<p>Post 155, paragraph2, I meant to say my college son’s friend’s granddad. My kids have no grandfathers and neither grandmother is helping out with college.</p>
<p>The GPs sound toxic. Be civil to them but don’t let them get their hooks into you or your daughters, and try your best to not let them poison things any further with their favoritism. It hurts to turn down “free money” but nothing is truly free and the price of their gift sounds too expensive. </p>
<p>In the long run, you will all be happier and healthier being completely independent of them and with your income what it is, you will eventually recover from the cost of the divorce.</p>
<p>Cynical thoughts: It occurs to me that GPs want to save face and have bragging rights for the absolute least amount of money. “We’ll pay 1/2, force dad to pay half, forcing him to pay as much as he would for a cheaper school, so that we aren’t saving him a dime; we will insist on a brag worthy school, since D1 going to a lowly school would make it obvious that we are not helping at all and would make us look stingy, and when less favored younger Ds are ready for college they will not have the more expensive option and will appear to be inferior to favored D1.”</p>
<p>No way I would go for this. Tell D1 why you are not accepting this ‘help’ and encourage her to shoot for a great grad school. Good luck to you.</p>
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<p>The step-D was not one of the 2 younger girls to whom he referred. The OP has not stated the slightest expectation that the GPs would chip in for a girl who is not their grandchild. In fact HE is planning to finance her education with no contribution from her biological father.</p>
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<p>Frankly, I think you are stretching this, and making the OP seem unreasonable. Yes, this may be the scenario, but there is no evidence for it. It is just as likely that the GPs have all along said things about how they would “see that D1 was able to go to the college of her choice,” or whatever, then backed off when they were asked for actual figures. According to many other posters, that sort of thing happens all too often.</p>
<p>Consolation, I am merely offering a possible reason why the GPs are not financing the younger Ds’ education; that they don’t have the grades. My post never mentioned anything about step D’s college financing.You have completely misunderstood my post and decidedly so that perhaps you are projecting your own negative feelings towards your in-laws into your posts?</p>
<p>My in-laws never paid a dime towards my kids’ education and we never expected them to. They paid for my H’s education and he graduated with no debt. My parents did the same for me. My children’s education are my responsibility.
If the OP’s D wants help from her grandparents then I think she should ask them directly and negotiate the terms on her own. The OP should stay out of it.</p>
<p>Thanks Sally305. It made sense for us and we have no regrets and our children don’t either. </p>
<p>For us, if a GP offered money to one of our children and not the others, we would not accept the offer. </p>
<p>Keep in mind that if GPs offer money now and in August their situation changes, you could find yourself sending a child to a college that you cannot afford and you have other children to send to college waiting. They could retract their offer, and even ask for repayment!</p>
<p>I have a friend who accepted $5000 from inlaws for home improvements which were nice but not necessary. After FIL died, MIL asked for the $5000 back because she did not feel financially secure despite being upper middle class leaning or wealthy.</p>
<p>One should anticipate the possibility of GPs asking for money back in the future.</p>
<p>I did not read every post as there is a pretty common theme. I understand where this gentleman is coming from. We all know about family dynamics and they can be pretty odd when you have wealthy people who have artificially supported entitled children. This gentleman having custody of his children says a lot to me, especially so with the lack of involvement by the ex.
Personally I would count on paying for all the daughters educations myself. I appreciate asking for equality for each of his children. If the oldest child takes issue with that then she needs some more maturity. Nobody has to give anyone a dime but what could be better than giving the gift of a wonderful educational experience to a grand child. They should be coming from love not from such a calculated place. None of us know though all the elements of these circumstances. The ex in laws could be very decent people or they could be evil.
If the Grand Parents are decent people they should have a relationship with the OP’s girls. If I have the means many years from now we will help our Grandchildren in every way we possibly can. We all know here how trying it is to attempt to have every educational opportunity available to our children.</p>
<p>BTW…how do the Grands know that the younger Ds aren’t strong students??? Why is the family sharing THAT info with the Grands? The Grands don’t have any rights to that info. If they ask, they should be told, “all the girls are doing very well. We’re proud of all of them.” </p>
<p>The fact that the Grands know that the younger D’s aren’t strong students, means that they’ve been given too much info. These type of judgemental folks shouldn’t be given info that they’ll use against the Ds.</p>
<p>Sorry to jump in late to thread, but maybe mom/ dad mentioned grades to Gp’s out of frustration over younger D’s relative lack of effort in high school ? I know I vented to my mother over my oldest stepsons grades in high school when he would get a D in Spanish because he did not complete assgts! If you can’t vent to your parents about your kids who can you vent to?</p>
<p>I know I vented to my mother over my oldest stepsons grades in high school when he would get a D in Spanish because he did not complete assgts! If you can’t vent to your parents about your kids who can you vent to?</p>
<p>I did not vent to my mother about specific frustrations, I feel that would be impinging on my child’s privacy. Grades don’t mean as much as what they are getting out of the class & what they are putting into it. If one of my kids wasn’t completing assignments, I would check to see if they understood them. I dont think kids want to do poorly.</p>
<p>The grandparents that have been discussed are the parents of OPs ex- wife and the relationship between them & OP does not seem to be close.</p>
<p>*Sorry to jump in late to thread, but maybe mom/ dad mentioned grades to Gp’s out of frustration over younger D’s relative lack of effort in high school ? I know I vented to my mother over my oldest stepsons grades in high school when he would get a D in Spanish because he did not complete assgts! If you can’t vent to your parents about your kids who can you vent to?
