AIBU Secret spare keys

[ShesGotAway]

So partner and I have recently bought a house in a town nearby to my parents.

Prior to buying to house my DM didn't know the seller but in the process of buying got really really chummy with them and helped them move and clear the house.

We think in this time my DM managed to obtain a spare key. There was only one set of keys declared and that's all we received from the seller. But there was a niggling feeling in my gut about it. My DM hasn't done this before specifically but she has form for other, similar behaviour. Not something I could outwardly ask her about either.

At a recent family gathering someone else brought up the topic of ring cameras and how they have one at home for the dog when they leave her for a short while. I brought up that we'd just purchased a ring doorbell for ours.

Cue a very angry 'well why on earth would you want one of those!' from my DM.

I explained to the group that we'd only received one set of keys when we'd bought the house and I felt like another set of keys could have been left with someone else by mistake (the seller had lived here for an awfully long time). I explained I felt uncomfortable with this as did my partner so we'd bought the doorbell just incase. (We do also receive a very high volume of packages as I use a room in the house as storage for my business).

I don't think I've ever seen my DM in such a silent rage before. And I have quite frankly taken this as proof that she's done exactly what we thought and managed to get a set of keys for our house!

AIBU- she hasn't got a spare

YANBU- she's definitely got a spare key

Do come back and tell us if your doorbell camera picks up an attempt at entry!

I’ve been given spare keys by my daughter in laws for their homes, perhaps it’s a matter of trust. If your DM has the spare set she should tell you.

This 😂😂

I agree this is the weird part. But yes obviously she has a key. Change the locks, get an house alarm. You’re clearly wary of your mother anyway but I’d be keeping personal items like bank statements etc in a room she can’t access. Why do you think she wants a secret key to your house?

Tbh it didnt occur to us at first. Then we were given two sets of keys. For a household of 3 adults who had also had a lodger. Just didnt seem enough to me. Lock was changed straight away.

We have security cameras at the front and back. They weren't too expensive. I can see as soon as my parents pull up. "Why don't you come round after lunch" too often results in a knock on the door at 10 am

My parents have keys to my sisters house dog walking purposes. My dad scared the life out of my sister and teenage daughter by letting himself in at 7.30am on a Saturday morning. They woke to the sound of him walking around and thought there was a stranger in the house.

My rules in life are
Never live closer that 30 minutes from my parents house - it's too far for "I'll take a chance and drive over on the off chance you are at home and free" visit
Never live further than 2-3h away from my parents - that is too far for a day trip visits and I can't handle my parents overnight or for a whole weekend
Never give my parents a key or unrestricted access to the house!

OP your mum sounds like mine, it took me over 40 years to realise she’s a classic narcissist. The performative niceness, the jealousy over other mother daughter relationships ( though I get this too), sneakiness and so on. When we bought our first home I gave my DF keys, he was doing a lot of work for us. After he died I changed the locks as I knew she’d use them without our permission, I trusted my DF but not her.

She once went nuts when she found out we had a camera in our DCs room and refused to baby sit because we were spying on her. This is the woman who use to read all our mail when we lived at home and who would go through my DBs house and look through his business paperwork to see how much money he had as well as secretly feed his vegetarian children meat! Dam right I didn’t trust her, but the camera was nothing to do with her it was because we couldn’t hear our DCs 1 & 3 in the house we were living in at the time, the baby monitor was crap so we decided to put a camera up that we could see the entire room. There you go signs of a child raised by a narcissist, I feel like I have to justify my every decision 🤷‍♀️

On the change of locks, I thought this was common knowledge to do this, even in low crime areas. I worked in insurance many years ago, not UK and your insurance would be invalid if your house was burgled and you could prove you’d changed the locks when you moved in.

Love the dating app story, people with normal families will never understand the craziness some of us go through 😂

You do have a therapist, yes?

Change the lock

Does your mother not know about this cctv? Or maybe she's forgotten?

Have an image in my head of her dancing like nobody is watching in the living room! 😂

We did because we got surprisingly few keys handed over on completion compared to the number of external doors. We only received one back door key for example when most lock barrels would come with 3. Plus the house was an ex-rental property.

Interesting - it was a requirement of my bank's home insurance when I moved house this time around, and I know three other people who found it in their house insurance small print. Obviously not universal though, but because I know people it has happened to, I assumed most insurance company required it.

Cancel the cheque

1. Change the locks and don't tell her
2. Complain loudly in her earshot that you spent all that money on the ring doorbell and it doesn't bloody work!
3. Wait to see if she makes an attempt at entry, thinking she is in the clear.
4. Come back and tell us about it when you finish laughing

Yes I do, and they're worth every penny!

