Actually he said he wanted “first and final say” ie - to be able to overrule her wishes on the subject.
Just caught this in the OP:
Er, no. You guys either decide your money is separate or joint. If it’s separate, you get no say in how she spends her money (other than coming to an agreement as to dividing up the mortgage and other joint expenses.) If it’s joint, you both have equal say. You don’t get to completely control the money just because you make more.
Edit: Yup, Hello Again, I just reread the OP and caught that. I’m with you on that one.
Speak with a family and estates lawyer in your jurisdiction.
Depending on the laws of your jurisdiction, you may have property/succession rights regardless of your wife’s will says.
In any event, a good lawyer with expertise in this area might be able to come up with something that keeps everyone happy.
I think there is a test you can give yourself to find out the real reasons for your feelings. What if she gave you the 401K money but then took out a life insurance policy through work benefiting only her son and the amount of the policy is much more than will be in the 401K for many years? If you still feel the same way then you have some issues because those types of policies are very cheap especially if she is fairly young. Such a policy would be ideal for the situation and you might want to suggest it to her.
You may think you would act fairly in the event something does happen but children can almost neevr trust their stepparents in this scenario as countless people find out every year including some in my family.
“Joint”? What is this word “joint” of which ye speake? Does “joint” mean “joint with right of survivorship”? Worth looking into.
Wow, this is enlightening. I have two children and am looking at getting married, to someone who is not their father, in the near future. I have worked very hard to build things for them and will continue to do so after I’m married. I fully intend to leave the business I am building and half of my life insurance, to my children. I am very specifically building these things for them, I come from a poor family and I want to set my children up so that they can move beyond that level. My future husband’s will get all of our other financial investments.
Is that selfish of me?
grayhairedmomma, you may or may not be selfish, but that’s the same kind of thing my mom is planning for me. She recently divorced husband #2, but the whole time, she was adamant that the house she owned (before he showed up) would be left only to me in the event of her death. Right or wrong, it sounds like something a lot of parents might want for their kids.
What I, other posters, the man in the moon, or anyone else, thinks about your selfishness or non-selfishness does not matter. Does the man who will be your husband think you are being selfish? His, your children, and your opinion are the only ones that count.
To answer your question, if the man who will be your husband know all this going into your marriage, no you are not being selfish. If, however, he marries you thinking that you both will be working your business for yourselves and your will hits him with giving it all to your kids, yes you have been selfish.
For the record, it hurts a good deal. My mother died and my father remarried, and this is the situation. I’ve always been a good kid, and being brushed aside in this way makes me feel like unwanted leftovers from my father’s previous marriage. The worst part is, if I bring it up I only look greedy.
What are her objectives? Take care of self, spouse and kids?
What are your objectives? Take care of self, spouse and kids?
Should it not be possible to find a way of both parties meeting the same objectives?
That’s where a good family and estates lawyer can help you.
I don’t think it’s selfish as long as your partner knows and understands this before he gets into bed financially with you.
Don’t feel lonely, bec. I know if my dad goes before my step-mom, I’ll see not one red cent–she’ll leave everything to her kids. Not that I care, really, I’m pretty self-sufficient. But her family has always been first in their joint finances, to the point where while helping her three children with insurance, etc., my dad had to ask permission to help my brother even just a little.
You need a pre-nuptual agreement. You need to get a complete valuation of the assets you own, the value of your business, and sit down with your prospective husband and a lawyer and hash out the terms under which you want these pre-marriage assets disposed of in case of your death.
Then you’ll need another agreement for how to handle the net wealth increase you experience while married. This isn’t a simple subject - how do you factor in things like the value of reputation and good will that your business has already built and which may contribute to growth in the future? You need a lawyer and an accountant here.
You’ll both have to come to an agreement as to how the property that was jointly accumulated during the marriage will be split when you die. Normally, your husband would have the rights to all of it. If you divorce, you’d split the value of what was built during the marriage, and you would keep what you owned before you got married. But again, this can be hideously complex to figure out.
Absolutely not. Any value accrued during the marriage is split if there is a divorce. It’s extremely common for one partner to have a better retirement package than the other. If they make plans for retirement based on the existence of that package, and there is a divorce right before retirement, the partner without the retirement plan gets screwed.
If 401(k)s and other retirement packages were considered to be separate resources, there would be great incentive for a spouse to plunk as much money as possible into the plan in order to shelter it from the other spouse in case of divorce.
What would you say to a situation where one spouse had a job where the employer matched 401(k) contributions, and the other spouse didn’t, and therefore they decide to put all of their retirement savings into that plan. Are you saying that the spouse who has the plan can then walk away from the marriage, leaving the other person with nothing? That’s not how it works.
Even company pensions are not exempt. If one spouse is an auto worker, and is therefore guaranteed a 70% pension at retirement, and the couple plans on using that as their retirement income, what happens if the two divorce on the day of retirement? The answer is that the pension is split. If they divorce well before retirement, the divorced spouse collects pension income the day the pension holder retires, in direct proportion to how long they were married during the period when the pension was accrued.