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<p>You vent to people who won’t be withholding and punishing with the info. </p>
<p>I know that my FIL was always very enamored with high academic achievement and (wrongly) dismissed those who were more average as being destined for low-paying careers. If he had been very rich and likely a source for college funding, he’d be the last person that I would have shared info that would cause him to “financially punish” one of my kids.</p>
<p>Good point but maybe it was not done maliciously ? My mother still treats all 3 boys in our family ( young men ? ) equally vis a vis money at Christmas etc but she did occasionally throw my youngest an extra 50 for a prefect report card. The other two did not really try in high school so while she never mentioned it she wasn’t waving 50 dollar bills for D’s on report cards. ( ESP when they could have been a’s!!!</p>
<p>Where I live, honor rolls are published in the paper. MY grandmother knows which of my kids made the A honor roll, which made the A-B, and which missed the boat each grading period. It’s also on the school website. It’s not really a secret at all. I’m just saying that in an-depth discussion specific to each kid’s grades is not necessarily required to know how the kids are doing. Plus, just having a discussion with each of them about their future plans can tell you a lot about where their respective potential lies.</p>
<p>Aside from the favoritism issue: Didn’t the OP say that Grands were worth 20 million dollars!! That is what struck me the most about the whole thread. When the grands are worth that much not paying for the grandchild’s college is simply unconscionable. They could pay out of interest alone and never miss it. </p>
<p>I don’t know what to make of super rich people who don’t even help their own families (much less anyone else). Madonna has a homeless brother? She can’t help him get an apartment? </p>
<p>The word ‘stingy’ is too kind for people like this. Charity begins at home.</p>
<p>If I’m ever worth 20 mil (unlikely but I can dream) my kids and grandkids are not going to be worrying about how to pay for college.</p>
<p>If I’m ever worth 20 mil (unlikely but I can dream) my kids and grandkids are not going to be worrying about how to pay for college.</p>
<p>I love it when Judge Judy says that she pays for her grandkids’ college, but she only pays for 4 years. 5 years is for parties, and she doesn’t pay for parties. lol</p>
<p>My uncle had that kind of net worth, and he put $100k in each grandchild’s college fund when they were born, so each has had a well-funded experience. </p>
<p>(We don’t know if Madonna doesn’t want to enable bad behavior. her name would have to be on the lease. If the brother did something bad to the place, she’d be responsible. There are good reasons why wealthy people close their checkbooks to “needy relatives.”)</p>
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<p>If they help no one at all, then they’re stingy. But people like the GPs in this story – singling out one while excluding close others – are worse. They use money as a weapon.</p>
<p>what i havent seen addressed is the relationship betweent the three sisters. how would they feel about the older “spolied/special favorite” getting money from grandparents and they get nothing</p>
<p>they could end up really resentful of older sister, and those relationships are more important then snooty grandparents</p>
<p>if you want to put a wedge in the family relationships even more, take the money, </p>
<p>the older daughter is not deserving of gp money over the others. knowing how sibling behave at different ages, and how the younger ones might have had a more complicated time of it then the “chosen” one, she shouldn’t get all the rewards</p>
<p>their relationships with each other is more important that with dad and gps, so thing long and hard before letting the oldest get all the goodies, that will backfire on everyone and if she gets mad at dad for not taking the money, she could be a bit of a brat</p>
<p>Where I live, honor rolls are published in the paper. MY grandmother knows which of my kids made the A honor roll, which made the A-B, and which missed the boat each grading period. It’s also on the school website</p>
<p>I know that some schools do allow this sort of thing, and some have argued that it violates FERPA. By “naming names”, then by default you’re revealing who didn’t “make the grade”. It’s probably a fine line, which is why schools still do this.</p>
<p>My kids would not care. They truly have not shown any resentment or jealousies when any one of them got goodies, but were happy about it. And it had nothing to do with anything we did; they just seem to be wired that way. They want to contribute to the youngest’s college so that he can go anywhere he wants to go without a price constraint. But this is in our family. Our kids were just so different that they did not feel they should get equality and did not compete with each other at all. </p>
<p>It is not unusual in families for members to want to contribute or help one who might have a special talent or opportunity that is out of the ordinary. My son’s good friend was accepted to Harvard, and his siblings and other family members did help contribute as he did not get financial aid but due to the family situation (a non contributing NCP) was not able to meet the cost on his mother and step dad’s income/assets. No one wanted him to have to turn down that opportunity. I doubt the same energy would have gone into helping him pay for college if the school were not Harvard. Where the line would be drawn, I don’t know. But, I see nothing unusual in GPs wanting to help pay for a very good student but figuring the other kids are going to be fine at state schools or ccs if they are not the academic super star that the one sibling is. </p>
<p>The same goes for talents in other areas. I know a family who was quite strapped financially, but they somehow managed to scrape up the funds to see their son play at football games at college. (He was a starter on a name team) They were not as conscientious about going to their other kids college things, and I suspect they did not get as much family or friend support in those ventures as well. People are willing to dig a little deeper or even a lot deeper into their bank accounts for something that is what they consider special.</p>