Our DD estranged us then went off to university

DogWhisperer in the 5 years have you had birthday ,mother's,father's day or Christmas cards from her if the answer is no . The she doesn't want anything thing to do with you .

Sounds harsh. But it's been 5 years seen my son cut ties with me . I haven't had a word from him since or any cards . He not only cut ties with me but all our side of the family .

While I still love my son and my 3 grandson's youngest one I don't even know his name or exact date of birth only his due date.

But I am proud of both my children. They have made their own way in the world . Their dad my husband died in 2004 in our daughter's final year at at uni . We only paid her tuition fee and gave her a small allowance a month . She took out at student loan and had worked since she was 16 . We had put aside the small allowance for our son . Because of being a widow disabled and not working didn't have to pay tution fee. He took out student loan and worked since he was 16.

Both children brought their own homes and paid for their own weddings with no help from me . Which I am very proud off.

Our children where 20 and 16 when their dad died. They told me they didn't want any inheritance when I died. My husband didn't leave them anything except his car reg. Neither children wanted it on there car . I finally sold it in thinking it was 2021 and the children had £6,000 each my daughter didn't want it but told her it was never mine in the first place as my husband left it to them in his will.
Problem getting my sons bank details. So my brother emailed him . No reply after 4 days . I got mad and text him at 4am and told him if I didn't have his details by 6pm he would not have the £6,000. He text me then at 9.30 am what hurt me he put thank you . As he had been vicious in his email to me and ended it I don't like you mom but love you.

I foolishly assumed given time he would be different. His birthday and his second sons was same date in August so I sent presents for the baby ,card ,cards for birthday. In my son's card put a short letter hoping the delivery went well and mother and baby doing well and rest of the family where well as well. Plus at the time of the email he knew I was waiting to have further heart tests as they found a problem. So I told him the result. Put in a cheque and put how it was to be spilt between him and the birthday boy and some to my oldest grandson. The day after my daughter and grandson was with me she was pregnant with her second boy.

The parcel came back all unopened and the babies presents had been crushed . Luckily all soft . I think my daughter in law had a hissy fit and crushed then there where fingers marks on the paper. And my son put in a note ' I do not want your manipulative or vindictive behaviour near me or my family ever again . Zero contact '

I have never been manipulative or vindictive in my life . I hate my in laws my father in law told me I was defective. But my husband loved his parents but didn't like them . When we where there is they started on at us we walked out but always went back the next Sunday . My father I law died in 1988.
After my husband died his mother told everyone she had no son or grandchildren and refused to go too their weddings. I hated that woman for 40 years but I looked after her for 11 years after my husband died because I don't abandon people . She was still my husband's mom ,mother in law and children's nan . It was me who sat by her beside for 15 hours the last 2 days of her life . He brother turned up once she was dead. She had me down as next of kin.

After my husband died I looked after both parents and mother in law. My mom live with me last 18 months of her life she had cancer and dementia. The children didn't want me to buy I loved my mom and couldn't put her in a home no matter how bad things got .

The children both live 100+ miles from me . Mom died in 2017. I moved to live closer to them in 2019. Which is what both couples wanted . I saw my son and his 2 eldest every week for 7 months then covid hit. But still in touch .

Last time I saw and spoke to my son was on my birthday 4 days before the email . He talked about putting paving down to make my garden safer . Told him I would get some to do it as he he worked full time had a family and still working on their house.

I never saw what was coming . But my lovely son in law said he knew something was wrong for years but wouldn't say anything because he didn't want to hurt me .

What has hurt me the most is to know my son is a cruel coward. He should have faced me . But I know he couldn't have done it.

2023 decided I am done hoping he will change his mind and feel happier. I can never forgive my son and daughter in law for this and would never trust my son ever again if he did want to contact me . He is no longer the loving caring son I had . He is a stranger . But I am no longer the mom he knew .

I am fiercely independent. But do see my daughter and family used to be weekly sometimes it is but definitely every 2 weeks . It depends on our social calendars she laughs I have a better social life than she does . But she texts everyday and when I need help she is there. All 5 of my grandsons are at school now..

But like I said at the start if you have never had any cards or contact from your daughter . Sorry a letter won't fix anything and you are strangers to eachother. You will just open yourself to abuse from her . Plus you are her parents you don't owe her any explanation.

