Tag: blended family

If you are a stepmother, there is no doubt you have found yourself in what can feel like a no-win situation. The very basic nature of being a stepmother, or an "outsider" who has joined the family circle, means that you’ll be examined under a microscope and potentially the recipient of criticism and emotional unloading… and that’s just for starters!

It is important not to deny your feelings, suppress them, or beat yourself up for feeling the way that you do. Of course you are going to have some painful feelings around this dynamic.

You’ve moved on. You’ve successfully separated from your ex-spouse, figured out the custody schedule, negotiated the divorce, and now find yourself with a whole new world of social possibilities. If you have done your homework, you have figured out what you did wrong in the last relationship and also figured out what kind of partner you want going forward. You are poised to make all sorts of changes to your family, including blending your children and your new spouse’s children into a fresh family unit. The good news is: Most of these changes can be very positive experiences for you and children.

Merging two families and finances inevitably brings challenges. A common concern among blended families is how to divide assets so that all children are included fairly after the death of one or both spouses. How do you maintain fairness, be impartial and get along with your spouse all at the same time?

One option is to set up a revocable living trust. A revocable living trust ensures that the trust becomes irrevocable at the death of the first spouse. Meaning, in the case of an unexpected death, whatever is written in the trust before death stays that way after death, protecting the heirs.

When two parents of a previous marriage decide to join together as husband and wife, not only do they bring their children into the household, they also bring a lot of emotional baggage as well.

When I began researching the concept of family happiness, over 25 percent of the people who responded had come from homes where two families were joined together. These families shared a lot of joy in these households, and the majority felt they were, in fact, happy.