Take one mom and two kids.
Mix with one dad and two kids.
Stir in love. Add a home and blend well. And you’ve got a recipe for a family that lives happily blended ever after. Right?
Well, it’s not that easy, as any stepparent or stepchild will tell you. There are all kinds of complexities that can come from families formed by previous marriages, including pocketbook issues ranging from child-support payments to what to do about an allowance.
“The kids kept raising the (allowance) issue at our first few family meetings,” recalled Bobbi Abram of Lenexa, Kan.
Abram, 40, married Kerry Layton, 46, in November 1997.
She brought to the marriage two children by a previous marriage: Jessica Herring, 15, and Robert Herring, 10. Layton also brought two children: Jessy Layton, 12, and Joel Layton, 10.
Abram took her birth name back after her divorce in 1996. She and Layton share custody of the four children with ex-spouses. For two weeks of every month, all four children live together under one roof. Most of the time, they say, it’s a harmonious and happy blend.
One issue that surfaced early in the marriage was a weekly allowance for all four children. The kids asked. The parents pondered. The resolution: No allowance.
“We couldn’t figure out an equitable way to do an allowance with ages being different,” Abram said.
The allowance issue is symbolic of the monetary minefield that stepparents must navigate when combining finances as well as families.
“Finances will not necessarily improve,” said Jennifer K. Hicks, a certified financial planner with the Women’s Alliance for Financial Education. “You are not adding just income but also past good and bad credit, good and bad spending habits and financial liabilities as well.”
Child-support payments, debts, retirement plans, college funds and additional costs for food, day care, entertainment and other day-to-day expenses all test the strength and structure of the blended family.
“There are big chunks of your income going somewhere else,” said Ruth-Ann Clurman, an Overland Park, Kan., stepmother and author of “Parenting the Other Chick’s Eggs.”
Money matters need to be addressed before blending, Clurman said. Resentment can fester if “you spend the best years of your life contributing dollars and emotional support” to a blended family and somehow become the scapegoat for stepchildren’s pain.
“Adjustment can be hard, and you can get way over your head on credit cards by trying to make everyone happy,” Abram said.
She and Layton set out systematically to pay off credit card debts and then write each creditor a letter requesting that the account be closed. Their goal is to own fewer credit cards.
Layton and Abram hold full-time jobs and contribute to a joint checking account to cover mortgage payments and other household expenses. They keep separate accounts to pay their children’s expenses.
Abram converts child-support checks to cash and gives Jessica and Robert what they need for school lunches and activities.
When they married, Layton lived in Abram’s house. Commuting to his children’s school district and to his workplace put 125 miles a day on his car, Layton said.
The solution was to move to neutral territory.
“We created a home for everyone,” Abram said.
They also created more debt. By adding moving expenses to wedding costs and absorbing past attorney fees, counseling sessions and other debts, Abram said, they calculated it would be “a good five years before we were debt-free.”
Mark and Gina Roggy married in June 1997. It was a second marriage for both. Mark Roggy instantly acquired three boys: Timmy Dewey, 9; Dylan Dewey, 7; and Austin Dewey, 5.
“I always wanted a family,” he said. “It was like I got all those years back that I’d missed out on.”
About a year ago, he and his wife added a daughter of their own to the family, Lauren Roggy.
Mark Roggy, 34, handles the family finances, and Gina Roggy, 28, stays home with the children and takes classes toward a degree at Missouri Western State College.
Mark Roggy uses a computer program to plan the household budget a year in advance. Forecasting utility and mortgage payments is easy, he said. The biggest challenge is budgeting for medical bills for the children.
Child support for the boys is applied toward their tuition at Life Christian Academy. Although the couple knew that child support would be inadequate for school expenses, they decided before they were married to send the boys to the private school.
Mark Roggy says his goal is to have the house paid off in nine years–by the time Timmy is ready for college.
Communicating openly and clearly about money matters is essential to the success of a second marriage because the odds are stacked so high against it.
The divorce rate is 50 percent for first marriages, 76 percent for second marriages, 87 percent for third marriages and 93 percent for fourth marriages, said John McClendon, the assistant pastor at the church the Roggys attend.
Why is the failure rate so high among remarriages?
“Kids and money,” said Diana Milne, human development specialist with University of Missouri Outreach and Extension. Milne teaches classes for divorcing parents.
Child support can be a battleground for divorced spouses that can create friction in remarriages. If Dad is mad at Mom, for example, the child support check may be late, insufficient or withheld.
“Only about 50 percent of all custodial parents who are supposed to receive monthly child support receive the full amount,” Milne said.
And seldom is child support adequate to pay half the expenses of child rearing, Milne said.
If the blended family budget is already tight, lost or late child-support checks can strain the marriage.
When grown children are involved, the stakes are different.
Carole Bozworth, a consumer and family economics specialist with University of Missouri Outreach and Extension, remarried 10 years after her first marriage ended in divorce. She had a high school-age daughter and a daughter in college. Her husband had a grown son and daughter who no longer lived at home.
Before their marriage, Bozworth and her husband signed a prenuptial agreement.
Prenuptial agreements that provide both for the surviving spouse and the children can help keep peace in blended families. Yet parents needn’t feel guilty about spending their assets or using them in other ways, Bozworth said.
“Remember, your assets are yours,” she said. “If you want to pass them on to your children, that’s OK, but an inheritance is not their right.”
Although adult children may want their parents to find happiness in a remarriage, they may feel uneasy about their inheritance when a widowed or divorced parent remarries.
“Most adult kids understand that when Dad dies, the assets go to Mom until she dies,” said Richard English, a lawyer with Stinson, Mag & Fizzell in Kansas City. “In a blended family, the adult children are less understanding.”