Once children are adults then it's up to them what they do in life . The phrase I hate is the bank if mom and dad. My children have made their own lifes without help from me and no dad .

My husband and I paid for own wedding and brought our own house ourselves no help from either parents .

I hope if you do send the letter you are prepared for the results but you need to ask yourself if she does contact you will she hurt you again .

I'll add my vote to the 'send a letter' camp. What harm can it do.

Having said that, if it were my daughter I would call her, or go round to her house if I knew she'd be there. I'd want her to know that I'd done all I could to make contact and to explain.

I don't understand the tax situation, but I don't need to - it's not really the main issue, which is that you haven't seen or spoken to your daughter for five years. The estrangement might not even be about the money. In any case, if you are now in a position to offer her some money to compensate for not paying to help her through university when you paid for her brother, I think you should consider doing so, so she doesn't feel that you care more about your son.

I wish you luck in sorting things out, as it must be very difficult for you.

Well her and the brother haven’t been treated the same however many times you say they have You didn’t encourage or help her but you are paying for the lad that’s not the same is it ? I know the finances are different then to now but with grants and loans you wouldn’t have been paying £30,000 and if you were in that much money trouble why wouldn’t she have got a grant but I think she thought ok I ll take the pressure off them and do it alone and looks like she has, just a big big shame she’s walked away from you in the process
Maybe a letter will help but do recognise how she would have felt even if that wasn’t your intention
I wonder what career she followed in the end ?

Honestly, it came so out of the blue that even after it happened, we didn't realise for a while that it had happened. We set her up in the flat she wanted. Being the guarantors of the flat didn't cost us any money, it was just an undertaking that if she didn't pay the rent, we would. I even went round and assembled some furniture for her and figured out how the electrics worked because the landlord hadn't told her. Then a week or so later, I dropped by with her younger brother who was curious to see where his big sister was living, and she wouldn't let us in. I thought "OK, maybe she's just out of the shower, or maybe her secret boyfriend is in there or whatever" and thought no more of it except that it seemed a little odd. But that was the last conversation I ever had with her.

I can tell people are still confused about the money / tax situation. We were confused about it too, especially when we were in the thick of it and we couldn't see the light at the end of the tunnel. We battled over those taxes for seven years. The foreign tax authorities gave us conflicting advice about what we owed, but they threatened us with daily interest payments on whatever that turned out to be. We couldn't pay because a lot of the money was tied up in investments which we couldn't access. It was impossible to find out who was dealing with our tax account or to contact them to ask questions. The tax system is so complicated that only they understand it. It was like dealing with the Mafia. It was a nightmare that we really didn't want to drag our daughter into, but of course with hindsight that was a mistake. We could afford to spend £300 on furniture for her flat, but we really didn't know whether or not we could afford £30,000 for a university course because we didn't know how much (if any) money we would have left when they were done with us.

And no, we have no favourites, her and her younger brother have always been treated the same and we love them both equally.

The reason I posted here was because I was looking for your thoughts about what I should do, and your votes so far seem to be:

Send the letter: 3
Walk away: 2
Just carry on sending Xmas cards: 0

So I think I'm going to take a deep breath and send the letter.

Did this non communication really come out of the blue
or was it the result of a final straw situation from your daughter's point of view?

Oh my goodness I totally understand your situation is different now, but you so casually say you’re son s off to uni and you ll be paying for him, made me gasp. Had she has always sensed a difference in your behaviour towards her and your son

Obviously it was a problem when you were overseas and there was some financial irregularities causing you to pay a lot of money back but that wasn’t her fault Surely you could have encouraged her to go to Uni as she obviously badly wanted your approval and if you’d been wiped out of money wouldn’t she have been approved for government help anyway How could you be guarantors of her flat and buy her furniture for it if you were wiped out of money ? I m missing something here if you had too much money for her to get government help why couldn’t you help her ! It really wasn’t her fault you had messed up overseas

Anyway that’s all out of the picture now she seems to have managed very well for herself and hopefully got her degree and making use of it It’s an awful shame she has cut the relationship off but she obviously feels very strongly that you didn’t encourage her at the time and hasn’t got over it
I really really hope that time and distance will melt all the hurt away and you can be reconnected even if in a smaller way

Personally I don’t understand why you couldn’t have prefaced any discussions about student finance with a conversation in which you explained the foreign tax situation to your daughter. Things might have turned out very differently.
But I think it is still worth explaining now, though it is probably too late to expect anything to change.

