Here is the history…

My husband was previously married and had a daughter who is now 12 years old. We married 5 years ago and have had 2 children. Our boy is 3 and girl is 1 and a half.

We have a moderate mortgage on our house and other smaller assets. We also have a superannuation plan but no investments such as investment properties etc. (He is 36 and I am 35).

As mentioned before, we have been married 5 years now and still have not been able to agree on the ‘break up’ of our assets. I completely agree that my step daughter should have a share in our assets, the same as the other 2 children. What we cannot agree on is how this should happen though.

For example, if he was to pass tomorrow, he feels that she should receive her share of the assets now as she shouldnt have to wait until my death (which could be another 50 years), and quite possibly, I may have nothing left as bringing up the kids, mortgage payments, school fee’s etc etc might use up all of the income we have now.

My argument is, if I had to provide my step daughter with her share upon his death, I would have to sell our home to come up with the money. This would end up putting our other 2 children in an unfair situation where their quality of life would be in jeopardy. In addition to this, my step daughters mother (the ex wife) would receive the money until she was ‘at age’ of being responsible. My husband and I both agree that the money would not be there by the time she was to turn 25 or whatever age my husband was to decide she should receive the funds (as they would be in trust for her).

In addition to this, upon their divorce, my husband provided his ex wife with a property settlement which contained a portion of his superannuation and signed over their matrimonial property with a very small mortgage (,000). She is now in ownership of the home. Should the mothers assets be considered as my step daughters share of the distribution of the income? She cannot have any more children, so unless she was to adopt, my step daughter would receive the bulk of her mothers estate.

I know this sounds horrible, my husband and i are not fighting over this, we just cannot come up with a fair split for the kids, why should my step daughter have to wait for my death to receive anything but why should the other 2 children maybe have to wait until my death (if it was old age) where my step daughter receive her share much earlier?

We really dont know what to do, please only answer if you are going to give constructive or fair advice, as I said before, we are not trying to favour one child over the other, that is the last thing we want to do, we just want it to be fair.