Every so often, a story comes along that redefines the word “entitlement.” We’re not just talking about a “can I speak to the manager” situation. We are talking about a man who looked at his stepdaughter’s inheritance—money she only has because her father died—and said, “Can my kids have some of that? You know, to make it fair?” I am screaming.
Our narrator is a 42-year-old mom. Ten years ago, her 7-year-old daughter’s father died in an avoidable accident. It’s a tragedy, full stop. The subsequent settlement resulted in a trust fund for her daughter, designed to give her a “head start in life” that her dad would never be able to. It’s blood money. It’s the price of her loss.
The daughter, now 17, is a great kid. She’s not a spoiled brat who takes this money for granted. She knows exactly where it came from. She worked her azz off and just got into her “dream school”—the same one her late father went to. She’s so excited she’s crying and clutching his old sweatshirt. It’s a beautiful, heartbreaking moment.
Life, as it does, moved on. The mom remarried a “lovely man” who has two kids of his own. They all live together, and it’s a big, blended family. This year, both 17-year-old girls are graduating and heading to college. The stepdaughter is also going to a fantastic school.
Here’s the “problem.” The daughter will graduate debt-free, thanks to her father’s tragic death. The stepdaughter will have to take out about $40,000 in loans, which the mom notes is “quite modest” for that school and her future career. This, to the new husband, is suddenly a massive, five-alarm “problem.”
He wants them to split the daughter’s trust fund between all three kids. His reasoning? So they can all have college paid for. He says it’s “ok” that this would drain her fund and force her to take out loans for grad school, because then “everyone will start off on an equal footing.”
I… I have no words. “Equal footing”? Sir, your kids have a living, breathing father. Her kid does not. Her “footing” started in a hole. This money isn’t a “privilege”; it’s a reparation. It’s the only thing her father could give her when his life was taken. It is not a family snack pack to be distributed evenly among the step-siblings.
The mom, thank God, has a spine. She told him absolutely not, for two very simple reasons: 1) Her father had to die for this money, and 2) It is her inheritance from him. This is not complicated.
But the husband, oh, the husband. He won’t let it go. He is now accusing her of being “selfish.” He’s claiming she is “teaching her daughter to be selfish.” He’s pulling out the ultimate guilt-trip: “you obviously don’t consider my SKs the same as my daughter.”
This is the most manipulative, gaslighting nonsense I have ever heard. He is not “blending” a family. He is a financial predator who is trying to raid a grieving child’s bank account to benefit his own kids. The mom isn’t “selfish” for protecting her daughter; she’s a mother.
So, is she the ahole for wanting to protect her daughter’s trust? Let me be abundantly clear: N-T-A. She is not the ahole. She is a mother protecting her child from a man who is being a greedy, entitled, and emotionally manipulative opportunist. He’s not just “selfish”; he’s ghoulish.