Let’s say you were married to your previous spouse for 10 years, during which time you accrued a pension with your company. My company offers 1% of peak earnings per year employed. So let’s say that during those 10 years, you built up a 10% of income pension credit. Now, you retire 30 years later. You haven’t seen your ex-spouse for 30 years. You worked for the company for 40 years, and therefore you get 40% of your income as pension - except that now your ex-spouse can come out of the woodwork and demand his half of the 10% accrued during your marriage, and you’ll wind up getting 35% of your income, and he’ll get 5%. If you had remarried for those 30 years and then divorced at retirement, you’d get 20% of your income, husband #1 would get 5%, and husband #2 would get 15%.
I’ll bet a lot of people don’t know that. Here in Canada, we have the Pension Benefits Division Act which covers this in the case of a spouse having a government pension (nurses, school teachers, police officers, military members, etc).
In this case, if there is a divorce and the non-pensioned party requests it, a calculation will be made as to how much the pension grew during the period of the marriage. That amount will be split in half, and a lump sum deposited into a locked-in retirement account for the other partner (and the pensioner’s pension amount reduced by an equivalent sum).
So no, retirement funds are never ‘yours’. If you earned them during the marriage, your spouse has as much say in their disposition as you do.
[quote]
For me, my wife and I both have life insurance policies, she is my beneficiary, but heres goes to her father. I am ok with this, even though I do earn almost twice as much as she does.
What is more of a concern to me, that is not addressed is “our” house. When I met her, she was about two years into a mortgage. 10 Years later the house has more than doubled in value, and the mortgage is tiny. She still refers to it as “her” house. Were we to divorce I see it being a big issue.
When my father passes away I suspect that I will get “screwed” on my inheritance. While I wouldn’t say I am fine with this, I really don’t want to fight over a dead mans many - if someone was to screwover and cheat to get a dead man’s money then I will let karma be the great leveller - I am successfull enough in my own right that I don’t NEED the money (although I do admit it would be nice)
For the OPs situation, so long as your retirement is well taken care of, why let it be an issue? There may be better mechanisms for her to take care of her son, but if this is what she wants let it be. While all the reasoning and logic may be sound as to why she shouldn’t give her 401 to her son, emotionally it will only ever sound like “you want to cheat my son out of an inheritance”
As mentioned upthread, perhaps a workable alternative may be a life insurance policy - satisfying all parties?
Cheers
I’ve highlighted some things that I think are relevant to this discussion that haven’t been mentioned by others elsewhere.
By your reckoning, her son was 11 when you married. Since you’ve been married, she’s made a practice of making him an equal beneficiary with you. From your phrasing, I will also guess that you have made a regular habit of questioning this practice. You are more than happy to let him have whatever she was able to set aside by herself prior to marriage. We aren’t privy here to how substantial an amount that is, but I’m also going to guess from your comment that it’s not much compared to what you have accumulated since you’ve been married.
Honestly, I’m not at all surprised that she doesn’t trust you to do right by her son if she dies. You couldn’t make your disregard for her son any clearer by your actions. Assigning half her 401k benefits may not have been the best move, but it’s clear she thinks you’d be willing to screw the kid over by leaving him with a relative pittance. People here who don’t understand a parent’s wanting to leave something for their child must not have kids, or else be incredibly selfish, because I don’t see anything wrong with her desire that he inherit something from her, regardless of his life circumstances.
I suspect that since the 401k contributions are related to her salary, she regards the contributions as hers to do with as she pleases. That’s not correct, but if you’re controlling every other dime in the relationship, or harping on the relative strength of your savings contributions, I’m not surprised she might feel that you don’t need to be sole beneficiary of her relatively “small” contribution to the family savings.
What other things has she made her son half beneficiary on? Are they financial instruments like the 401k that are supposed to go to a surviving spouse? Because if not, and if I were her, I’d seriously consider letting you have your 401k and change everything else to benefit my son only.
Does the son live with you, or did he? Does/did his father provide child support, such that you feel no financial obligation toward him? Just wondering.
OK. That portion of my post is withdrawn.
The rest of my post stands: in a marriage, one spouse ought to be able to trust his or her partner to abide by his or her wishes in the event of his or her death. Absent that trust, all the legal agreements in the world won’t fix what’s wrong.
Bolding added.
“Ought” is the operative word here. The OP has apparently given his wife reason to believe he will not abide by her wishes to provide for her son. So she is trying to do it in a way she believes he can’t change.
Legal agreements usually can not fix what is wrong in the emotional relations between the married parties, but legal agreements often can fix what is wrong in the financial relations between the married parties.
You misspelled “make excuses for”.
That line of thinking has torn as many families apart as addiction and affairs. It is stupid and pointless to make a point through irresponsibilty and naivety. Second marriages have a higher divorce rate than first marriages and many of the ones left standing won’t turn out that well either. Stepchildren often have a tenuous and adverserial relationship with their stepparents and things can really go to hell once the one person holding it all together is no longer there. It is a story across the ages and even happens when all parties start out well intended. There is no excuse for someone not to have a will and other legal tools when they are so easy to do. Stepparents may decluded themselves into thinking that a small fraction of what the deceased parent intended is a generous gift from themselves and should be applauded.
You can never truly trust anyone fully when it comes to these matters. People often surprise and shock when money is on the table and they get control. My grandmother is quite wealthy and has enough sense to spell out exactly who should get what when she passes. All of it is locked away in trusts and we granchildren get ours directly rather than being controlled through our parents who she rightfully believe will either get greedy or just screw things up.