Inheritance for kids need rational help!

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Deltadeliquent

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Background:
I have a friend that is recently married for the second time. She moved from a foreign country to the UK to marry after a three year long distance relationship. She has two independent children that are doing well for themselves.

The man she married also has two grown children, one with a university education. They are constantly being given money, staying at their dads house, getting their credit cards paid off by dad. These kids are in their mid to very late twenties.

Groom has paid for little to nothing in terms of the new marriage. The brides residual debt in the foreign country has been paid by the bride, and now that she is out of money, she has to borrow money from her family members…including her children. Groom is wanting bride to even pay for her own groceries. Groom is constantly complaining about money, even though he has a good job and makes over twice the average wage in the UK. He has a large amount in savings, but denies it. We know this through his best friend, and bank account statements.
He also had an inheritance from his mother recently, which he claims is gone, but no one can understand where it went. And he cannot explain where it has gone. He has made a will giving everything to the kids, with his new bride receiving nothing.

Bride is trying to get a job, but being a middle aged woman, the backlash against foreigners, and the need for a couple of courses to enhance her language skills have hindered finding employment. She left a well paying, highly skilled job in her own country. She is socially isolated and broke after 1.5 years of using her savings to fund her existence in a new country. Groom is not paying for anything other than a few groceries and complains about that. She does all the housework and cooking. She has no car, no computer or printer on which to write a resume or apply for jobs. She has very few tools to work with. She is not eligible for any social benefits.

She understands that they both need to be contributing to the expenses. She is not trying to be a kept woman. But she is facing difficulties in the UK and has given up a lot, including a nice pension in her own country to be with this man. I would expect all monies to be pooled and bills paid by this mutual pool. I wouldn’t expect a married couple to have totally separate financial lives. And I would expect the spouse with the job to take up the slack until both are working. She expected the same. He refuses. He is insisting she even pay for most of her own food!

Needless to say, they are in the edge of breaking up. This was not a sham marriage, I watched the entire courtship and marriage. They both were totally besotted and everyone thought they had a great chance of making it. But once the bride moved, everything changed. His attitude did a complete reversal and is centered around money. They both state that want to work it out, but he will not move one inch…she is very close to going home because at this point she cant work in the UK, and she has to eat…if they split, she will have to leave as the government will insist. Who’s paying for the ticket, we have no idea…

Groom’s excuse for not paying her way is that he wants to keep as much money aside in order to give his kids an inheritance. Bride and groom live in the marital home of the groom, even to the extent of sleeping in the same bed, mattress as he did with his first wife!
This need of his to give even more to his children after his death is going to destroy his present life, not to mention his brides life.

My question:
with no religious connotation, can someone give me a good, rational, money orientated reason why the groom should be using his money to fund his new life and get his brides life restarted, rather than keeping it locked away for his bratty children who think they deserve it.
I honestly believe that if dad could get over his belief about an inheritance for his kids, they might be able to work this out since this is the one reason he keeps giving for his stinginess. Of we could demolish this, maybe he would see the error of his ways and they could reset the relationship.

Wow! Reading this over, it is a very sad story…
 
I don’t know what to say to this, other than I can’t imagine why in the world she stayed 1.5 years. I’d have left a LONG time before it got to this.

Something is very wrong with this situation. I can’t image what you could say to him that hasn’t been said in 1.5 years. And his complete change in personality after the marriage indicates there is indeed a lot more to this situation-- either a personality disorder on his part or something else going on.

I wouldn’t try to insert myself in the situation to attempt to “fix” it. I’d offer her a safe place to stay temporarily and money to get home to her own country. I’d help her find a UK lawyer to sue for divorce and some of his assets to recover what she lost in this farce of a marriage.
 
Sounds like a very selfish, self-centered man. I would be long gone over that nonsense.

His priority should be his WIFE, not his adult children. Period.

I think this could also possibly be financial abuse…deliberately keeping her isolated and broke to control her.

He definitely does not love her. A man who loves his wife would never force her to live like that.
 
It sounds like they need to go into marriage counseling yesterday.

