Real Life Mother-in-Law Stories That Will Make You Want to Stay Single

When you find a partner, you might think that you’re just marrying them when in reality, you’re marrying their whole family. That includes your new in-laws, who might end up being more of a struggle than your own children.

These people found out first hand that mothers-in-law can bring some significant stress to your life, even when they think they’re being incredibly helpful.

Now We Have a Security System

This incident happened exactly one year ago today. My wife and I are in therapy, not so much because of issues we have in our marriage but because both of us have horrible families, and neither of us until meeting our therapist had strong spines about it.

We are very low contact with my mother-in-law. She more sucks than is horrible but she also has some substance issues she’s dealing with, namely an addiction to pain medication. Anyway, let’s go back a year and a few days. My wife is due any second with our first child.

So the plan was to have both sets of parents at the hospital after the baby arrived and my wife and I had time to bond. Her parents accepted that, my dad who is an enabler was okay with that, but my mom was not. She demanded she be at the hospital earlier, and we told her no, she had to wait.

Finally, she said OK after she saw we weren’t budging. So the baby was born. It’s a boy, and we hadn’t found out so it was a big surprise. Anyway, both sets of parents come, everything’s good. Until suddenly, it took a dark turn.

 My wife was getting tired so I walk my parents out; hers had already gone home.

My dad went out to get the car while I waited by the front door with my mom. She then turns to me and says that my dad and her are filing for custody of the baby.

Before I can speak, she claims my wife is on drugs like her mom (my wife doesn’t even drink) and that she saw how my wife was around the baby and she fears for his safety. I’m stunned. My dad pulls up and she gets in and leaves.

I go back upstairs and my wife sees my face and knows something is up.

I really don’t want to tell her but I’m not going to lie to her, either. She’s as upset as I am, so I text my mom that she’s not to contact us anymore. I then block her number. At this point, my younger sister is blowing my phone up and I know it’s my mom.

We go home the next day, and my wife had tearing and therefore needs medication. She refuses pain medications because of her family history but says she will take Advil. So I go get some things at CVS, she and baby are sleeping (him in his cot) at home.

I’m in line getting us dinner when my wife calls me sobbing. She woke up and there’s no baby. I run home and we are both a mess at this time. Then my neighbor comes over and asks what’s going on. She sees me running like my feet are on fire, so I tell her.

She tells me, “Wait, so your parents weren’t supposed to take the baby?” Yep, my mom came and kidnapped my baby. I immediately call the sheriff’s office, since my best friend is a deputy there.

As soon as I tell him and his partner what happened, they head to get our baby. Turns out my dad wasn’t involved in the actual kidnapping, although I’m sure he knew about it. My mom knew at the time where we kept a spare key and let herself in. We went all the way and pressed charges.

According to my friend, they had a nursery waiting at their house. Our baby was returned to us. My mom was sentenced, but because of her standing in the community she was only given a slap on the wrist.

However, the negative attention she got after that event spurred her and my dad to move. Thankfully, my sister turned 18 before then and she stayed with us a few months before going a few states away to school. For a long time, both my mom and my dad were radio silent.

However, my mom has tried to reach out in the last few months. Thankfully we’ve learned from this. We now have cameras, a security system, and no spare key outside. Our neighbor, who is now a great friend, has our spare.

We are three months along with our second child, and I’m hoping my mom doesn’t find out about it until long after.

Story credit: Reddit / not2daysatan90

No Respect For My Situation

So, I can’t walk very long distances, can’t climb stairs at all, and am mostly in my wheelchair. However, my mother-in-law doesn’t believe I need my wheelchair. The following is a part of a conversation I had with her. MIL: Can you walk?

Me: Yes, depending on how far I have to walk and how I’m feeling that day. MIL: So you can walk. Then what’s up with the wheelchair? It was my birthday last week, and she decided to throw me a party…on the deck of her house that’s currently under renovation. We get there, and the front of her house is all torn up. There’s no walkway, there’s cement and rocks everywhere.

It was all blocking the front door. Basically, even if you weren’t in a wheelchair you wouldn’t have been able to get into the house through the front door. According to my mother-in-law, that wasn’t a problem!

Since the party was on the deck and you don’t need to go through the house to get to the deck, all you need to do is go to the backyard and climb the stairs on to the deck. Easy right? Not. By the way, she had not told anyone that her house was under renovation, so we were all taken aback.

When my husband and I get to the backyard, my mother-in-law and my husband’s siblings were all on the deck having food and drinks. There was no feasible way for me to get up there unless I was carried.

I was ready to leave until my brothers-in-law started clearing the tables and chairs and bringing them down onto the grass.

At this point, my mother-in-law was having a fit—”That’s my deck furniture!” or “It’ll get grass stains!”

