DH's sister has always been a complete nightmare. She made his life a misery during their childhood, attacked both him and their mother, and constantly lied. As an adult, she has gone from one disaster to another, drinks too much, is violent, has physical fights with all her partners, and takes anything she can. After my father-in-law died 11 years ago, she has stolen hundreds of thousands from MIL, and has constantly been bailed out by her on top of that. She has 4 living children. The eldest, now 20, was abused horribly (verbal, emotional and some physical) by SIL and her ex husband, who is father of the other three. As a result, eldest niece went off the rails in her teens, and had a child a 15. She was kicked out by her mother when she 16, and her mother ended up with custody of niece's son, as niece was homeless, a mess, and had no legal representation. Daughter number 2 (now 14) then also went off the rails, and after spending time in psychiatric care has now been put into foster care. There is now a court order over the other two of SIL's children plus niece's son. Our niece found daughte 3's diary last week, which talked about suicide and self harm. She showed this to her lawyer, which he then reported as a safeguarding issue. Niece is now in a stable relationship, with an 8 month child and another on the way. Obviously she wants custody of her 5 year old.
DH and I have long held the opinion that SIL is not fit to look after children, and I would not leave her unsupervised with my 5 year old son. We are on the other hand of the opinion that eldest niece is really trying to turn her life around, and has grown up a great deal, and is trying to deal with her issues.
We have therefore made the decision to support our niece, who lives in the same town as us, by giving her lifts to contact and going with her to talk to social services etc.
This has caused a huge rift in the family. SIL told MIL that niece "stabbed her in the back" by "telling lies" in court to get money by having her son back. MIL is convinced that SIL is an exemplary mother, and has stated she is disowning niece. We just had a huge row because I took niece to her first contact yesterday (she now has contact 2 per week) and I stated she is a better option for her son than SIL.
Other information, to avoid drip feeding: both DH and SIL are adopted, but both at 6 weeks old. Various people have stated the opinion that SIL shows symptoms of reactive detachment disorder, but that is unlikely to stem from her adoption, as adoption only causes it where the child is settled past the age of one. MIL is extremely emotionally distant, and I have suddenly realised this week that actually she may have been a major contributing factor in SIL's problems?
SIL sent a really rude text to DH yesterday, and MIL put the phone down on me when I refused to agree that her daughter was the beacon of motherhood. Now MIL's boyfriend has told DH that she is going to cut us out of her life. DH is understandably extremely upset, although he still thinks we should support niece.