Imagine marrying someone who already has a child, and then you have more children together.

When it comes to saving up for these children to go to college, would you set aside the same amount of money for every child, or would you treat your stepchild differently than your biological children?

In this story, one man shares how he and his wife decided to save for their children to go to college, but his stepson doesn’t think it’s fair.

Let’s read the whole story.

AITA for not wanting to contribute to my step-son’s college fund?

My (39M) and my wife Emily (38F) have been married for 12 years.

Emily has a son James (17) from a previous relationship with Dan. Em left Dan when she caught him cheating with a co-worker.

They shared 50/50 custody of James.

I met Em about a year after he had left Dan. A year later, Dan married his affair partner, and Em and I got married soon after.

It can be hard for kids to bond with step parents sometimes.

James never really bonded to me.

I admit that I tried a little too hard initailly to get him to like me, but backed off when I realized I was trying too hard and it was having the opposite impact.

Over the years, we’ve built a tense acceptance of sorts, if that makes sense.

This family never really blended.

Em and I have three kids (10F, 7M & 4M).

James doesn’t have a good relationship with them either.

He bonds well with Dan’s sons, but doesn’t like spending much time with our kids.

He isn’t mean to them but just ignores them mostly. The eldest two now just avoid him when he is home.

They came up with a plan to save for their children’s college education.

Em and I both have well paying jobs and early on, we decided that I would contribute 80% to our trio’s college fund, and Em would do 20%, cause she would contribute 100% to James’ college fund.

We didn’t know if Dan was making any such arrangements on his end, but we thought that at least this way James would have something instead of nothing.

Em recently sat him down to talk to him about his college fund.

He seemed happy with the financial help he was going to get.

James wanted to know more about the college funds.

He went off to Dan’s for the weekend and when he came back he asked Em about our kid’s college funds.

When he learned that the amount was fairly higher than his, he was upset.

When he asked about the disparity, Em told him about our college fund set up.

He was furious to know that I hadn’t contributed to his college fund. He said that I was just pretending to play “family” with him all these years. That I really didn’t care about him and was a heartless AH.

Em had a suggestion.

Em suggest that we could take some money out of our youngest’s fund and give it to James and that she would add it back overtime. But she said that it’s my call. That she won’t pressurize me either way and would accept whatever I decided.

Quite frankly, I don’t want to do it.

James idolizes his stupid father, even now that he knows he cheated on his mother.

He knows he might be being petty.

I could deal with his crappy behaviour with me, but I never understood his attitude towards our kids.

We even tried going to family therapy, he refused to go because I wasn’t his family.

Now when he needs money, suddenly I am family.

I know I am perhaps being petty, but I don’t want to give him the money. AITA?

Should he agree to give James some money for college, or should he stick to the original plan?

Let’s see what Reddit has to say in the comments.

This person blames the boy’s dad.

Seriously, why did his mom tell him?

Here’s a suggestion of what to tell the boy.

This person blames the boy’s mom.

Sometimes ignorance is bliss.

If you thought that was an interesting story, check out what happened when a family gave their in-laws a free place to stay in exchange for babysitting, but things changed when they don’t hold up their end of the bargain.