Inheritance dilemma

Didn't you say OP should stay out of it and leave it to the three siblings? So you don't think op should have stayed out of it - you think she should instead have refused her mil's request and suggested that her mil instead get the siblings to organise it, and suggest to her mil that her daughter the sil should be involved.

All so that the sil doesn't have to manage on her own to make a call that an 80 year old managed which was clearly and repeatedly explained to her.

As OP is family and the dying woman requested her to organise the call, she did the right thing.

No, ignoring her MiL's request would be strange.
I think, given that OP knew from the start her SiL would have trouble accessing the group call, she should have explained this to her MiL and suggested MiL ask her children to organise the call between them, making sure that SiL could be involved.

This.

So you think OP should have ignored her Mil's wants and Mil's request to the OP to set up the call? And as sil hasn't visited her mother in four years I suspect leaving anything to her would be rather difficult.

You’re quite clear they do have sentimental value. Wear them, treasure them and her memory and tell sil all she had to do was join a fucking video call so she can’t really care that much. Not enough to visit, not enough to practice a video call, not enough to plan a funeral, just enough to call you and tell you off. I’d feel the same way as you, but I also have a sip a little like that!!

I have met people I think are useless at a lot of things, though I doubt I'd call them useless as such, but perhaps OP is just fed up with it after years of it. I get that there might be another side to the sil that the OP doesn't see but it doesn't actually matter to the outcome as Op did nothing wrong and isn't her sil's support person or carer or PA.

Thank you for this.
You're envious of her good looks, OP, and envy can blind people to alot of things.
You've had pages of people here say, go team OP, you put that daughter in her place! But this is her mum we're talking about, her mum is dying and there will be alot more to their relationship than what you've been privy to. You can't possibly know all the reasons why your sister in law hasn't visited her mother in the last four years.
I'd be careful of taking the reigns and playing a sort of golden child role in the family dynamics.
As @MyElatedUmberFinch put it, "i think you should stay out of things and leave it to the three siblings to arrange and sort out."

I wouldn't have helped her any more than Op already did, it would have become a burden to the op at that point. She followed her mil's wants and op was just guessing at her deep down motives for not doing even more to help the sil - she did plenty, so it doesn't matter what her motives are.

Well it's the OP saying she knew the SIL wouldn't be able to work it out, not me, so I am taking her at her word. If I knew someone would be struggling to do something I had set up, I certainly would have at least made a call to see what was going on and if I could help, not left it to a 10 year old. Certainly not for such an important matter. And the rather more important point is the OP admitting she would not have been given the jewellery she asked for (as opposed to it being already earmarked for her by MIL in advance of the call) had the SIL been on the call from the start.

I purposefully avoided mentioning the jewellery, as I don't disagree with the OP's actions or the outcome.

My point was that the OP referred to her SiL as a 'useless woman' - citing examples of this as being "doesn’t work, doesn’t drive, is a SAHM" and then went on to describe her as "just boring, a bit self centred, helpless and unable to do anything for herself."

The OP might not be U in this event, but there can be all kinds of reasons for presenting like the SiL, that may or may not be relevant here. Who knows?

As an aside, I don't think I've met anyone in my life so far who I could confidently label 'a useless woman.'

I didn't miss it, it just doesn't matter as OP is not her sil's carer and sil was given plenty of help definitely received the messages and could really easily have asked her son or husband to help her since that's exactly what she did when she realised nobody else was going to do it for her. It just shows that the OP is a considerate person second guessing herself but her deep down motives don't matter at all because she handled it perfectly reasonably and fairly and it would have been unfair to the OP to try to coddle her sil or offer more assistance - she got plenty.

Op youve done nothing wrong. Only carried out the wishes of your mil. She's divided her estate as she wants. Your sil is a selfish cf.

Everyone seems to have missed this from the OP:

Was I unreasonable to set up the call the way I did? If I’m honest, deep down I knew she’d somehow not be able to manage it. I could have looked into other options. Also AIBU not to give her the items MIL gave me, bearing in mind if she’d managed to join the zoom call I’d be unlikely to have them?

It seems to me that the OP is sort of admitting she was setting her SIL up for a fail here (as lame as she may be for not understanding how to join a call), and judging by her husband's attitude to his sister, nobody cared whether she was present for this apparently seminal, near end of life distribution of anecdotes, reminiscences and beloved assets. MIL's wishes were not set in stone either, with a pre-intention to give anything to the OP, since OP indicates that if SIL had been on the call from the start and had asked for all the jewellery, she would have been given it all by her mother. So it was a matter of luck on the OP's part that SIL didn't manage to get on the call. If the OP had had an IT/internet failure, and hadn't been able to get on the call herself (along with her husband), I wonder whether she/he would think they had been treated unfairly by the others carrying on regardless, picking what assets they wanted in her absence.

Whatever else may be true, it's black and white that the mil has the absolute right to throw her jewellery in the bin if she wants to and give it to anybody at all, that the sil is already getting an extremely generous share of the expensive jewellery and that op has the complete right to accept the mil's wishes. It's black and white that the sil will have to accept that as she has no other choice and it's also black and white that the op is not responsible for being the sil's support person no matter what her problems might be.

