to think MIL is being ridiculous

[Syd35]

My MIL has said she is having nothing to do with us because we didn't spend Easter Sunday with her. We have spent the day with her for the last two years but this year we decided to have friends round for a BBQ and thought it would be nice for the children to have some fun hunting for eggs etc. We spent Saturday evening with MIL and DH actually was the one who didn't want to invite her around on Sunday. We have been so good at spending time with her since DH's father passed away (7 years ago), for instance we holiday together once a year and see her almost every weekend and have spent the last 9 Christmasses together (I haven't had a Xmas with my family since DH and I got together). My mother is so laid back and doesn't put pressure on us to visit so I can't understand this.

MIL was due to look after DS today and we phoned last night to confirm the arrangement. We hadn't even realised there was any upset until she went ballistic on the phone and said we were selfish for not seeing her on Easter which in her opinion is like Christmas. She was tearful which is not like her, she's usually quite a tough cookie. If she had let us know Easter meant so much to her of course we would have seen her on the day but actually for us Easter is time off work, fun for the kids and an excuse to have lots of chocolate. Now she is not looking after DS which is causing a problem today but we'll manage.

Anyway, MIL says she wants nothing to do with us now which I think is really harsh and DH is very upset. She won't reason with us and slams the phone down so she is really angry just now. We are not sure how to smooth this over as obviously we still want her in our lives, she is great with DS and we enjoy her company for the most part but we don't think it's fair that she is making such an issue about this. We had invited her round this Friday to watch the Royal wedding with us but she says she's not coming now. This is not the first time she has stamped her feet if we haven't done as she wished and I think she is being unreasonable.

Any advice how we should go forward?

MiL is entitled to be upset and lonely but her behaviour is unacceptable. I hope your DH can sort this out and I would leave them to it. He needs to make it clear that you all love her BUT her reaction was unacceptable. If she chooses to stay away from your family that is her choice.

It is unacceptable for her to back down from an agreement to look after GC. Her GC have no control over this situation and she is being very unfair to them.

You have nothing to feel guilty about and I hope it gets sorted out.

You have nothing to feel bad about and I hope you don't. Just a word of warning, don't grovel to her over this - make it clear that her behaviour is unacceptable and that is is not going to be tolerated. Because this will set the scene for things that may come up in the future.

You sound like a very kind, considerate daughter in law.

I would leave her to it. I despise this kind of shit from adults.

It sounds like you see plenty of her, you saw her the sat ffs.

Why does she take presedence over your family?

Fwiw I don't invite my mil or my mum to BBQs we have with friends.

I think she's feeling rather desolate and abandoned, tbh, especially if she cried and this is an unusual reaction. This doesn't mean you need to include her in every activity you plan but you clearly DO need to ensure that there aren't any misplaced expectations about special occasions. Only if you've spent the previous 2 Easter Sundays with her, she wasn't being wholly unreasonable (in the absence of any information to the contrary) to think this Easter Sunday would follow the same pattern.

Where things go beyond sensible is her refusal to talk things through more calmly and sending your DH round to have a face-to-face chat sounds like the best way forwards.

Oh FFS I HATE it when women who are MORE than old enough to know better sulk like a tantrumming 2 year old. Agree with shoutyhamster. She really needs to act her age.

I sympathise massively. We have similar situation with my MIL. she lost her husband over 6 years ago is very active in fact is always out and never in its very hard to find time to do anything with her - we dont have children yet.

but she constantly moans at my DH and use emotional blackmail like no ones business to get her own way. She acts very spoilt and petulant if my DH doesnt do what she wants when she wants or what we ask her to do with us as a family doesnt fit in with her plans. She makes no suggestions to do anything as a family unit or spend time with her son but then moans. Its come to the stage where he calls in to see her constantly after work or will have to phone everyday otherwise he wouldnt hear from her, contact is all one way.

I think you have given plenty of your live and time to her and maybe she has just come to expect it - its not fair and i think you are more than entitled to time on your own as a family without always including her.

Please please can I add my voice to the 'don't grovel to her' comment above?

She is on a power trip. Don't play the game.

