From experience, I can tell you that your DH will more than likely NEVER change his mind and discipline his kids. He is worried that if he steps up, the kids will hate him and BM will be upset. I lived the nightmare not once but with two different men. I should have learned a valuable lesson with man #1 but I thought he was the exception to not being able to blend to become the Brady Bunch. I was wrong. I wasted about 6 years of my life just TRYING to understand why he would let his kids be disrespectful to everyone including him. He NEVER saw that they were.

You need to take a step or two back and breathe. Having a baby with this man will not automatically make everything better, it will get worse. It will also make things more complicated if you decide to leave the marriage. I would hold off on any financial decisions right now too.

There is nothing wrong with putting these two issues on the backburner until YOU decide if this is the deal breaker for you or is it something you can work out.

I don't have advice, per se, but I will say that when DH and I first married (lo those 3.5 years ago), these are the kind of arguments we would have. Any time his kids were mentioned, he got EXTREMELY defensive and accused me of hating them, etc. He parented from fear of their mother and what she would do. It wasn't quite Disney parenting, but it was awful. It took him a very long time to understand that we could take whatever BS BM pushed our way, and that court was expensive, but worthwhile.

I think you're wise to separate money/inheritance.

If you're going to make this marriage work, though, you all need some help. Have you considered therapy?

So he is now saying that if he tries to discipline his sons BM will go to court and demand he only gets supervised visits? Wow, he's really digging deep to come up with reasons why he can't make his kids be respectful and behave.

I can't say I've ever heard of a judge who ordered supervised visitation due to a father taking away the xbox or sending a kid to their bedroom to read a book because kid couldn't keep his hands off his brother, but I suppose there's always a first :O

Is DH choosing his kids? *shrugs* I'm not sure what he's choosing, but he's definitely choosing to not be a parent his kids. Seems like he wants his cake and to eat it to. He wants his wife to tolerate his undisciplined children , accept their disrespect and to shut and get in the kitchen and cook his dinner.

Yeah, what a guy. No marriage, no matter how badly you'd like it to work is going to be successful as long as these are the requirements.

But only you know how much longer you're willing to keep fighting and arguing over your DH's lack of parenting while being asked to continue to welcome all this into your home week after week.

It might be time to try a separate residence for a while to be able to think clearly and decide what it is you need and want. Is there somewhere you could spend the weekend and do some sorting out of your feelings? Your Dh has made it pretty clear he doesn't intend to change, not his attitude, not his parenting and not his children's behavior.

DH says that he doesn't want supervised visits

I'm confused, why would he have supervised visits?

I told him that he only cares about BM trying to take him to court for actually trying to parent his own kids and make them learn respect and have consequences if they are bad.

First of all, I'm not sure this is the reason he doesn't discipline. Second, he needs to learn about his rights if he's afraid of BM taking him to court for every little thing. I mean, taking him to court for teaching his kids respect or giving them consequences? Ridiculous.

BM over here has always been very litigious but I told my DH there was very little she could legally do to him, he was doing nothing wrong. BM was not quite dumb enough to think she could take him to court over bullshit, she just hoped DH was dumb enough to think so. He most certainly was not afraid to discipline his own daughter.

Your step kids didn't get to be this disrespectful over night. My SD was taught respect at a very young age, your steps were not. Your husband can use whatever excuse he wants, the fact is, he never taught or enforced it. Period. And it doesn't sound like he's going to start now.

Ok.. you say he doesn't want supervised visits.. that brings to my mind that the discipline you are hoping he metes out to those kids is physical.

TBH, I don't think you will get anywhere telling him he should "beat" his kid. Maybe that's the idea of punishment you think the child should have but it honestly hasn't been shown to be all that effective... ESPECIALLY with a kid with potential aggression tendencies of his own!

I honestly don't know how you are approaching this with your DH, but if your doing it anything like your posts here.. I can absolutely see how he would be defensive.

Quite frankly, a lot of your posts are making mountains out of molehills and picking and being over controlling and very derogatory towards his kids and his EX. It might just be venting.. but I have a feeling that sentiment is also being displayed to your DH.

I think it would be helpful for you to have counseling to learn to communicate more effectively. Also Pick.Your.Battles. You see every interaction as some intent to control or bug you. Even stuff that isn't abnormal for kids to do seems to be the same as murder for you and "intolerable". To a certain extent, you have to learn that sometimes it is just "kids being kids" and sometimes it is more than that. You also have to allow a certain amount of latitude given the fact that the kids aren't there full time. It does take repetition and time for kids to learn new habits and behaviors.

Now, your DH doesn't get off scott free. Of course, he should have reasonable expectations of behavior from his children. Of course there should be consequences and teachable moments with him and his children. He shouldn't just wait for you to bottle up till you explode on him before he does anything. In everything I have seen you post recently, the thing that really needed addressing is him picking up the knife. Not a "warm your butt" addressing, but a sit down (with both kids) about not doing things like that because you could hurt someone and the consequences if they do. (jail..juvie..dead sibling). Some of the other annoying stuff... the calling someone stupid... those are a lot less dire situations. And.. tbh, if someone called ME stupid, I wouldn't be waiting for their father to say something, because I would be the one to deal with disrespect towards myself (in a nonphysical way... you CANNOT touch his kids).

By all means I don't know everything... But I do know my husband has issues with standing up to his ex....

I've done research (that's how I handle stress and when I feel threatened... I get informed... for better or for worse) and apparently it's common in divorced men... Even if it wasn't their fault the divorce came about they get this divorced man guilt... don't want to upset the kids... So they tend to get lax in discipline (my husband less so, but it says they vary in response to how they handle guilt personally) and tend to not want to upset BM in fear of upsetting the kids when they think they've "caused" the divorce and have ruined the kids chance at having a regular family with their BM and now your DH.

It's super dumb... I know... But the only way to really solve it is him working through his own guilt and emotions (the things men like to pretend they don't have) once he works through that it might change, but until then I really wouldn't expect it. Men apparently have a tendency to suppress rather than solve (some woman too...) so they lock it up and never actually work though a lot of it...

So just do your best! You got this! It's all a rough situation!

Keep your inheritance seperate- do not put it in a joint account, do not use it to buy or improve joint property. If you keep it seperate it remains yours if you divorce. If you co-mingle it with marital assets it becomes a joint asset. Put it in a savings or investment account in your name only and fill out the beneficiary form to whomever you want to have it if you die- that way it does not become part of your estate.