The relationship between a parent and child can sometimes be tense no matter how old everyone involved is. This seems doubly true once children become full-fledged adults and begin living their own lives. Sometimes it can be tough for parents to realize their children can make their own decisions, and those parents can sometimes wield what power they think they have over their children in order to gain some sense of control.
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One woman shared on Reddit that her mother-in-law is trying to control her and her husband to the point of forcing them into bankruptcy … unless the woman's husband leaves her to live with his own mother.
The man had some odds stacked against him.
The woman begins her post by explaining what's been going on:
"Before my husband met me he bought his condo and needed his mom on the title as well due to bad credit. At the time he was swamped in child support and lawyer fees as we’re in the midst of a vicious custody battle with his ex for his son."
The court battle has taken years.
"It’s been extremely drawn out due to her false claims of abuse and mental illness on his part, and we are still in court fighting— we won’t give up. Due to this we are about 20k deep in lawyers fees and going further down that hole, he pays more than our mortgage each month in CS and we simply cannot afford the house."
Unfortunately, the mom won't sell the condo.
The woman's mother-in-law is refusing to allow them to sell the condo, even though she doesn't contribute financially to it:
"My MIL, who is co-owner of the condo my husband bought before we met, will not let us sell it. If we don’t sell we go into foreclosure and bankruptcy, as mathematically we cannot afford the home. She has never put a cent toward the house."
The pair are also planning to move in with HER mom.
To make things more complicated, the husband and wife plan to move in with her mom to save money:
"My husband and I plan to move in with my mom, for several reasons. One being, my mother is not a horrible nasty person. The second being, she has triple the space in a 4br 3 bath home."
The mother-in-law says her son should move in with her ... alone.
"MIL is [expletive] irate that my husband would move in with my mom and I. She is baffled that he won’t be leaving me to live with her. She stipulated that she’d only allow us to sell the house if he came back to live with her alone."
The husband thought it was a joke, but she doubled down.
The woman's husband laughed and said that plan was never going to happen. But the mother-in-law went harder:
"When my husband laughed in her face and said 'you expect me to live with my mother over my WIFE?' She backed down and said, 'once you win custody of your son, you move back in with me and bring him. There’s no reason (my name) and her mother should get all his love when I, his blood, get treated like a secondary citizen. I don’t want her mother play acting as grandma, that’s not her role and she needs to know her place.'"
The woman told her husband to lie.
The woman's solution is for her husband to say OK, but then not follow through:
"I’ve told my husband to lie to her and say that the minute we sell the house he’ll pack up and move to her house. Don’t put it in writing, but tell her that if he has to. I’ve told him to lie up down and sideways. Otherwise she’ll either never let us sell and send us all into destitution, or sell and keep 'her half' of the profit, despite her never paying anything toward the home."
She received lots of advice.
Luckily, other people in the group understand what the woman is going through, and they had a ton of thoughts for her. One suggestion: just rent the condo out.
"Rent it out!" a commenter advised. "My father bought me a townhouse and it got to the point where he wanted me to rent it out so I did and now I’m going to be selling it for over $400,000. We are both on the deed but he passed years ago."
Bankruptcy would impact her, too.
The mother-in-law may not have considered one huge thing: If the couples files for bankruptcy, it impacts her, too. The commenter noted:
"But I will say this, no matter what you decide to do MIL is going to be absolutely screwed. The only thing you could do that won't result in her getting screwed over is to continue to try to pay the mortgage. Partition sales, foreclosure, and bankruptcy are all in her future otherwise."
The mother-in-law is definitely overstepping.
Another person brought up a great point: The mother-in-law is the co-owner, and that's it.
"When my parents died and my sisters and me inherited the family house it was made very clear that, as co-owners, if any co-owner A wanted to sell the house, others co-owners B&C had only two choices : sell the house, or B&C buy the share of the house owned by A and keep the house as sole co-owners."
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