Sil was given lots of assistance to make the call and actually was part of the call and should have talked to her mother about her mother's decisions one to one instead of trying to force the sil to give up her perfectly fair share. All of that is pretty much black and white, no matter the sil's wants or reasons.

I can relate to this. When I read the opening post, I recognised that I might present and behave in a similar way to your SiL with something like this. I don't have depression, but I have trauma-related anxiety, ADHD and autism, but no one in my family knows apart from DH, DC and Dsis. An 'outsider' would write me off in the same way as your SiL.

Same as a couple of pp, I also don't like the little jabs about not driving and SAHP stuff. You may not BU,OP, but I think you should consider that your SiL may well have her faults, but she possibly isn't just the useless waste of space you have her pegged as.

I know there's a lot of "Team OP!" going on here, but generally, I've found in life that people and situations are rarely black and white when it comes to any of this stuff.

I did think that, it could well be that they knew she wouldn't put the effort in so saw it as her fault that she wasn't there and all cracked on regardless, or that maybe they knew how she would be about the jewellery and MIL took the opportunity to make her wishes known without argument, either way the wishes are the MILs so not up to SIL to try and change things later unless she has a very good reason (a certain item being sentimental etc).

IMO, being the only 'daughter' is not a good enough reason to insist all jewellery comes to her, against her mums wishes.

@sandyhappypeople . Yes, keeping it in the family is one possibility, which is a bit silly as the OP’s daughter will inherit it as a granddaughter and is therefore “family”. However another possibility is that the SIL has placed her value to her mother as being the only daughter. In other words, a role (daughter) rather than a person in her own right who has earned her mother’s love and respect as the OP appears to have. She’s wanting to mark her territory as the “real” daughter, not the “replacement “. Not rational or fair, but human enough.

I do find it interesting that every other person involved in that call decided to carry on the phone call in the sister's absence though, you would have thought that someone would have insisted on waiting, or talked about something else until she managed to join, it was only half an hour.

Maybe they're just used to her never making any effort at all and expecting the world to revolve around her and what she can or can't be bothered to do - and they're just sick of it?

You can only carry other adults so far before they have to make a tiny bit of effort themselves.

but the OP details exactly why the SIl wants the jewellery:

but she did call me up afterwards to say she was shocked that she wasn’t getting all the jewellery as the only daughter,

She is under the impression (like many on here are for some reason!), that the daughter should be the sole recipient of any jewellery. It doesn't sound like SIL is suffering from misplaced emotion, it just sounds like she resents it 'going outside of the family (her)'.

I understand you playing devils advocate and you are very right that this does not represent the complexity of the SILs relationship with her mum, but it honestly sounds like SIL thinks she is entitled to it all and just doesn't agree that any other female should be gifted any.

I do find it interesting that every other person involved in that call decided to carry on the phone call in the sister's absence though, you would have thought that someone would have insisted on waiting, or talked about something else until she managed to join, it was only half an hour.

As much as SIL was at fault for not preparing, I would have felt a bit hurt that this important 'everyone needs to be together to decide' meeting was swiftly carried out without me as if it didn't matter that I was there or not, maybe SIL would not have had as much of a problem if she felt she was included in the decision making?

The jewellery is yours by right, your mil gets to decide where it goes and only your mil. Think nothing more of it and do not respond to the greedy, lazy sil about this at all, I'd also suggest grey rocking and simply avoiding her as much as possible on pretty much everything going forward as you owe her nothing

It’s perfectly reasonable for daughters in law to receive sone items. If you later divorce you should morally leave those with your husbands family but that’s the only moral constraint i would feel here.

After reading one insane post after another I had to reply to this. 😂 The jewellery belongs to the MIL!! She has every right to give it to whoever she wants to!! Morals don’t really come into this - OP has not done anything wrong!

And I say this as a daughter who has been told she will inherit most of my mum’s jewellery while my brother will get the diamond rings to give to any future SIL - I respect this is what my mother wants!!

Besides at some point we will all die and what good are pretty jewels then. I would like my now baby daughter to have mine but beyond that I don’t care.

It sounds like the SiL knows she would be crass and unreasonable to argue against the MIL decision, which is why she never mentioned anything on the zoom call when she found out about the decision.

Instead of discussing it with her mum, who is the person making the decisions about her own things, she has called OP behind her mums back to ask that she pass those pieces on to her. It's very underhand and puts OP in a very awkward position of feeling guilty.

I love my MIL like a mum, if she wanted to leave a small piece of jewellery to me while giving her own daughter the bulk of her jewellery I'd be honoured, and I wouldn't look kindly on my SIL thinking I'm not worthy of it and trying to get it off me.

@MrsDoombsPatterson excellent post.
It makes me feel very uncomfortable; the selfish and childish behaviour of the daughter, while the OP is so selfless in her behaviour and a knight in shining armour. I would love to hear her side. She's losing her mum, i feel for the daughter.

Again, I made it very clear in my post the MIL and OP have done nothing wrong. What I am saying to the OP (not to you or anyone else taking umbrage) is to cut the SIL some slack for being upset over a piece of jewellery because it may well be misplaced emotion over a relationship she has had with her mother her whole life; which most likely will not be the same as the relationship the OP has, which is based on admiration of a successful “finished article” who was never her mother and all that entails.