She should probably make a mental note to self for how long she would tolerate no improvement in the situation. I would personally not give it more than a month more without visible improvement (going to counseling, reasonable grocery provision, etc). A personal finance course (perhaps an online one) would also be a reasonable form of improvement. (As I’ve mentioned in your other threads, Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University would be a good online option.) I would not state the mental deadline to him, but would ask him to do the stuff, and mention that she cannot go on any longer drawing down her savings, and she cannot continue paying to live with him. She might say something like, “I love you, I gave up everything to be with you, but I can’t afford to live with you with no income. I am going to have to go back to my home country just to be able to survive if we aren’t able to work out a reasonable financial arrangement. How do you suggest we improve the situation?” The answer to that will probably be, “Well, you should get a job, and then we won’t have a problem.” And her answer could be, “What if I can’t get a job in the next half year?” or “I want a full financial partnership. We cannot be successful as a couple if you are making all financial decisions without involving me in the process. We need to have a working budgeting process where we create a new budget every month that we both agree on. If we can’t manage to sit down and agree on our spending, I can’t stay with you. Let’s do a budget now and make an agreement that we will stick to the budget for the coming month and if there are any changes to be made, we will discuss it in advance.” (And then she needs to choose a dollar (or pound figure) that either of them can spend without asking the other.)

Dave Ramsey talks a lot about marriage issues, by the way. He might not be culturally a good fit, but one of his major messages is that couples must agree on finances and work together on finances or they will not be able to have a successful marriage. Here are some links that might be helpful:

daveramsey.com/article/the-truth-about-money-and-relationships/lifeandmoney_relationshipsandmoney/

daveramsey.com/article/newlyweds-what-do-we-need-to-know-about-money/lifeandmoney_relationshipsandmoney/

This should all have been worked out before they married, of course, but it’s not too late now.

If he’s impervious to all of this, she can ask her adult children for help in getting back home. If they are as well-set as you described, they should be able to help her get back on her feet. It’s possible that once he knows that she has her plane tickets and is all set to move back, he will have a change of heart.

I hope she finds her way. And I hope she isn’t criticizing his adult children. Her problem is with him, not them.

Edited to add: agreed about locating a UK divorce lawyer and asking for advice. You might be able to help with that end.
 
Thanks everyone.
She’s not critiquing his kids, but she has told him he ought to stop "helping"them so much.
I have sent her the Dave Ramsey site. And told her they need counseling, like NOW.

Granted, I’m on the outside here, but from what she has told me I am floored. I knew him somewhat before the courtship and am very surprised.

I just being her friend for now and trying to help her understand that this is not normal. And I have offered her a place to run to if she needs and the means to get here or home if she needs.

I just thought that since there seem to be those on CAF that are very good with money, they might have a good rational argument against his insistence on inheritance. At least at this stage of the game. She’s culturally catholic, he’s not anything.
 
But this isn’t a money management issue. This is a dysfunctional marital situation issue. Big difference.
 
Thanks everyone.
She’s not critiquing his kids, but she has told him he ought to stop "helping"them so much.
I have sent her the Dave Ramsey site. And told her they need counseling, like NOW.

Granted, I’m on the outside here, but from what she has told me I am floored. I knew him somewhat before the courtship and am very surprised.

I just being her friend for now and trying to help her understand that this is not normal. And I have offered her a place to run to if she needs and the means to get here or home if she needs.

I just thought that since there seem to be those on CAF that are very good with money, they might have a good rational argument against his insistence on inheritance. At least at this stage of the game. She’s culturally catholic, he’s not anything.
It’s hard to make the inheritance argument without sounding greedy, so that would not be my first stop.

I think the primary strategy needs to be to get him to agree to managing money together, and once he agrees to that and they start doing a budget, the inheritance stuff can be discussed at a later point.

Once they are budgeting together and he is chipping in appropriately, that’s fine for now. At some point (perhaps after things have been running smoothly for six months), it’s fair to ask, “If you die now, what happens to me?” One piece of the solution might be to give the kids the home but get her the legal right to stay in the home until her death or departure (I don’t know if that can be done in the UK, but it can be done in the US). So, here are some possible options:
  1. he leaves her just the house
  2. he leaves her a life estate in the house, plus a small but reasonable fraction of his estate.
  3. If his estate is large, leaving her 1/4 of it would be generous. That way, each child would get 3/8 of the estate. If they got a whole share, they would each get 4/8, so it only diminishes each total share by 25%.
Alternately, 1/3 would also be reasonable, as it puts each of the children and your friend on equal footing.

Neither 1/4 nor 1/3 sounds greedy to my ear. I know that in some parts of the world, the default is that 1/2 goes to the spouse, and the remainder is split among the children.

Another idea is that they should go together and talk to his attorney who manages the will for him and they should ask the attorney what other people do in the same circumstances, what the range of options is.
 
But this isn’t a money management issue. This is a dysfunctional marital situation issue. Big difference.
The husband thinks of it as a money management issue, so it’s worthwhile pointing out to him (as sweetly as possible) that even just from the money management point of view, he’s being stupid.
 
