“Barmaid Syndrome” is the fear a woman has that, after her death, her husband will drown his sorrows at the golf club, fall in love with the blousy barmaid, re-marry with her, then die leaving everything to the new wife and nothing to the kids.
The phrase “barmaid syndrome” was coined by Ralph Ray, one of the founders of STEP - the Society of Trust and Estate Practitioners.
Where a husband has the “barmaid syndrome” problem, it used to be known as “coalman syndrome”. For the twenty-first century, I have suggested re-naming it “personal trainer syndrome”, but my idea hasn’t caught on, yet.
Any married woman with children might have a barmaid syndrome problem. However, the problem is more intense and real where yours is a second marriage. That’s because in a first marriage, your kids are his kids, too, so the risk of his deliberately leaving them in the cold is much less. (The worst risk in that circumstance is that he remarries then doesn’t bother to make a new will. In that case the new wife probably would grab the lot. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: whoever you are, you owe it to your family to make a will.)
With a second marriage, though, the problem is real. It’s at its most intense where the second marriage happened later in life, when both parties already had grown-up children of their own. In such cases the stepfamilies are often not friends, and do not even know each other particularly well.
Barmaid Syndrome is a tricky problem to deal with. There are emotional issues and legal issues, and they often don’t dovetail neatly. Although there are things you can do by yourself, ideally the couple should face the issue together, and reach a joint conclusion. Some possible solutions are discussed in future postings to this blog.
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