SURVIVOR BENEFITS BATTLE

A proposed house is bringing an old relationship into sharp focus, and a 15-year-old's survivor benefits are now at the center of the fight.

A 38-year-old mother says her 15-year-old son receives $1,100 a month in Social Security survivor benefits from his late father, who died when the boy was five. For years, she's handled the money in a way that gives her son some freedom: half of the check, $550, goes to him for personal spending, and the other half is saved for him.

Now she and her boyfriend, 40, are planning to move in together and buy or rent a home. The couple has been on and off for a long time, she says, but things have been going well lately, and he recently proposed. The household would include her son and the boyfriend's children as well, he has three kids, though only one would live with them full-time.

The house they're looking at would cost $2,500 a month.

That's where the budget argument began.

The boyfriend laid out his plan like this: he would pay $950, she would pay $950, and $600 from her son's survivor benefits would go toward the household. He also said the remaining $500 should be put into savings.

The mother wasn't comfortable with that at all. In her view, the benefits belong to her son, and should not be treated like household income to lower the adults' share of the bills. She says she believes her son should have some control over his own money, and that the check should be managed for his benefit alone.

Her boyfriend sees it differently. He wants all of the money pooled because, as he put it, they are "going to be a family." When she pushed back, he told her she was "wrong and selfish" for not wanting the survivor benefits included in the main budget.

She says she's left feeling uneasy about the expectation. "I'm feeling incredibly uncomfortable with his expectation," she wrote, asking whether she's in the wrong for wanting to keep the money separate.

Her question is direct: "Am I wrong here?" She asks whether it's selfish to keep her son's check separate, or whether her boyfriend's financial expectation is a red flag for what's ahead if they build a life together.

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