Thanks for all those comments / suggestions - although it's a bit of a mixed bag! Just to answer a few questions:

If we were clairvoyant and we had known what was going to happen, yes, we would absolutely have sat her down (tied her to the chair if necessary) and explained to her about the tax thing. However, it's difficult to explain a complicated tax situation to someone if they insist on storming off to their bedroom and slamming the door without giving you the chance to explain. And then there was no contact, and the chance was gone.

The financial problem in 2020, as some of you have gathered, was high income (making us liable for significant contributions) but zero savings (because we'd just had them all taken away by the foreign taxman). So one proposal we put to her was, would you consider postponing Uni for a year? That would have given us chance to save some money and stabilise our financial situation. That idea wasn't well received, although it's what she ended up doing anyway, because in order to qualify for the Govt grant on the ground of "irreconcilable estrangement" she had to postpone Uni for a year, because you can only get it if you have been estranged for a year.

And yes, her brother is going to Uni this year and we are paying for him, because we have been able to save up for the last five years now the foreign taxman is off our backs. That is what we wanted to do for her.

OP We have now had no contact from her for over five years, and we are thinking it's now time to stop trying to reach out, accept that she may never be coming back, and just let her go.

Yes, accept and let her go - she's gone.

Why didn't you explain the situation to your D at the time? .

Writing and explaining without a response from your daughter won’t hurt any more than it already hurts. I would do so, without being too hopeful, but if you don’t you will always be left wondering. Did you pay your son’s university fees?
I don’t understand why you didn’t explain at the time, but better now than never. It’s worth a last try.

There is absolutely no reason for you not to tell family and friends the true situation. The pretence is unsustainable.

You cannot go through your life pretending you went to her graduation, talking about her "career", met her partners, went to the wedding, are excited she's promoted/ pregnant/ married / you have a grandchild etc. That you visit her and she visits you.

Don't go there.

For your own sake it's time to come clean and tell your friends and family and work colleagues the simple truth

"Our daughter doesn't keep in touch with home any more, we don't quite know why because she just stopped and has never told us why. It's very difficult for us."

If they ask questions you just keep repeating " I wish we knew the answers but we don't. This situation is her choice, not ours."

Or just tell them YOUR truth.

" I don't want to talk about it. It's too upsetting"

This is your daughter's decision; you cannot and don't have to explain it on her behalf or defend her behaviour.

Don't go down the MH rabbit hole of denying your own reality , covering up , pretending everything is absolutely normal.

I would have thought it quite obvious that your DD felt badly let down by you and her Dad. Parents know if their earnings are above a certain amount it means they are supposed to pay to make up the difference for a full student loan. You must have had the earnings but chose not to give her the top up. This system has been in place for years so it's not like you needing to pay to enable your DD to go was a shock for you. Most parents save up over time. Because you couldn't support her your DD couldn't go when she wanted to do she probably things you stole her dreams away from her. Your DD moving out was probably because she didn't want to be anywhere near to you and she may have realised if she waited as an independent student she would get a full loan. My advice leave her alone. If she wants contact she knows where you are. If you fund her brother it will hurt her even more. Have you been saving for him to prevent this from happening again?

I’m so sorry for the last 5 years of estrangement you have experienced- just heartbreaking.
I would absolutely write and explain why everything suddenly changed, & personally would have done this way before now, otherwise how is she to understand what you did?

Hi

I started this thread in Dec 2023, a lot of people posted helpful comments and suggestions, for which I thank you, but almost two years on, I'm looking for a bit more advice.

To save you having to re-read all the previous posts, here is a summary of the story so far:

Suddenly and without warning, our DD went "no contact" in July 2020. We have tentatively reached out to her a few times since then, including sending her a birthday card and a Christmas card for the last two years (thanks for that suggestion) but received no response.

