Mom Refuses to Split Daughter’s Inheritance from Her Dad to Benefit Husband’s Kids

“NTA. That settlement was for your deceased husband’s children, not your future children, and certainly not someone else’s.”

Hundreds and hundreds of comments on this viral post in Reddit’s r/AmItheA–hole forum reflect the gist of this award-winning remark from StAlvis.

As a matter of fact, the AITA community is seething in fury after reading the post, condemning the woman’s second husband, who wanted his kids to benefit from the inheritance of her daughter, whose father died in an accident when she was only seven years old.

With the username u/AITACollegeFundMom, this mom shared the story with the members of the AITA community to seek their opinion: “When my (42F) daughter (17F) was seven, we lost her father to an avoidable accident. Due to that and the subsequent settlement, my daughter was able to have a trust fund of sorts that provided for college, grad school if she wanted, and even some left over for whatever life might bring. It is money that – managed wisely – would enable her to have a head start in life. She knows about this and has never taken it for granted, given where the money came from. After all, we’d both rather have her father around than the money.”

Six years passed, and OP got married again to a man who has his own two children (17F and 13M). They live as one family, with her stepkids seeing their mom during vacations since she resides across the country.

Everything was running well until this year, when OP’s daughter and her husband’s eldest daughter were soon to graduate. According to OP, “My daughter was admitted ED (early decision) to her dream school last year and is ecstatic about it. Her father is an alumnus. and she has this old sweatshirt of his that she kept to remind her of him. She cried so much when she got in, and both her stepfather and I were proud of her, because she worked hard to get in.”

However, proud as he seemed to be of his SD, OP’s husband was thinking more of his daughter. He and his ex have not been able to save enough for their kids’ college education. Yes, his daughter would also be attending a great school, but she would have to take some loans to complete her courses.

This means OP’s SD would have about $40K in loans by the time she graduates, but in OP’s point of view, it was still modest considering the prestigious school she would be attending and her future prospects after graduation. With regard to OP’s daughter, she would be graduating debt-free and even enjoying the opportunity to enroll in master’s and doctorate programs.

However, OP’s husband was now eyeing her daughter’s inheritance as she continued to relate in her post, “He wants us to split up my daughter’s fund between all three kids, because then they could all (probably) have college fully paid for. My daughter won’t have much left over and will definitely need to borrow for grad school – which she has expressed interest in attending – but, according to my husband, that’s ok because everyone will start off on an equal footing post-college. I think this is unfair to my daughter because 1) her father had to die for this money and 2) this is like her inheritance from him.”

Nevertheless, her husband continued to argue that OP’s daughter and his kids were siblings and that her daughter should feel happy in helping her stepsister and stepbrother to have a good start in life as well. But OP refused to have her daughter get caught in the guilt-tripping and remained firm with her decision.

But her husband didn’t take the rejection lightly and accused OP of selfishness and teaching her daughter to be selfish. For him, OP doesn’t consider her stepkids as real family.

It’s no longer necessary to ask who’s the a–hole in this story. But this comment from ErikLovemonger is another one that’s worth noting, like most of the messages from thousands of commenters in this post.

“I know people always complain AITA is too quick to say ‘divorce.’ It’s one thing for a spouse to propose this, which is already gross. He’s pushing this despite getting denied and attacking OP and OP’s daughter, whose father had to die to get this money. I would honestly be questioning who I really married and whether I really know this person.

“Does this person really care about my daughter and myself, or is he going to work to our detriment and hurt us if he thinks it helps his kids? If he continued to push this, I don’t think I could stay in the relationship – for my daughter’s sake at least.”