Blended families are fraught with controversy in the best of times, and when step siblings feel as if the love isn’t being fairly shared, things can devolve pretty quickly.

OP’s parents have been divorced a long time. She spent most of her time with her mom, but was with her dad – and eventually his wife and stepdaughter – a few times a week growing up.

My (24f) dad is married to a woman I’ll call Melissa, and they’ve been married for 13 years. Melissa has a daughter, Sara (25).

I didn’t live with my dad full time growing up. My parents had shared custody but it was pretty flexible, so I’d spend on average 2 nights there a week and my dad would normally take me to dinner one evening a week.

I have never had much of a relationship with Melissa but we’ve always been friendly.

Her dad always went out of his way to spend quality time with her and support her, and they always excluded her stepsister – who clearly didn’t appreciate it.

Sara, on the other hand, has always been jealous of me and my relationship with my dad. Anything I was doing, she wanted to do, anywhere I was going with my dad, she wanted to come. My dad always handled it, but I was always aware that she was clearly unhappy when I was around.

My dad and I spoke about this more than once, and my dad expressed that he found Sara always expecting things from him a bit stressful and that he had brought it up with Melissa but it didn’t seem to help.

They are both adults now, and they recently had dinner together with their parents and their significant others. OP announced her engagement and her father wanted to write her a check to help with the wedding.

OP said no, but she and her fiancee did accept the money, saying they would put it in an account for their future children.

I haven’t seen Sara much in the last few years since I moved away, but I recently got engaged so my fiancé and I had dinner with my dad, Melissa, Sara, and her fiancé to celebrate. My dad made a toast, and said he’d like to pay for the wedding. He then presented us with a cheque.

I thanked him, but said we will be paying for the wedding ourselves. My dad said he wanted to contribute to our lives in some way, and my fiancé suggested we could put the money into a trust for our future child.

We then continued on with the dinner.

Later, OP’s stepsister called saying if she didn’t want or need the money she should give it to her. OP told her to ask her father for money if she wanted it.

After a lot of annoying and rude talk, OP hauled off and told the stepsister it wasn’t her problem that her dad would never love her.

The next day, I got a call from Sara, who said I should split the money my dad gave me for the wedding with her. I was confused and asked why, and Sara said that my dad is a father figure to both of us. I told her if my dad wanted to give her money he would have and that it has nothing to do with me.

Sara started getting mad and said that I should share the money since I didn’t need it. She swore at me, called me mean, spoilt, a gold digger, all sorts. Then she said it was my fault she never had a dad and I need to share the money and admit my dad is her dad, too.

I was just getting so annoyed and said, “it’s not my fault he doesn’t love you, if you want money from him, ask him” and hung up on her.

Now her dad and stepmom are upset, thinking she should have held her tongue.

I guess he did ask him, because my dad called and got mad at me for blowing up on her, saying I didn’t have to be that harsh with her. He said it’s caused a lot of drama between him and Melissa and Sara.

He said I didn’t have to respond to Sara’s goading, and maybe that’s true but I don’t think I’m the AH for saying what he was too scared to, especially when I was being blamed for something that has nothing to do with me.

I can’t wait to hear what Reddit is going to say about this one!

The first comment absolves both OP and her father of any wrongdoing.

This person, though, thinks her father definitely could have done a better.

And this person argues that either way, the stepsister is an adult now and needs to find a way to get over it.

Though this commenter does think that the stepsister has a right to be upset.

This person comes close to calling the dad the AH here…

I definitely think this whole situation (and maybe the girls’ whole lives) could have been handled better.

But all they can do is move forward now.