This is an absolutely flawless plan! No notes 🤣🤣🤣

@ShesGotAway Please do this!
And may I say - well done on recognising your mother for exactly who she is, and for not giving her the means to control you. That must have taken a lot of work. I'm really glad that you have a nice MIL!

My top lock tips.

When you buy your high security lock, always make sure you get the number of keys you need at the same time.If you have to order them separately then you get rinsed on the price of the copies.

You can buy eurocylinder locks that are "keyed alike" so you have the same key fits both locks. Handy when you have lots of eurocylinder locks. Less handy of course if you lose the key, because then you have to replace them all.

I don't have a top tip for overbearing mothers/MIL, which I guess is where the interest is going on this thread.

Just adding to the chorus of I have never moved into a house and not changed the locks.

We were in Private Let for a short spell - 1 year - in the late noughties, and we changed them then too. The Landlord sent us a letter (through the post) demanding to know why we had changed the locks, just 3-4 weeks into the tenancy? I phoned him and said 'how do you know we've changed the locks?'

He came up with some bullshit about how a neighbour had informed him that we had done it. I spoke to the 9 other houses in the cul de sac, and they all said 'what ? no, LOL, why would we do this.' Several of them did confirm though that they had seen him at our house at the front door one day last week (when we were all out and the car wasn't on the drive.) Clearly he had come with a key and tried the door! We refused to change the locks back, and gave notice to leave a month before the end of the 12 month tenancy. He wanted a key and we refused.

We left the keys with the property agent that we had gone through to get the house. We never changed the locks back because we knew he was going to find some reason to deduct some money from our deposit, so we just expected him to take for the lock change too.. (He did, he took 50% of it.)

I was going to fight it as the shite he had come out with to take £400 off us was nonsensical (the locks being changed again was about £80,) and he came out with some nonsense about the place being left dirty (a lie.) Lots of rubbish being left in the back garden including a broken rabbit hutch. (A lie. And also the old rabbit hutch was there when we got there.) And the loft had been about a quarter full of rubbish that he had to remove. (It was, but it was there when we got there. It wasn't ours.) He still took £400 though - probably £650 in today's money.

I did laugh (sorry not sorry) when I heard that the tenant after us had absconded owing £1500 rent arrears.)

Oh and yes @ShesGotAway Your DM had the other set of keys.

I think the first post (and subsequent) nailed it.

I stupidly didn't even think of changing the locks when we moved into our current house but we had the doors and windows replaced within about six months of moving in. It wasn't something that occurred to me until there was a thread on here a few months ago about changing the locks...and the loo seats (which we didn't do either until we changed the bathroom, again about six months or so after we moved in).

For the record I don't see the point of Ring doorbells. They must be really stressful when you are away somewhere and can't do anything about dodgy looking visitors anyway.

Years ago I'd locked myself once too often so have my father a spare key for 'just in case' (I'd have had more chance of coming home and finding the pope having a cuppa than I had of him using it)

My mother (who sounds just like yours) got wind of this

I started to come home to my post on the table (opened) bits going missing and things that had been moved

Not knowing my mother knew about the key,I blamed ds (I thought he was waiting until I'd left and coming back home to mess with me,its the sort of crap he would find funny)

He denied this but it carried on

Starting to get pissed off about it,I dropped the younger kids off at school and instead of heading off to college,I came home

To find my mother with a bottle of posh shampoo and a new packet of san-pro in one hand and my new cleaning cloths and spray in the other (my post,one with my new bank card and the other with my new pin where open on the table)

Shed been taking the key,coming round,helping herself and putting the key back

She went mental when she was caught

Apparently i bought better brands than she did and wanted a slice of the pie but refused to pay for it

She's a tight millionaire and I was a skint single mum

God knows what she told people but I had people hounding me for years over this

I was 'tight not to share with your mum'

God knows what she told my father but he agreed with her and I ended up nc with both of them

Ds was very kind and forgave me for blaming him which was more than I deserved

Nc for well over 15 years and I could also tell some stories about her

I love your rules for life.

My mum went and got her own key cut. I don't mind, she lives far enough away that she can't just come and let herself in, and I have a key for her house (though she gave me that one). But it was a bit cheeky.

Edited: I guess if I locked myself out it would be cheaper to give to hers and get the spare key than it would to get a locksmith out.

Omg your mum is a narcissist OP. I bet she always likes to be the centre of attention and tries to control everyone but especially you. She forms friendships with people you know to triangulate.https://www.mentalhealth.com/library/narcissistic-triangulation

Everyone surely does that-except if there's an extremely bad relationship? The only people I know who didn't give keys to in-laws immediately didn't because they were in prison for drugs, and they had abused their kids when high.
Now, none of these people would have been concerned by a Ring doorbell!