Newlywed Causes Family Drama After Removing Brother’s Ex from Shared Spotify

A woman turns to the Reddit community for support following an unexpected family conflict that started with something as small as a Spotify account.

She explains that she and her husband recently tied the knot and have been “in the process of merging our finances.” That included going through all of their subscriptions.

When they looked at her husband’s family Spotify plan, she noticed a major problem: “We realized that my husband’s brother’s ex wife is still on his Family Spotify Plan. Because she is, we can’t add me.”

The plan itself goes back years. “My husband started the family plan about six years ago, for himself and his two older brothers,” she writes. It allowed four accounts in total, and since one brother was married at the time, the final slot went to the middle brother’s wife.

For years, it seemed like a fair setup. “At the time, this made perfect sense. They all saved some money, the middle brother was the only one with a spouse, and although my husband and I had been together for about a year at the time, I was about to start grad school so I could still get the student pricing,” she explains.

Now, things have changed. The couple is married, she’s out of school and her husband’s brother finalized his divorce about a year and a half ago. “We can easily afford to keep my separate Spotify, but we also realized the ex never paid my husband back when the plan renewed this year,” she adds.

That detail made the couple’s decision seem obvious. “We agreed it made more sense to remove her and add me in order to simplify our subscriptions,” she explains. Her husband deactivated his former sister-in-law’s account, linked hers instead and sent a quick text to his brother, but they didn’t reach out directly to the ex-wife.

“We didn’t text her directly because she became extremely volatile during their divorce so the brother asked our whole family not to contact her directly so all communication could flow through a specific moderated messaging app that their lawyers recommended,” she explains.

Still, the change quickly stirred up tension. The middle brother became upset when he found out, arguing that his ex would inevitably be triggered by the switch. “The middle brother is mad at us because he feels like we’re forcing him to have another fight with his ex just so we could save a buck,” she says.

It’s a tough spot, and the poster admits the brother has a point. “It’s true that she will definitely be set off by this,” she adds. To make matters more complicated, her brother-in-law thinks his ex-wife still has a claim to the account.

According to him, she “deserves” to stay on the plan because they were together for a long time, even longer than the poster and her husband. She and her husband understand that it will cause an uncomfortable situation for him, but they also feel the arrangement is unfair.

Not everyone in the family agrees with the middle brother. The eldest sibling supports their decision, saying it’s not reasonable for an ex-spouse to stay “on their family plan forever just to avoid a conflict, it’s healthier to sever these last ties.”

The oldest brother also feels that because she chose to leave the marriage, she gave up the benefits that came with it. As the woman recalls him putting it, “she chose to leave the family (divorce was her call) so she gave up any family-related benefits.” He sees the poster being added to the plan as natural now that she and her husband are married.

This divide leaves the family split down the middle, with one brother arguing that the ex-wife’s feelings need to be protected, and the other emphasizing that it’s healthier to move on. At the heart of the issue is whether the woman is wrong for asking to be added to the plan at all.

Reddit commenters were quick to weigh in with their own opinions, many siding with the poster. One person points out that the ex wasn’t even contributing to the account anymore: “She wasn’t paying for the plan sooooo she shouldn’t be on it.”

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Another commenter went further, suggesting that they didn’t owe her an explanation at all. “I wouldn’t even inform her about the change let her find out on her own,” they write. The commenter advises that if she does become upset, the brother can simply tell her “it’s a family plan, she’s no longer family.”

Despite the support online, the situation remains delicate for the family. But in her words, “there are logical reasons for me to join the plan now.”