Hi all!

New comer here,I apologize for the long post but I want to provide details.

 I’d like some insight and advice about my adult stepdaughters. They are 31, 33 and 37. Their bio dad has dealt with a lot when it comes to them ( they were /are rude to him, disrespectful , he was paying for expensive therapy sessions over a**** he didn’t cause etc .)

They were raised by a toxic bio mom who brainwashed them to believe their dad is the bad one and she is the victim.  They’ve been divorced for 24 years. Their mom is a diagnosed narcissist. She is also a piece of work and likes to gossip and spread false rumors. She convinces people that her stories are true though. She also quit the therapist sessions because the therapist pointed out that she is the problem. Stepdaughters worship the ground their mother walks on, they even call her “ saint” , “angel with no flaws” etc. 

Ex messed up the oldest daughter by constantly criticizing her and nitpicking at her,  she did some of the same to the middle daughter and alienated the youngest daughter from her dad. Their mom never required them to actually start acting like adult women, and they unfortunately turned into their mom- being emotionally manipulative, immature, extorting their dad financially , being two faced, snarky, rude etc. StepDaughters refuse to see their mom as a flawed human being . They praise her at all times and get mad if anything good is said about me by my husband. 

Me and my husband have been married for seven years , we love each other very much, we spend our spare time together. When he married me, all three of them said to him that they won’t talk to him again, but they came back weeks after to ask for more money. They were not invited to our wedding because my husband said they are troublemakers and he didn’t want them to ruin our wedding.

I’ve been talking to him more about freeing himself from the mental shackles placed onto him by the ex wife who made him believe that it is his fault the daughters are not doing the best in their lives because he divorced her and that he needs to pay for them and the grandkids whose father walked away from their lives.

The stepdaughters (31,33,37) are still getting their phone bills paid, their car insurances paid, grocery allowance, he bought them cars, phones, pays for their gas , misc expenses, tires etc. He also pays the expenses like food , clothes, preschool etc for the two grandchildren. He’s also paid several college tuitions, rents for different places , utilities etc.

They are not grateful for anything, they expect it.

Me and my husband feel drained by them.

They just send their unpaid bills over , and expect my husband to make a payment . He’s been slowly stopping that too.

We’ve asked the SD who is 31 to take over the gas and car insurance payments, she is dragging her feet, suggesting we should continue to take care of it. She never paid a cent for the car.  She is also getting her dad to pay for college payments, and he was paying her rent for years while she was in her 20s. This same SD made a hurtful post on her internet blog how she wishes she had influence and control over who and whether her dad remarries. She called her dad a liar and made her bio mom to look like a saint and made herself look like a victim of our marriage.

They have been rude to me and excluded me from day one. They call themselves “Family “but they never call me that. I was very naive and I thought they’d see me for the person that I am and will accept me as I was willing to accept and love them. 

SD 37 is emotionally unstable so she plays double minded games. She uses the phone bill that her father pays for, to be very rude to him. One day she is for me, next day she is trying to ask my husband to tell her what’s wrong in our marriage . This is so she can run and tell her bio mom. The ex got involved and was trying to manipulate my husband into paying the 37 year old’s rent, he refused to. This SD is very bad with money and has a history overspending . She is also always telling him if you love me you'll do this , you'll do that etc. 

SD 33 is passive aggressive. She acts one way in front of my husband and another way behind his back. She disrespected me multiple times by the way she addressed me , she wanted to probe into our finances many times and feels entitled to do so ( the other two feel the same way) , she invites herself over to our house , she shows signs of jealousy when anything good happens to me , she was rude to me in my own home and I didn’t know how to react so I just smiled and went away without calling her out on it. She too never paid a dime for either of the two given cars. She has manipulated her dad to buy her another car which me and my husband agreed is going to be the last car bought for any one of them and it is going to be a used car at that. 

I was confused about her rudeness in my home because I gave her her own room, washer and drier and bathroom in our house, as well as bought her gifts, took her to buy clothes she can’t afford for her and her sisters , bought her her fav food , drinks etc.

She is in law school and expects us to pay for that as well, even though she has bachelors and masters. 

All three are extremely entitled. They entangled their dad in a bad property deal with an ex so he can buy them a rental property (they feel he owes them money, even though there is no legal proof of such a claim) and so that he can give them extra cash from the house equity as it builds up over time . The Ex has her own business and is not strapped for cash, she was just doing this out of greed.  We went to court to nullify the agreement after several years of him paying for a bad property deal. 

The property is essentially worthless and distressed , ex still lives there , she is paying for it and we are down tens of thousands of dollars.

This has affected our credit score , retirement and we’ve been walking in darkness in our house due to broken light fixtures for three years and malfunctioning bathroom faucets because we couldn’t afford the electrician and plumber due to them constantly feeling the need to manipulate my husband for more money. Plus all the attorneys expenses. 

SD 33 wrote me a list of things she wants me to buy for her (including gold Jewelry) because she says she wants to receive more benefits from me, Meanwhile her gifts to us are a can of sardines this Christmas or some other cheap things like that.

They feel entitled enough to say me and my husband’s money is their money.They have no empathy towards us and expect my husband, who is working very hard, as am I, to be their cash machine forever. They’ve invited him to hang out with them, without me, he denied their invitations. 

I’ve talked to him and he says he hates giving them money,  he wishes he cut them off long time ago,  we are slowly making progress to quit the money giving . He first got into giving them money out of fear that if he stops , the ex will badmouth him even more to the daughters and he was guilt tripped into enabling them . He is a reliable trustworthy guy and they have been milking it for all they can, it really makes me sick. 

He realizes they are ungrateful, undeserving of his help and expect too much but he finds it hard to fully cut them off.

Any insights or advice how I should handle all of this ?

Am I being unreasonable?

Are they being unreasonable?

How do I protect myself even legally if I need to?

I feel like nothing I do ever gets appreciated, I never get a thank you for my contributions .

My husband is not very good at setting boundaries with them, he feels that he can’t tell them the truth or they’ll get really mad, he talks to them on the phone but he doesn’t want to see them in person anymore.

He says he feels compassion for them because they were ruined by their mother. I don’t think he has fully grasped yet that they are adults and they are responsible for their own behavior and choices in life. ( I was severely traumatized by the mistreatment and the a**** I’ve suffered from my family for two decades, and I’ve never used that as an excuse to treat anyone poorly or take someone else’s resources or be lazy.)

All of this has affected our marriage negatively , due to stepdaughters and ex's hostility, public slander, being an emotional and financial burden. I have considered divorce few years ago because of all the stress they’ve put us through but we love each other and want to make our marriage work. This has been a nightmare that I’ve never expected to happen in my life.

Any advice helps , 

Thanks