I think you should have realised that she thought she would see you on the Sunday as like the previous 2 years and made her aware of your plans much earlier. Did it really not occur to you that she would think she would see you and might be waiting for you? You don't have to spend all your time with her but I think you should have warned her and let her arrange something else.

She shouldn't act OTT and will probably calm down but just sounds really hurt. Obviously you can't allow her to dictate your life and perhaps you should spend more time with your family- like Christmas.

You obv caught her at a bad moment...leave her to calm down and I am sure she will soon apologise for her rash behavior.......

I dont think she is on a power trip, she probably felt sad and alone.....if you are religious then easter is more important than christmas and to be honest, I would have invited her to the BBQ. My MIL has severe dementia and is a bloody nightmare (obv through no fault of her own) but we had her over for a couple of BBQ's that we had friends too as well to give her son a break and also to get her out the house.

Cut her some slack, I am sure she will regret what she said which was just in the heat of the moment xx

Thank you fellow mumsnetters, it's made me see the situation in an almost comical light, indeed she has thrown her toys out of the pram and I don't see why we should pander to her.

DH is an only child whereas I have lots of siblings so I never get pressurised like this, it really is emotional blackmail.

Something else I never got off my chest - if I may - the other time we had a fallout like this I had just had a bad time with pre-eclampsia and spent 9 days in hospital. We were only home 3 days with our new baby when MIL arrived, full of good intentions I'm sure, but proceeded to thrust a legal document in my face and ask me to sign it. It was a Will that SHE had decided to have drafted on our behalf, without any consultation, I might add, and wanted me to sign. FFS I was just home from hospital after a tough experience so her timing was awful. Anyway, the upshot was that if I didn't sign the Will then she wanted nothing more to do with me. It was all to do with protecting her money and inheritance tax etc, but surely I should decide when and if I want to do a Will. I felt very bullied into it and in the end I signed it as my DH persuaded me to but I have never forgotten it. It was full or jargon and I did phone the chap who drafted it as I always understood you shouldn't sign anything you were unsure of, he was quite rude so I wasn't happy to sign it but went with it for peace sake. My mum had a good point - just sign it then nothing to stop me making another one.

So I think we have a control freak here. She is a lovely lady most of the time (or when things are going her way) but watch out if you don't agree with her.

All said, I like harmony and I do hope we can get past this.

she forced you to sign a will??????
and you did it?>?
have you since made a new will?
the woman is a freak.

Hang on, hang on - she wrote out a will - YOUR will? and made you sign it?

And you DID?

Are you fucking nuts?

Get a new will made.

Don't tell her about it.

Bloody hell.

You allowed someone to write your will for you? and you don't even know what's in it? And you haven't sorted out a new one? - all you need to do is have a new one, it automatically revokes all other ones.

Syd your last post changes the whole tone of this.
Get another will pronto.

Yeah I know I know, I should have been more assertive. At the time I had a friend over to meet my baby and MIL had gone out and was expecting me to get the friend to witness the Will. When she returned she didn't even say hi to my guest, she just wanted to know if we had signed the document. My friend was gobsmacked and thought it very rude.

Guess I should get round to doing a new one as I know it will make the other null and void. To be honest, I didn't even sign it in my normal signature I just kind of scrawled something so it would possibly not even be legally binding?

In general with relatives we go for as little routine as possible, that way no-one feels that we "should" be spending x occasion or weekend with them and our time is our own.
If someone treated me like this I wouldn't be running round to smooth thiongs over and would be waiting for them to phone and apologise. It sounds as though you need to start spending more time without her eg at xmas so she doesn't feel all xmases and Easters should be spent with her.
Your husband sounds a bit of a control freak as well re the will thing. He should have kicked this idea into touch and told his mother to butt out of your affairs.
I would be wanting to have very little to do with her for the next few months until she accepts your life is your own.

i think you should seriously get another will asap thats really worrying especially as you have children. i am surprised your DH was ok with that also. she sounds awful tbh

Probably not. Why on earth was your dh happy for her to do this to you?

You can't know that.

The only sensible thing to do is to make a new will.

It takes very little time to do! There is no reason for you to 'get around to it'. Just do it.

If you continue to see it as something you will get around to one day maybe probably in the fullness of time perhaps...

then you'll probably keel over with that will still in force.

