'AITA for cutting my son out of the will but not his ex-wife?' UPDATED (2024)

Matt rarely ever visited and didn’t answer our calls often saying that we had other kids so it wasn’t like my husband was dying lonely. Last night Matt stopped by to talk about inheritance, he never mentioned Josie nor Ruth and hinted that he thought he should get more inheritance than his siblings the entire time.

My husband and I shared awkward looks until he decided to cut in, he explained that everyone would get a piece, but he’d focus more on Ruth and Bonnie (one of our other grandkids). Matt got angry and said that Ruth was just a bastard and that his son deserved more than her, my husband got furious after that and left the room saying that he wouldn’t include Matthew at all.

Matt yelled back and turned to me saying that Ruth wasn’t worth it because she’d just grow up to be like her mother, I told him that i’d rather have her mother as my daughter than him as my son and insisted that he leave. I’m getting phone calls from Matt’s wife and family friends saying that my husband and I overreacted and he was just angry that we were playing favorites. AITA?

EDIT: To clear some things up: Josie did not cheat on Matthew, Josie and Matthew met later in college and Josie was known as a “party girl” before that, Ruth isn’t the product of an affair but we are planning on getting a DNA test because what Matthew said has gotten under Ruth’s skin (she was at the house when this occurred and over heard it)

When it came to taking in Josie and Ruth we didn’t hesitate because Josie is not from here, she and Matt lived in another country until he moved them here a few months before he got caught cheating and they had no where else to go as Josie was a stay at home mom.

See Also

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I had no intentions of “choosing” Josie over Matt, then and now, and I never discouraged Matt from visiting, i tried to make it very clear that we weren’t picking and choosing when we took Josie in, we just wanted her and our granddaughter to be safe and have a good home.

What do you think? AITA? This is what top commenters had to say:

quippers said:

Make sure to leave him and his son $1 each so they can't contest the will by saying you forgot about them.

rmric0 said:

NTA. Dude abandoned his family and only came sniffing back around when his dad was ina bad state and he thought he might get something out of it, he couldn't even be civil and fake nice long enough for that conversation.

co*keycane said:

NTA - Boy money makes people do horrible things. Seems like Matt and his current wife are just worried about money than anything else. That's quite gross and sickening. Cannot respect a man disowning his own daughter.

juicygooseylucyetc said:

NTA, wow, what on earth happened to your son that he turned out like that?

Borageandthyme said:

NTA. He is, however, for counting “his” money before anyone’s even dead.

Geek_is_my_chic said:

Nta, make sure he gets the sum of one dollar so he cant sue that he was meant to be in the will and the deceased forgot him. It will show he was included but purposely excluded. basically lawyer proof the whole thing making sure he cannot steal his biological children’s portions

Over a month after her original post, OP shared this update:

This situation is what my grandchildren have described as “messy”. There is a lot that happened so i’ll try to sum it up in one explanation. We had been trying to talk with Matthew for several weeks after what happened and we were only met with silence, he and his wife would refuse us at the door and he never answered his phone.

There was obviously something we didn’t know from his side of the story but we can’t make a judgment based on what we could possibly not know. I sat Josie down and asked her if she knew what could possibly be happening, she never talked much about her and Matt’s marriage much and we never pried.

Josie broke down told us that their marriage wasn’t great from the beginning and that Matt cheating wasn’t something new and them moving here was because he told her he would stop once he was closer to his family. She says she never told us because she was embarrassed and she didn’t want to turn us against our son.

A few days ago, Matthew came by our house well after midnight while drunk. He insisted on talking so i brought him to the basem*nt patio. He told me that he thought Josie was cheating on him from the beginning but had no proof nor any reason to think it, he just couldn’t think that such a pretty ex party girl would stay faithful.

Josie getting pregnant wasn’t off track for their bedroom life but he just couldn’t believe it. There’s wasn’t much sense to his words but he did say “she’s so pretty and i love her so much, why would she stay faithful”. He started having affairs after Ruth was born and Josie knew, she stayed because she didn’t want Ruth to have a dysfunctional family.

Eventually he started repeating that he f-ed up and being a crappy father is the only thing he’s good at and that he can’t disappoint anyone if there’s nothing to look forward too with him. He said “i’m an @$$hole and that’s it, no changing it. i’m not good for being the villain” and called his wife for a ride home.

He’s gone back to ignoring us and i’m not sure what to do. His wife Ellie has told us that she’s tried and it’s not a fight we’re going to win. In an even longer story short; Ruth is 100% Matt’s daughter and it looks like we’re going to have to raise our grandson too. I hope everyone has gotten their fill of drama today.