Family dynamics can become very complicated when a parent divorces and remarries. And when a step-parent becomes more involved in a child’s life, it can easily spark resentments among the child’s parents.
A woman on Reddit found herself in this situation with her step-daughter’s parents when her step-daughter asked her for some advice. So she went to the AITA (Am I The A**hole) subReddit for some perspective on how she handled the situation.
The Original Poster (OP), who goes by Psychological_Bad952 on the site, asked:
“AITA for convincing my stepdaughter to not sign a deal?”
She explained:
“My stepdaughter (24F[emale]) runs a Instagram page/ YouTube channel with a decent amount of following. She makes some money of it and her Father wanted her to sign up with an ‘agency’. he had done most of the work and she had a contract in hand. She asked me to take a look at it. I am not a lawyer but I have taken part in some business negotiations.”
“The document was biased against her. They got control over any IP she created, more than half the cut of all her earnings and their marketing commitment was very vaguely defined. They only benefit of the contract was a 35K up front payment for signing up but which had to be paid back if she failed to meet their content production targets.”
“it was a deal were her upside was limited while their downside was protected. I told her that this deal was sh*t and she could do much better than whatever this company offered just by working on her own.”
“she is a smart girl and she decided not to sign up. She really doesn’t care. She is making money to support herself and do what she likes and has no want to go viral.”
“Her father hates that I interfered in his relationship with his daughter. her mother (My wife) is not happy either was as she doesn’t want my daughter to be self employed. I feel a bit guilty as I did not mince words when I described the deal, I was furious and the ensuing fallout between her dad and her has strained their relationships. I feel like, I poured fire on a family feud.”
“Her father is mad at me for poking my head were it belongs and upstaging him, he doesn’t like me a lot anyway as he hates that fact his ex wife married a woman. My wife is miffed that I am encouraging her to continue this career.”
Folks on Reddit were then asked to judge who was in the wrong in this conflict based on the following categories:
- NTA – Not The A**hole
- YTA – You’re The A**hole
- ESH – Everyone Sucks Here
- NAH – No A**holes Here
And the vast majority of them found this tiff ridiculous.
“NTA”
“‘She asked me to take a look'”
“This right here means there is no way that you could ever be an a**hole. Your adult step daughter asked you to look at something for her and you did, in good faith.”
“You didn’t go out looking to cause a rift, and you didn’t stick your nose where it didn’t belong. She asked and you were honest with her. That’s all that happened here.”
“The fact that both her parents seem ok with a company taking advantage of her is far more concerning to me honestly.” —Efficient-Leek
“NTA – ‘she asked me to look’ that’s it. That’s the whole thing right there.” —rekette
“… Simply because you were asked, OP, you are NTA. I also find it rather alarming that her parents would be angry at you for pointing out such an obviously ill-written contract.”
“Don’t they want their daughter to have control over her life? Don’t they want her to actually benefit from her own success? It seems to me that it was more important to her father to be a part of his daughter’s success, rather than see her become a success on her own.” —Mikko420
“…Legal documents and contracts are designed and crafted to make it difficult for normal people to understand, and often times intended to benefit one party more than the other. OP’s stepdaughter wasn’t sure what she might be getting herself into and did the right thing – asked for an opinion from someone else in order to make sure her content and herself are protected.”
“I’m not a lawyer but I had came across a few agreements and contracts for work, and if you actually read through it line for line, you’d be wondering who allowed this document to be signed and how ridiculous some of those terms were.”
“Contracts should be read through and through. Most people don’t know how to read a contract, so she came to you, OP, to ask for help. She did the right thing. You did the right thing. WTF was the dad doing trying to get her into a contract that could screw her over?” —philip_regular
“…OP did not ‘interfere’, did not ‘poke her head’ anywhere, nothing like that. She did something her stepdaughter asked her to do and gave her honest oppinion when asked.”
“I get the feeling that the stepdaughter knew very well why she asked OP instead of just listening to her father.” —SufficientMacaroon1
“I’m mostly bothered by the father not butting heads with the mother over that contract. He’s basically turning her into a wage slave and she wants to sabotage her completely.”
“Unless the entire parents’ endgame was for her to hate what she does so much she’d quit and OP ruined that by empowering her to keep the product of her own labor out of the hands of greedy capitalists.” —BZenMojo
“NTA. Obviously. Also, it’s unsurprising the daughter asked OP, as he’s the only one here that sounds like they were actually looking at and considering the daughters interests and what was truly best for her.”
“Her dads more worried about being undermined than he is about his daughter signing a contract that could leave her thousands in debt if she didn’t follow vague guidelines. Her mother is more worried about her daughter being technically employed by a company than she cares about the quality of the company her daughter might be working for.”
“I understand the mother more as self employment is a scary and uncertain concept, but overall OPs daughter was about to get screwed by these companies that take advantage of young people who see the $35 thou down payment and sign immediately. He p much saved his daughters financial future by dodging this bullet while her bio parents only care about the possibility of monetary gain and their own feelings.” —pineapplesodaa
Hopefully these parents can learn to get over themselves and work together.