I suspect that wouldn't be a good idea.

She sounds like a hideous bully, not a 'lovely lady' at all and I think you and your DH are just rolling over and letting her do it for a quiet life.

Don't you want to spend Xmas with your family ever? Even though your mum is laid back, she must be upset that she doesn't get to see her GC on Xmas day.

And you should definitely, definitely prioritise making a new will.

Don't take the chance. Take it to a solicitor to get their advice and re-do the whole thing.
You need to protect yourself and your DS.

She is very comfortably off, all about protecting her precious fortune I think. It caused a lot of tension at the time and I don't want to drag it all up again but I will look into getting a new one done. DH was caught in the middle and was trying to keep the peace but I still dislike the whole thing.

Sorry I ended up sharing a bit more than I started off to, appreciate all the advice though.

You don't need to drag it all up again, because she need never know that you have made a different will.

In fact, if you believe that your husband may tell her - he need never know either!

Just make sure you do it.

Re. Easter she is being a complete spoilt brat. If you didn't discuss her being involved with your plans for the Sunday then it is ridiculous of her to assume she was. Given how much you do involve her in she is being petty and spiteful. Sounds like you need to put some metaphorical and physical distance between you and her.

Re. your will that is outrageous. I can understand you signing it given what had just happened to you and how much you must have wanted to rest and enjoy your baby but you really do need to draft your own will and make sure your DH (but not MIL) knows where it is and roughly what it does. I am beyond shocked and genuinely angry on your behalf.

I have a lot of sympathy for you, OP, and I do agree that it would be a good idea for DH to talk with MIL to explore why she needs to be included in everything. But it needs pointing out that behaving the way she did is guaranteed to make you less likely to invite her to things, and a very poor example to set to her DGC. I think seeing a counsellor would really help her understand why she behaves the way she does, and maybe talk over how she's coping or not with the loss of her husband. She may have lost self confidence and self esteem, so that she takes offence if you don't invite her to everything, because you are her friends as well as family.

My parents had a long widowed female friend who became a bit dependent on them, She was retired from work and I don't think had many friends. My parents had moved north. One day while they were down visiting, I got an angry phone call from friend J, wanting to speak to them. I said they were out at the moment but would say she had called and they would ring her back later. At this point J ranted that they hadn't let her know they were coming to visit me, and had 'had to find out from a friend she met in town.'

I said I appreciated that she felt upset, that it was probably a misunderstanding or oversight, and she insisted they had not told her deliberately. Then I had had enough and told J it was none of my business and if she was going to rant I would end the call, and hung up.

Mum was a bit upset when I told her, but it seemed they had told her they were coming down, just hadn't specified exactly which day they were coming and as they were going to be staying for almost 3 weeks, thought they'd ring her while they were down. They'd only been down 2 days! They did visit J, and dad was so overly nice to her she started to feel rather silly and embarrassed for getting irate. But then he was a trained psychiatric nurse and good with difficult patients!!

I hope you can resolve this happily. But I do think you need some rules, and that means less of MIL 'expecting' you to do things with her and including your own parents more; and being more definite about arrangements, if you haven't said you're going to hers, then you're not going, and MIL shouldn't expect it because it happened the year before or whatever.

OMG and I thought my MIL was bonkers ...!

But then again, DH has always been very assertive with his mother about EVERYTHING and she would never suppose to behave like yours.

The controlling thing drives me mad: when DD was 5 (she's now 8), MIL grandly announced that she was giving each of her GCs £1000. Given DD's age at the time it might as well have been £100 or £1,000,000 for all DD understood. MIL even told me which bank she wanted me to put it in.

Then we had weeks of DD saying "I don't need to do chores for pocket money cos I've got a thousand pounds."

A year later it was "When can I have my hundred pounds that Grandma gave me?"

She asked MIL on Sunday when she can have her thousand pounds and MIL said "Not until you're 21!"

As DH and I have explained to both of them, it's my name on the account so I make the decisions. [cangry]

Very generous of her and all that, but couldn't she have just given DH the money and asked him to invest it for DD, rather than all the grand announcements, controlling behaviour and hassle this has caused with DD?!

Honestly - there's nothing like money for causing upset in families!