Make it work
Furthermore, she recommends sitting down to hammer out a list of financial goals both for you as a couple and for your family. Do you aim to buy a house large enough for all of you? Do the logistics of ferrying kids to ex-spouses and extracurricular activities require you to buy a second vehicle? How will you manage educational expenses? Will you blend finances or keep separate accounts?
Kelly, 45, also suggests considering a pre-nuptial agreement, although she admits she and her husband didn’t follow that savvy advice, even though he had two young daughters when she married him. “You really don’t want to think about what would happen if you don’t make it,” she says.
Think fair, not equal
Kelly’s husband was a widower when she met him, and his former in-laws have continued to play a role, emotionally and financially, in the lives of his daughters. The girls’ university education was covered, as well as other expenses over the years. But the reality is different for the three sons Kelly and her husband had together. “The boys are already saying, ‘How are we going to go to university?’” Kelly says. “We joke about it. We’ll say: ‘Have you heard of this thing called a part-time job?’”
The fact is, contends Kelly, children are fully capable of understanding that families have differing amounts of time, money and energy. Even biologic- al parents who are together have been known to give one child a bigger present for his 16th birthday, for example. In other families, one child’s passion for hockey may eat up more of the family’s available cash.
“You just tell the kids straight out that you and your ex-spouse simply don’t have the same resources as Suzy’s parents,” advises McCurdy. The key thing, she believes, is to take pains to treat everyone the same emotionally, if not financially, and make all the kids feel welcome.
