We travel with a 3-year old, so if we are separated, we do ask.

At least they're asking. I've had people just try to take my seat before I've sat down as I'm boarding. And in one case, even after I've insisted on having the seat I've been assigned, they decided they weren't going to give me my seat anyway. Fortunately, it's nothing that the flight attendants can't handle.

Re: the living with sitting a few rows apart.

Agreed. My boyfriend and I have had awful luck getting bumped from overbooked flights, no matter how early we book (and choose our seats) and how early we check in. One of those was a 10-hour flight, and it sucked, but we just sat apart. We're adults, and both planned to sleep the whole flight anyway.

If you get separated from your kid (which I often see happen during the holidays when people get rebooked on different flights due to weather), you probably don't even NEED the $50. The threat of having to sit next to an unattended three-year-old would be enough to have me dashing back to the middle seat by the bathrooms.

To clarify my first paragraph above, I'm talking about choosing seats together, getting bumped from a flight and then getting rebooked on another flight where we don't have seats together.

One time I was on a flight. I don't remember if I paid extra but I had a
aisle bulk head seat with extra leg room.
Before the flight took off, I went to the restroom. When I came back, there was a baby seat in my seat. There was a woman in the row behind me with a baby who smiled and said she needed to exchange seat sbecause she didnt have enough room in her middle seat.
I told her to forget it as I wasn't going to sit in a middle seat foy a 5 hour flight with a hurt knee.
She got huffy and said she hopes her kids cries behind me for the whole flight.
I loadly asked her name and said I needed to report her to child protective services because she woukd let her baby cry because she wouldn't get her way.
Her husband who was in the row next to me hushed her and apologised. He said it was a last minute flight because of a family death. She just scowled at me
Talk about rude entitled prople.....

My 60-year-old mom came to visit last year when my son was born, and she told me she felt very claustrophobic in the window seat for the flight from Seattle to Honolulu. She asked me if I could change her seat to an aisle (she's not internet savvy), and I said okay, but inwardly I was groaning.

However, it took only a few minutes on the phone with the airline. It may help if people who are assigned to a seat they won't like start taking steps as soon as they know.

On an eight hour flight from Abu Dhabi to Amsterdam last year, I was flying in the last row of Economy Plus and the woman next to me asked me to change seats with her 14 year old son (I'm guessing - he was definitely not younger than 12) who was one row back and across the aisle from her, because he was nervous.

Having kids myself, normally I would have swapped, but it would have meant giving up the extra leg room, and at 6'3", that is a big sacrifice. So I politely declined. I did point out that she could always ask to switch with the young lady sitting next to her son, which she didn't want to do because then she would be giving up the extra leg room (the same leg room she was expecting me to give up - she never noticed the irony).

So she called the head flight attendant over and explained how stressed her son was about being separated, and could they move some passengers around to accommodate them. The FA told her the same thing that I did about switching her seat with the woman next to her son, and again, she declined because she didn't want to give up the extra leg room.

The flight attendant then said "Madam, I am sorry but if your comfort is more important to you than your son's mental well-being, then I'm afraid that I cannot help you."

Once I was seated between a married couple who both refused to change seats with me. During the entire flight, they talked through/over me and handed stuff back and forth in front of my face. I was seething (but didn't say anything further).

The flight attendant then said "Madam, I am sorry but if your comfort is more important to you than your son's mental well-being, then I'm afraid that I cannot help you."
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Beautifully said. Did she react at all?