3 Important Things to Keep in Mind When Dealing with Your Step-Children After Your Husband Dies

So you’re in a blended family and you’ve just lost your husband. We want to make sure that your relationship with your husband’s children doesn’t deteriorate, or deteriorate worse than it already is. Here are three things to keep in mind when dealing with your step-children after your husband dies.

Their fear, grief and assumptions

Yes, you’re grieving and you’ve lost a spouse, but you need to remember that they have lost a parent.

dealing with your step-children

Remember that they’re also grieving and that people grieve in different ways. You need to be the bigger person. And in some ways the adult, even though they are also adults.

While they might not bear in mind your fear and grief about the future, you need to have some consideration for theirs. That’s not to say that you give up anything or agree to anything too early. You shouldn’t make any big decisions while you’re still grieving. But what it does mean is that you have some patience and empathy for what might be said in the heat of the moment.

And it’s also important to be aware that they might be making some negative assumptions about you, which you’re not aware of. That might be increasing their fear and resentment towards you. There are ways of having open and honest communication that can clear some of those assumptions up.

You have rights, but you have options

Next, you have rights, but you also have options.

So yes, you have your legal rights, but taking a position in negotiations can sometimes make negotiations worse.

On the other hand, you probably have a lot of options open to you, and keeping your open mind about those options, and keeping all those options open is going to be crucial in having successful negotiations with your step-children after your husband dies.

This may mean exploring all options for any real estate involved, and exploring options for dealing with any superannuation or any other major investments. There are multiple options, and multiple ways of owning property, and many ways to meet your future needs.

You can come to an arrangement that everyone can live with, without going to Court

Finally, you can come to an arrangement with everyone by consent, without going to court.

There are ways to have open and honest communication with everyone ,and have a win-win outcome, when you’re able to keep the options open.

In many cases, lawyers can increase a problem after someone passes away, but if you find the right lawyer and the right process, an agreement can be made that everyone comes out happy with. This process can be an early stage mediation, or it can be what is called collaborative practice.

Collaborative practice is a process where all the professionals need to have been collaboratively trained. So you can’t just have just any lawyer ,and all the professionals sign an agreement that they will keep the matter out of court. (So they are incentivised for a resolution to happen rather than to litigate.) Collaborative practice usually takes three to six meetings, and there is a mediator and a financial advisor that are independent and available for everyone to get advice from throughout the process.