In the end, they all effectively moved the stuff down. She was grumbling but put on a nice face for the rest of the party. Later on, I heard her complaining about why I didn’t just climb the stairs since I could walk.

She just doesn’t get that a person can walk AND need a wheelchair at the same time. So, that basically sums up what a disaster that day was.

Story credit: Reddit / Prudent_Ferret2

Overly Attached to Her Son

My fiancé’s mother is a single mother, and she is waayyy overly attached to my fiancé. She seems to think she is entitled to be a part of every aspect of my fiancé’s life and that she must always come first in all situations.

For example, she was livid when we got engaged because we didn’t visit her first after the proposal. She pitched a fit that we had stopped by my parents’ first to show them the ring. When we did arrive at her house, she was so angry that she ended up throwing a cake at us in her driveway.

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. She has made my life a nightmare since we got together, but it became much worse when I got pregnant. She has made numerous attempts to convince my fiancé to leave me because she doesn’t believe I am pregnant with his baby.

Her “proof” is that I was too fat, so I must be lying about the due date. This is just one of the many things she has done to hurt and embarrass me. We have limited our contact with her as a result, but she always seems to find a way to weasel back in.

So, last week I gave birth to a beautiful baby girl.

Both our families were not able to come to the hospital and will likely not be able to visit in person for a while. My parents told me they planned to decorate the front of my house to welcome the baby home, and my mom said she had ordered a bunch of things off Etsy for the occasion.

When I arrived home, I was surprised to see that there were no decorations. I didn’t think much of it and just assumed my family had run out of time. It wasn’t like them to forget, but I assumed there was a good explanation. Then I got a heart-stopping phone call.

My mom called me after I was settled and asked me how I liked the decorations and presents. I asked her what she was talking about and told her that there was nothing outside when I got home. My mom proceeded to text me several pictures of my house fully decorated in pink baby gear.

I also noticed several wrapped presents on my porch in the picture. They were also missing along with a large banner, balloon arrangements, and several other decorations. My mother told me one of the presents contained a little sweater knitted by my grandma that I wore as a baby.

I had been looking forward to receiving this and passing it on to my daughter. I was extremely confused as we live in a rural area so porch pirates are not very common. I asked my fiancé to check our security camera. He pulled up the footage and we were both shocked at what we saw.

 We saw his mother taking everything down and putting it all in her car. The footage was very clear and you can easily see her license plate in the video. My fiancé was livid and immediately called his mother. She tried to deny it at first but soon admitted what she had done.

She claimed she was angry that she was not given the opportunity to decorate our house herself. She said my family had insulted her by excluding her, and she began to cry about how horrible we are to her. My fiancé was not having it.

He said she had one hour to bring everything back to our place or he would be calling the authorities. She then laughed and said that she had already thrown everything into a donation bin and told us good luck finding it.

My fiancé has already driven around to several donation bins in the area to check but hasn’t found anything yet. We now agree that she will have no contact with our child in the future. I am beyond done with her and I just hope this is all over.

Story credit: Reddit / RedSky988

She’s Not My Responsibility

This morning I got a call from a funeral home letting me know that my mother-in-law’s body had been picked up, and they wanted to discuss the obituary as well as inquire about payment. There was just one problem.

 My mother-in-law is still very much alive and she certainly wouldn’t have been sent to a funeral home four or five hours away from where she lives if she wasn’t.

I tell them they have the wrong number, even though they used my maiden name—I have an extremely rare maiden name—and I previously lived in that town. The young man on the phone was apologetic and wished me a good day. Not even five minutes later, the number calls me again.

This time it’s a woman asking me if I was the daughter-in-law of my ex mother-in-law. I said, “Not in the last 10 years.” Turns out, my witch of an ex-mother-in-law, who honestly was a practicing witch but also just a witch of a woman, had known she was dying. So she decided to get a bizarre revenge.

As one final “screw you,” she thought she would try to stick me with her funeral costs. Of course there’s no legal recourse here, even though our state has that weird law where you legally have to take care of your parents if they aren’t able to themselves.

But she’s not my mother and I was never legally married to her son thanks to his shady officiant friend not filing our marriage license.

From what I can gather, she pre-planned her funeral and told the funeral home that I was currently her daughter-in-law (again, I’m not) and would be covering all funeral costs. They apparently believed her, probably because she plays the victim so easily, and thought I helped her make the plans.

This is exactly what she did when I lived with her and my ex.

I busted my butt working full time while she did nothing but spend all of her money at thrift stores and he worked 15-20 hours a week minimum wage. Now they’re holding a body and have no idea what to do with it as they don’t have contact information for my ex, and nor do I.

I suggested they call the nursing home. But yeah, happy Friday to me. Story credit: Reddit / ItsKaragan