Because it happened so suddenly, we don't know for sure why it happened, but we think it was because we had some difficult discussions with her about how we were going to fund her through university. The background to that was that we had recently come back from a foreign country where we had been working, but didn't realise that the country we had come from punishes expats who leave by whacking them for enormous amounts of "departure tax" - in our case, the equivalent of £208,000 in local money. We fought the foreign tax authorities over it but couldn't win and had to hand it over. It came at the worst possible time because it was just before DD was supposed to go to Uni, so we ended up handing over what was supposed to be her Uni money and our retirement savings to the tax authorities, which pretty much cleaned us out of cash.

We never discussed the tax thing with DD, and we think (although we don't know) that DD just thought we were being mean and manipulative over money, and decided to do her own thing by claiming "irreconcilable estrangement" from us in order to claim Government grants and loans as an independent student. And to give her due credit for initiative, it worked. She got her money from the Government, we were never asked for any financial contribution, and off she went to Uni where (as far as we know) she has been ever since.

We have now had no contact from her for over five years, and we are thinking it's now time to stop trying to reach out, accept that she may never be coming back, and just let her go. But it would be tragic if all this happened as a result of a misunderstanding, because she just didn't know that we were forced to send back all her Uni money to the tax authorities. So I'm wondering whether, before we stop reaching out, I should try one last time and write her a letter explaining what happened, maybe enclosing a copy of the bank statement to prove it, saying that we respect her decision to stop contact and we are not going to try to contact her again, and wishing her all the best for the future? Or maybe we should continue sending her birthday and Christmas cards? Or maybe we should do nothing and just let go?

Any thoughts would be appreciated.

I certainly get it as one of mine is at university at the moment, well not today as it is boxing day!

The maintenance loan should at least cover halls though. I wonder when this changed? As I've detailed earlier in the thread, the top up amount for rent is quite a lot (university based accommodation) if you only qualify for the base level amount.

I think a number of people are genuinely confused - the link is clear though.

I fill these forms out every year lol

No one has misunderstood

There are 2 parts 2 the loan

University fees

Maintenance (living expenses)

The second part is means tested

I even posted a link explaining...

It's certainly not us who isn't getting it

I agree JJ. I don’t know why it’s still having to be explained.

The university fees are covered by the basic loan. This seems to have been misunderstood throughout this thread

Not to enter into the emotional side of the question, it IS actually true that under the current student support scheme, the amount a student can borrow via student loan for maintenance as opposed to tuition IS means tested, and if your parents rrefuse the means testing, your ability to borrow is set at the absolute lowest level.

So under the scheme the girl was applying under, NOT living independently from her parents could (would?) have meant she couldn't even borrow the money she needed for her university maintenance.

It's monstrously unfair in my opinion, but that's how the calculation is done. So it is very financially possible that the only way the daughter could access sufficient finance for university at all was to be able to evidence that she was financially independent of her parents. Which she could, by having a flat of her own for a year etc.

It's not about the amount of debt, it affects being able to borrow the money at all.

Hithere

I wonder why going to university in the other country vs the UK was not a possibility

I don't really understand what you mean?

Would the daughter have eligibility given that their parents had given up the expat life and residence/work visa and returned to the UK?

The parents had decided to move the family home before university.

Who would have paid for the DD to attend University abroad as a non-resident?

There may also have been issues that the DD did not meet the educational requirements to study abroad - for example if she had attended a British curriculum private school for expats and didn't have GCSE/A level in the local language.

eazybee

There is a very careful drip-feed of information so I doubt if all will be revealed.

Isn't that true of most original posts of this kind though?

People give you their 'side' of the situation from the standpoint that they are being unfairly treated and feel upset because of it, Very few are able to be completely objective - I know I wouldn't be, which is why though I've been tempted on occasions to get thoughts and opinions from others, I could not be sufficiently objective to get any meaningful responses.

Apart from which, giving the details of the "other side" of the story would in fact reveal too much personal information which might lead to identification in real life.

So, yes, I'm sure there's more to this situation than we are being told but I do think the OP is genuinely not in the 'know' quite why her daughter has estranged her. But the complete silence from the daughter does not necessarily mean that something dramatic has happened that we are not being told about - young people can be very determined when they decide to go their own way and clam up like the proverbial shell.

I wonder why going to university in the other country vs the UK was not a possibility