral. These are all things that could be considered.
?). It sounds like there are marriage problems as well as problems between the father/children and step parent/children. I married someone with children too, so I know how complicated it can get. First, all the emotions of everyone involved and next, all the practical things like wills, etc.