Long, but I wanted to give as much info as possible...
Based on the information below, aibu in thinking slightly bonkers and bossy SIL is casting my my dh to be her daughter's substitute father rather than uncle?
SIL is quite a bit older than dh. She married a husband much older than her and divorced him some time ago.He is no longer on the scene.
She has two children, both grown up, both have had more failures/difficulties than successes in their lives up til now - e.g. a number of failed relationships, trouble with the police etc.
However, the daughter, now in her 30s, has turned her life around. While coping with two young children (after her marriage to the father of the youngest child ended), she did a degree and achieved a very good result, and now has excellent career prospects. We all happened to be on holiday somewhere with very difficult communication when this happened and found out when we got home.
Cue very arsey phone call 2 days after our return from SIL (dh was out), demanding to know why "no-one had contacted DN to congratulate her". This follows a call dh had made to SIL where he'd said he would phone DN (and then didn't immediately, but he was very busy sorting out our dd's new home that weekend, and he's fairly crap at making promises like this which he then forgets about).
SIL was equally arsey when DN got married a few years ago - it was abroad, an expensively long way away, and we decided it was too much time/money to all go. DN had asked dh to give her away, and we thought about dh going alone, but we don't get many holidays (plus the expense) so we decided against it. SIL made it very clear she was NOT happy about this.
Finally, SIL has now asked dh to dn's graduation ceremony and meal afterwards. DN is allowed 2 relatives there, and her brother can't make it. I would've thought she'd want her eldest son to go (he's a teenager), but apparently dh is invited instead.
I have no issue with dh going, but I did also just say to him he needs to guard against SIL and possibly DN treating him as a substitute father as time goes on, especially as SIL gets older.
He doesn't agree and thinks I'm being paranoid - am I?