42-year-old asks wife to help fund stepdaughter's college despite the separate finances agreement he proposed when they got married, and gets upset when she refuses

• A 42-year-old man who remarried two years ago pushed for a fully separate finances arrangement specifically to keep his daughter's college fund untouched. His wife agreed. Everyone shook hands, metaphorically speaking, and moved on. Two years later, his daughter got into a $65k-a-year school with about $80k saved, and suddenly the separate finances arrangement started to feel less like a smart safeguard and more like an inconvenient technicality.

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  via Natalia Blauth

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• AITA for telling my spouse I won't help pay for their kid's college when we agreed finances would stay separate?

  952867

• I (42M) married my wife (40F) two years ago. This is a second marriage for both of us. I have a daughter (17F) from my first marriage. She doesn't have kids.

• When we got married we explicitly agreed to keep our finances separate. We have a joint account for household expenses that we both contribute to, but everything else stays in our own accounts. This was my idea originally because I wanted to make sure my daughter's college fund stayed protected for her.

• My daughter is applying to colleges now and apparently the fund I set up for her isn't going to cover everything. She got into a school that costs around $65k a year. The college fund has about $80k in it which would cover maybe a year and a half.

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  via Natalia Blauth

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• Last week I asked my wife if she'd be willing to help cover some of the costs since we're married and my daughter is technically her stepdaughter now. She said no. She makes good money as a consultant ($140k) but says she has her own financial goals and we agreed when we got married that our money would stay separate.

• I got really upset and said I didn't think she'd actually hold me to that when it comes to my daughter's education. I said this is different than regular expenses and that family should help family.

• She reminded me that keeping finances separate was MY idea specifically to protect my daughter's money. I said that was about protecting her FROM potential issues, not her refusing to help when my daughter needs it.

• My ex-wife found out about this somehow and called my wife saying she's being selfish. My daughter hasn't said anything directly but she's been really cold to my wife lately.
  My sister says my wife is technically right but being kind of heartless. My best friend says we had an agreement and I can't change the rules now just because it doesn't work in my favor anymore.
  AITA for expecting my wife to help with college costs even though we agreed to keep finances separate?

  952867

• 
  via Natalia Blauth

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• BubblyNumber5518:

  YTA. I don’t know your wife at all, but I’m wondering if she would have been happy to combine finances, never touch your daughter’s college savings, and supported her when she needed the extra money for school.

  But you, in your profound wisdom, treated her like a would-be thief and now you’re bothered that she doesn’t want to help?

• At one point, his logic gets genuinely creative. He reframes the original agreement to mean that the separation was designed to protect his daughter FROM his wife, not to protect his wife FROM his daughter's expenses. That is a remarkable pivot. The clause meant to shield one person's money becomes, through sheer interpretive effort, an implied obligation for the other person to contribute to that same fund's shortfall. Legal scholars are probably not studying this case, but they should be.

• Amazing-Wave4704:

  YTA.

  "What's mine is mine. And what's yours is also mine."

• What makes this kind of situation so recognizable is the gap between what people agree to in theory and what they expect in practice. Financial agreements feel abstract when everything is fine. When a real cost shows up, some people discover that they signed up for the protection without actually internalizing the reciprocity. His wife makes $140k and has her own financial goals. She is not a villain for treating a written agreement like a written agreement.

• Pomelo9:

  YTA. And this conversation should have been kept from your daughter. You’ve probably created a rift between your wife and daughter that will take a long time to heal if it ever does.

• Roping in his ex-wife to pressure his current wife is a bold additional move. If anything, it proves that the man understands coalition-building, even if his grasp of contract law is a little loose. His sister called his wife heartless while also admitting she is technically right, which is basically the entire argument condensed into one sentence.

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