People are always more generous with imaginary money compared with how they would expect someone to deal in real life

[Blueysshoes]

I know I am lucky and that there is a cost of living crisis but this is more about principle than finance.

So, we send our 3 kids to private school. We can, and do, afford it ourselves but if push came to shove my parents would step in as they have a lot of capacity that way. My MIL knows this which does give us wiggle room others wouldn’t have.

My DH’s sister has a very stable job but it doesn’t pay as much (but we run our own business so that in itself is less stable) which means she can’t afford private school. Unfortunately the school her children are likely to go to isn’t brilliant. Anyway, my MIL (who always loves telling me how DH and I should share) tonight declared that if ‘she had the money’ she would not only pay for her children to send their kids to private school, but ‘nieces and nephews’ because it wouldn’t be fair that one set of kids got an advantage the others didn’t.

She then finished with the fact that if she won the lottery but could only afford to help one of her children, it would obviously be SIL that got the help. Of course, the start point of this was that SIL couldn’t do it without help (whilst the assumption is we always could) but I do wonder if this was a case of her actually thinking we should contribute, not just a daydream about what she would do with unlimited cash.

Sounds like you've firmly made your position clear then. I wish you'd told us that earlier. Bravo.

Not out of the question I overreacted tho 🙄

I'd just ignore the comments. You can't win with people like MIL. Generous with other people's money, generous with other people's time and patience. In addition to this, any time anyone has money there are people who are jealous and want a slice, unjustifiably - for no reason other than they "want it".

If MIL and SIL want to prioritise SILs kids going to a private school, they could move in together and sell one of their homes. But it isn't their priority. So they don't do it. They just want magic money (ie yours) to pay for their whims and wants. This would lead me to go quite low contact with them - drama free - but stepping away a bit. And I would not engage in any discussion whatsoever about money. Just change the subject.

Obviously noone should be paying for anything they don't want to, I'm not really sure your MIL was asking you to.

What stands out to me from your posts is how you keep coming back to how your MIL wouldn't help out your financially secure dh but his brother instead. If you're well off and can afford to send 3 kids to private school, why would she think you need help compared to your BIL? If one child is in a worse financial position than the other, whether that is of their own doing or not, surely you can understand that things wouldn't automatically be 50/50?