There’s also a very popular personal finance book entitled “The Millionaire Next Door” that your friend and her husband may find helpful. One of the sections is about the impact that it has on affluent people giving adult children continual infusions of cash to afford a lifestyle they can’t manage on their own income.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Millionaire_Next_Door

Here’s a blog post talking about the authors’ argument against the cash subsidies, namely that the subsidies often encourage adult children into taking on ongoing expenses that they cannot afford.

frugalize.blogspot.com/2007/11/millionaire-next-door-review-pt-3.html
 
The husband thinks of it as a money management issue, so it’s worthwhile pointing out to him (as sweetly as possible) that even just from the money management point of view, he’s being stupid.
It’s not that he’s being stupid, he’s being abusive. He has cut her off from her finances (her pension), her family, her country. He’s withholding his own income from her, something that she has a moral right to as his wife. He tricked her. He protected his own finances and he got a free maid service out of a sham of a marriage. He had no intention of being true husband and wife when they got married. I would be willing to bet this marriage would be annulled in a heartbeat due to fraud and the lack of intention to be truly married.

He has made them nothing more than room mates…and he gets all the benefits of that arrangement.

She’s a fool to stay, imo. Dave Ramsey isn’t going to fix this.
 
It’s not that he’s being stupid, he’s being abusive. He has cut her off from her finances (her pension), her family, her country. He’s withholding his own income from her, something that she has a moral right to as his wife. He tricked her. He protected his own finances and he got a free maid service out of a sham of a marriage. He had no intention of being true husband and wife when they got married. I would be willing to bet this marriage would be annulled in a heartbeat due to fraud and the lack of intention to be truly married.

He has made them nothing more than room mates…and he gets all the benefits of that arrangement.

She’s a fool to stay, imo. Dave Ramsey isn’t going to fix this.
I think there’s 80% chance that you’re right, but I feel like she should give him one month to move forward, just to be very sure. One month costs relatively little after 1.5 years.

It’s possible he is just obtuse. His mental tape may be saying stuff like, “I thought she was going to get a job right away, why isn’t her English better yet?, I thought we’d be doing this 50/50, I’m paying for my stuff, why doesn’t she pay for her stuff?, she’s just sitting at home doing nothing, groceries don’t cost that much, my kids need the money, my mom worked her whole life for that money, etc., etc.” So he’s in the wrong, but he’s not necessarily being straight-out evil.

And they should have worked this out well in advance of her moving for him. People in second marriages have to be scrupulous about deciding on money stuff well in advance–these are very predictable issues.
 
I’ve told her just that! That she is a roommate, not a wife.

I would have been long gone too, but she is a foreign country with few resources.

I do wonder if his children have not poisoned him against her with something about her being a gold digger. I can easily see the son doing this. Although she had a good paying high status job (which does not translate), she is from a country that most would consider the Third World.

She has told him many times she doesn’t want anything for him if he dies. She just wants a normal marriage in this world.

She is a smart cookie, energetic, beautiful and loving. But she is in a bad place right now, being in exile effectively, broke and isolated.

I’m not advocating adultery, but any decent man in his right mind would love to have her as a wife.

I’ll write her and make those suggestions.
 
It’s possible he is just obtuse. His mental tape may be saying stuff like, “I thought she was going to get a job right away, why isn’t her English better yet?, I thought we’d be doing this 50/50, I’m paying for my stuff, why doesn’t she pay for her stuff?, she’s just sitting at home doing nothing, groceries don’t cost that much, my kids need the money, my mom worked her whole life for that money, etc., etc.” So he’s in the wrong, but he’s not necessarily being straight-out evil. .
I think this is right. And im convinced someone has put a bug in his ear about her being a gold digger.
If this is so its no excuse. He chose her. He asked her to marry him. He ought to respect her and love her and protect her and help her. He has no idea of what a marriage is, and how to be a husband. I’ve told her this too.

Her English is very good, BTW. But not quite up to snuff on the nuances needed for translation work. She hopes for this. She has applied for lower work, even as a dinner lady at the local schools. No luck. She’s foreign and way over qualified.
 
I think this is right. And im convinced someone has put a bug in his ear about her being a gold digger.
If they started out well and then things went wrong, maybe.

But to me, it sounds like they never had a reasonable financial agreement or plan between the two of them.

Some men are just stingy and fearful of women taking all their money, and they don’t understand that that is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Also, a lot of guys just aren’t clear on how much stuff costs.

Also, at least in the US, there’s a popular fantasy that, “American women are selfish and spoiled, but if I can just get a woman from a different country, everything will be amazing!” I wouldn’t be surprised if there is a British version of that particular fairy tale.
 
Husbands and wives do pay for their own food, this guy is just using her for live-in/sleep-in maid service. She needs to wise up and go back home to her family, ASAP.
 
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