Meeting the New Adult Stepchildren by Carolyn Parr
[This excerpt from Love’s Way: Living Peacefully with Your Family as Your Parents Age describes the author and her new significant other’s attempts to create good feelings as their adult children get to know each other.]
If sibling rivalry can intensify as parents age, then step-siblings and parents they didn't grow up with can take it to another level. “Will a stranger get Mom's jewelry? Dad's memorabilia? What about their investments? Will Mom (or Dad) change their will? Powers of attorney? We thought we knew what we were likely to inherit, and now all bets are off!”
My husband Jerry died in 2015. After fifty-six years of marriage I never expected to marry again. Nevertheless, two years later I did. Jim Le Gette, one of Jerry's best friends and a former Secret Service colleague, had also lost a spouse after a long marriage. We liked and trusted each other. We found each other attractive. We enjoyed each other’s company. We fell in love and in 2017 we married.
Jim has four adult children and I have three, all around the same ages. We wanted their buy-in and we wanted to reassure them that they would benefit, not lose out, from our union. Here's what we did.
Before we married, we tried to make it easy for our kids to know each other. … I gave a birthday party for Jim … and invited all children and grandchildren from both sides. They mingled well. My Jennifer and Jim's Michele made plans to get together.
We involved the kids in helping us find a new home. …. We chose Annapolis because it was close to …our kids if a crisis struck; it had more amenities than [Jim’s town] Severna Park… [and] less traffic and congestion and fresher air than Washington, DC, where I lived; and I … hoped for a condo with a water view. Michele and Jennifer researched places … and Michele and Jim's youngest son accompanied us to look.
We wrote a prenuptial agreement and shared it with all the children. The purpose of a prenup is to determine, before marriage, how the property each brings to the marriage will be distributed in the event of death or divorce. We wanted the kids to know that our marriage would not take away anything they [expected to inherit].
We showed our kids the draft of our prenup. We tried to answer their questions, and then made some changes. Without adopting all their suggestions, we tried to respond to their concerns.
Finally, we invited all the children to help plan our wedding, participate with readings or toasts, and to stand up with us as our attendants. Even a British Royal Family wedding probably had fewer attendants – we had ten on each side, but we, they, and our guests loved it!
We're so grateful for each other and for all the children, including each other's. We hope and trust we've headed off any conflicts among them that might arise upon our death.
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Excerpt from Chapter 5, “Siblings in War and Peace,” Love’s Way: Living Peacefully with Your Family as Your Parents Age” by Carolyn Miller Parr and Sig Cohen, copyright 2019 by Henderson Publishers, Peabody, Massachusetts. Used by Permission. All rights reserved. Carolyn is a retired judge, mediator, and writer. She is a member of Redbud Writers Guild.
