My partner’s sister has twins via sperm donor. The kids just turned 3 today and their mom, who is my partner’s sister, had an abnormal mammogram (today) that her doctors think could be cancer. When me and my partner began dating almost 2 years ago, he told me he was godparent to those children. He has a lot of school debt, and I asked him how he planned to take care of the kids in case something happened to his sister. Last year, I told him that if we were going to consider getting married, he needed to speak to his sister about term life insurance since she is their sole caregiver (is getting a lot of help from my partner’s parents, as well, but they are aging) and because he has so much debt. He told me he would, and he didn’t. I told him that his sister didn’t seem to be taking good care of herself at all, and that it was inevitable that something might happen to her sooner than she wanted.

I backed off because I didn’t want to sound all gloom and doom, but what I feared did happen. Mostly everyone is going to get one of five things as we age: diabetes, cancer, heart disease, Alzheimer’s, or some degenerative disease. In my mind, it’s not a question of if, it’s when, and people who don’t look after their health, on average, appear to get sicker sooner.

Anyway, my partner has since changed to a better job working with his dad and I have a well-paying job too. Neither one of us has kids. It’s still very early in this journey with his sister, and I hope the prognosis is a good one because she’s a great mom and she loves her kids so dearly. It would be tragic to see her lose a battle with cancer and devastating for her kids. That said, I’m angry with my partner for not bringing up the term life insurance with his sister because I don’t know how we end up paying for two kids we’d have to raise. She probably couldn’t even qualify for term life if she finds out she has cancer, or it would be super expensive now. We could probably swing it, but he has nothing saved even for himself. If he takes over his dad’s company, there might be a way for him to retire one day. The kids would be taken care of, but he’d be left with little.

To add, he’s never worked in business before (he used to work in government) and has a passive approach to initiating things. He’s shy and hates networking or being a front man for the business. I’m not even sure if him taking over his dad’s business would work out because I don’t see the instincts he needs to make it work. We were trying to have our own child, but I don’t even know if that’s a possibility now with this on the horizon. I love the twins and would completely take them in with us – they are the sweetest kids. But I feel like his lack of guts and planning is changing my plans and what I want, and I’m resentful about it.