When you get married, you should be working together with your spouse to make sure the needs of the family are covered.

What would you do if your wife agreed to pay for the education of your youngest while you paid for your oldest, but now she is backing out?

That is the situation the husband in this story is in, so he wants to force her hand and make her pay for their daughter’s college.

Is this the wrong approach, or is his wife being unreasonable? Let’s read the whole story.

AITAH for telling my wife she needs to cover the cost of our daughter’s future?

First of all, I love both my wife and kids. But here is the deal.

When we started a family 18 years ago, we had one kid. My wife, at the time, a SAHM insisted on having a second kid.

I resisted and we both verbally agreed she would be fully responsible.

I said it was going to be too expensive.

She insisted she would cover everything — ballet, music lessons, sports, etc.

At least she has some money to cover the costs.

She has some family money from her home country.

It may come off as a joke or humorous banter but I was serious about the commitment we would make. And there would be a drastic change to our family.

So I bring this up every few years and she sorts of laughs it off.

There is nothing I wouldn’t do for my daughter. I love my princess and spoil her dearly.

So here is the story:

She is doing very well for herself.

Now here has what what has changed.

Wife is no longer SAHM and took up a job as the kids got older. At first, it was low paying job so I really didn’t care. Started at $40k/year. Now, $96k. So I never really asked her about her finances. It was her pocket money and she spend it as she saw fit; mostly on things for the kids as she promised.

I contribute 90% of all the expenses. Mortgages, car, insurance, everything. When my wife needed a car, I’d buy it and pay for it. We both aggressively saved.

I saved up enough for our first born for his college. Around $200k. I stopped spending for myself when he hit 7th grade. No new toys, no new cars. Just aggressively save for both.

This is very generous.

I can probably cover my daughter as well. But now my son wants to look at Ivy League schools and medical school.

I promised him, I will go all the way. Since I make good money, we don’t qualify for financial aid of any kind. A top state college – UCLA is $45k a year. Harvard or Stanford are $100k a year. A big jump.

I can’t afford to send two kids to Ivy. I could send both to state schools. If I had to, we could do it. I can liquidate some investments.

He wants his wife to contribute more.

So, I told my wife, she needs to help out.

She does indeed help out. She pays for groceries, property taxes,etc. She has bought me expensive things like cars in the past, watches, and take us on nice family vacations. But it is a small portion of what I cover to support the family.

We both save but she can save a lot more when she has little expenses.

She does have plenty of money to cover an education.

Last time she showed me her account, she had $100k in a HYSA in 2020. It is now 2025 and I know it is more. I venture she stashes around $50k a year.

She is also a foreign born (but US citizen). She transferred another $100k to the US which I won’t get into.

I told her, that it is her money before we got married like I have assets before I married her as well.

This isn’t really funny.

I went on and said, hey we can get divorced. In 2 years, you’d qualify for student aid for our daughter under FASFA based on her income.

Then she got angry. Because a divorce means I’d take my assets.

I basically told her we need to combine our assets for both kids. Otherwise, I am gonna stick it to her original deal years ago. She is financially responsible for our daughter.

I also think my daughter heard in the next room, her bedroom. I love my daughter but things need to be fair and I am only doing this to force equity in the household.

As I mentioned, I went full on frugal when my kids approached middle school. I also want my daughter to have all means within our family arsenal as well.

They should really be working together on this as a couple rather than two individuals.

I flat out told my wife, she isn’t going to coerce my kids to go to community college if they don’t want to. My wife does have the means to abide by our initial agreement years ago.

AITAH for taking this stance?

I already told my wife, we need to consolidate all our money into a family trust for both our kids. In the event something happens, we all have access. If I die, she would have access to mine and vice versa.

Honestly, they really need to get on the same page with finances. It’s not like the wife doesn’t have the means to help out, so she should be.

Let’s see what the people in the comments on Reddit think about this.

Totally rich people problems.

I agree with this commenter.

Yeah, both parties are terrible.

He really should talk to his daughter.

This is a very good suggestion.

This couple needs therapy, and dad needs to apologize to his daughter.

If you liked that post, check out this story about a guy who was forced to sleep on the couch at his wife’s family’s house, so he went to a hotel instead.