Living in Purgatory: Navigating a Multimillion-Dollar Trust Fund Controlled by My Mother-in-Law

I’ve been with my wife for 15 years. We’re in our 40s, have two children and are very happy. We both have good jobs and make about $400,000 a year combined. My wife’s grandfather made a decent-sized fortune for himself and left his kids a thriving business and sizable trust funds.

The trusts and other investments are controlled by my mother-in-law, even though they are meant for my wife. As we don’t have access to them or specific knowledge about them, I have always preached and practiced that we need to budget and live within our means — meaning our direct income, savings, etc.

However, with the knowledge that there is this money and with feedback from my wife’s family always being along the lines of “don’t worry about the money” or “it will be fine,” we have spent beyond what I would otherwise say is smart.

Life in New York is not cheap, and with two kids, we are now getting to the point where there is no more meat left on the bone. We are in the red at the end of the year. I worry about how much we are spending on dining out and groceries, while at the same time discussing a near $1 million renovation of our apartment. That money would have to come from our mother-in-law.

We monitor our credit-card spending, and we stress out as we come to the end of each cycle. At the same time, we are also being cc’d on messages from her family about investment opportunities. It’s not lost on us that we are lucky, and that this is not a scenario where her mother is blowing through her money.

My mother-in-law is generous and feels like she is protecting my wife and her family. That said, she is not necessarily the most financially savvy, and any conversation my wife tries to have with her is met with instant and irrational resistance.

If our reality is that we need to live and plan like a family of four making what we make, I am fine with that, but significant changes have to be made. If our reality is that we are blessed with some wealth and have flexibility both in how we spend now and how we plan, then of course that is great. But we’re living in purgatory, and that is stressful and hard to manage.

I can’t write a check to our credit-card company that says, “Don’t worry, my wife’s family says it will be fine.” No one is looking to take bags of money and run to Vegas,

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