When you marry a widower ...

puffinmuffin

My OHs mum died 10 years ago (when he was 18) In the last couple of years his dad had grown close to someone (they live seperately) She has been encouraging him to make various changes around the family home and garden which were needed. He has also taken down photographs of OHs mum. While OH found this hard at first, he realises that his Dad needs to move on and can't live in a shrine!</p>

lostinrates

well, my widower f-i-l remarried a couple of years ago. His adult children were told that the family homes would remain for their usage and inheritance (one had been their mothers, one a jointly owned home bought during the marriage.) Mother died intestate.

Needless to say, things change...as things do. The homes were sold and the chattels picked over by new step mother, taken to another country, the remainders given away. DH managed to get some of the remainders...all very complicated as we were living in a different country at the time, and put in storage, his siblings ...living in another country again, couldn't ...obviously dh will dived stuff for them. The difficulty was had the plans not changed in a relatively short time span the ''kids'' would have liked all the stuff. They feel sore that things that were their mother's are held by step mother, and that the time scale, given the international arrangements, and that both of them are students..they just couldn't do much bout it.

t certainly can leave a bad taste, even with adult surviving children, but people do need to move on. Timescles for those moving on seem slow, while for those still not come to terms, or finding the changes are not as they would have been otherwise...and are not what they would choose, it is hard.

If the same happened to me now, there is no doubt I would part with anything I meant to before a new partner came on the scene, making sure items were willed to children, not partner, and enabling a new person entering the family could be loved for themselves, not feared for the impact they could have.

flossyblog

how old is he?

if this was the husband I would be worried, but frankly from an adult child this is not on. I certainly wouldn't put up with another outburst like that. I would have asked him to leave.

There's no point in talking to him because there is nothing to explain.

floss2

eklynne wrote: »

I keep all my cards in a suitcase under my bed, there are hundreds and I would hate to think that if I died someone would take them to a skip. Maybe I'm a bit too sentimental, but cards and written words have always meant more to me than expensive possessions.

But not everyone would respect what those mean to you - maybe you should leave in your will them to a society or social history group who could use the information / detail within them, so that they are not simply destroyed?

paddy's_mum

The son is 40 and his mother died in 1998.

The wife is, he once told her, a "gold-digger" and the fact that she has stood by his father through thick and thin and all kinds of painful adversity is a mere trifle.

flossyblog

paddy's_mum wrote: »

The son is 40 and his mother died in 1998.

The wife is, he once told her, a "gold-digger" and the fact that she has stood by his father through thick and thin and all kinds of painful adversity is a mere trifle.

This is someone who is worried about his inheritence. I met someone at a barbecue last year who was bad mouthing his step mother. He was living with them and treating the place like a hotel and wondered why she didn't like it. As the conversation went on it was obvious he was worried about his inheritence.

He is not rude to his step mother to her face. His father asked him to find his own place.

flossyblog

eklynne wrote: »

. Maybe I'm a bit too sentimental, but cards and written words have always meant more to me than expensive possessions.

Yeah me too, but who knows what motivates others

thebillet

Invite the son to purchase the house at at a cost to include what she has spent on it and given it is so important to him he can return it to its former glory. Alternatively if he suggests that is childish - agree with him, as he should know!

Person_one

eklynne wrote: »

I keep all my cards in a suitcase under my bed, there are hundreds and I would hate to think that if I died someone would take them to a skip. Maybe I'm a bit too sentimental, but cards and written words have always meant more to me than expensive possessions.

But they only have meaning to you. As long as you have them to read and look at during your life does it matter what happens to them after? Who do you expect to keep them?

lostinrates

Person_one wrote: »

But they only have meaning to you. As long as you have them to read and look at during your life does it matter what happens to them after? Who do you expect to keep them?

In fact letters and photos, is one of the things my DH and his siblings bemoan. They think that had they known with enough warning they would have liked to spend a week together going through this sort of stuff, reminiscing..seeing if there were any that meant something to them...or to their mother's siblings.