My husband and his sister are non-contact with his mother because she was abusive during their childhoods. His mother is twice divorced and my husband has a good relationship with both his father and step father and also with his stepmother. He has a good relationship with his aunt too.
His relationship with his grandparents was up and down - they were fully under the control of his mother which led to issues when my husband was "disloyal". Being "disloyal" included going to university when she told him he wasn't allowed to, learning to drive and setting up a bank account in his own name. She lied to his grandparents on a great number of occasions and they largely believed those lies. So, his grandparents always tried to force a relationship between him and his mother and were often angry if he tried to distance himself from her.
A few years ago, his mother did something really awful which ended up involving the police and local authority (so the LA are completely aware of what she did) and after months of providing evidence, the grandparents agreed that she was definitely the person who had done it and agreed that my husband was reasonable to cut contact with her at least until she owned up and apologised - she still hasn't. Since then, my husband and his grandparents have had a really lovely relationship. They know not to believe anything his mother says and because her usual tactic of turning them against him was to say he's being violent or aggressive etc, she can't use that because they know he's not in contact with her at all.
Recently, my husband's granny died and left his grandpa alone. My husband's mother used this to try and force a relationship again - she used her eulogy at the funeral to attack my husband for cutting contact with her and ambushed us afterwards demanding that we restart a relationship with her. She's managed to get under Grandpa's skin and he's now saying that time has passed and we should resume contact.
Meanwhile, we're going through the adoption process. We've told them that we have no contact with my mother in law and they've agreed that it's for the best. We also told them the rest of the family support our decision - which was true at the time we said it but now that support is wavering from grandpa. Our adoption agency want a reference from grandpa to corroborate everything we've told them about my mother's behaviour in my childhood - he won't provide this reference.
He's very, very old and unwell now and has just lost his wife. He's an English, ex-military guy who very much does not air his dirty laundry outside the family. He's beyond embarrassed by my mother's behaviour and doesn't talk about it. In addition, he doesn't know most of what actually happened because until my husband left home he couldn't communicate with his grandpa without his mother there and she lied to him relentlessly for years about what was going on.
I'm struggling to understand how/why they can refuse to allow us to adopt on the basis that someone else (not us) is unwilling to provide a reference which is essentially just a character assassination of their own child. Like with most things they've said, their reason is pretty much "because we said so".
Does anyone have any experience with either convincing elderly relatives to stab their own children in the back or with convincing adoption agencies to stop demanding references that we can't get? Our only other alternative appears to be to wait until he dies but that's horrifically morbid.