The coming together of two families is a beautiful thing until it isn’t. No matter how much you dream of great relationships with your in-laws, it just doesn’t always happen. But don’t worry, you’re not alone! People share outrageous stories about their entitled in-laws and how they responded. This content has been edited for clarity.
That’s Not Your Name
“To cut to the chase, my wife and I spent four years trying to get pregnant before the wrong side of 35. We are currently 33 and are blessed with a wonderful infant son. My wife has a younger half sister who she doesn’t contact much because she is entitled and toxic, and also her mother’s golden child. We’ve refused to let her or my mother-in-law in the house since they both blatantly tried to run off with my wife’s jewelry box a couple of years ago. The box contained a lot of valuable jewelry inherited from my wife’s grandmother. Said jewelry is now in a safety deposit box as per my suggestion.
My wife and I had nearly given up trying to conceive when it suddenly happened and we were ecstatic. After we found out we were having a boy, we started looking into names. I ended up suggesting the name of my Scottish grandfather, and my wife loved it, so that’s the name we settled on. Unfortunately, we made the mistake of posting about it on social media.
Well no surprise, my wife’s sister was pregnant too and much further along. She decided to claim my grandfather’s name for her own son. Not just the first name, but the middle name too. We were ticked and gave her a call about it. She smugly told us there’s nothing we can do about it.
We realized that drama was exactly what she wanted. She thought that by taking the name for herself, we’d not be able to use it. I laughed and told her that while what she did was dirty and underhanded, but we would keep our chosen name and she could just deal with it if she decided to go through with copying us.
Months later, my sister-in-law had a healthy baby boy and named him my grandfather’s name. We did not show up for the birth and when she called us wanting our congratulations, we told her we simply didn’t care. We said if she was still insisting we change our baby’s name, then she’d be in for disappointment because we were not.
Two months later, we were blessed with our son. He came out perfect and we named him just as we’d intended. My sister-in-law called us a few days after the birth to scream in our ears that we copied her son’s name. I pointed out she was the real copycat since she had no familial ties to the name and we did. Then my wife spoke and said after the attempted theft of her grandmother’s jewelry, she no longer considered her her sister.
We didn’t speak to her for months until she called us to bitterly tell us we’d won. She and her baby-daddy got in a huge fight and he left. He was apparently very sore she didn’t let him even give their son a middle name from his family. He said wanted his son named after him and not some guy he wasn’t even related to. She finally caved and got her son’s birth certificate reissued with a new name which cost around 500 dollars.
She then demanded we at least compensate her for the name change, plus another 100 dollars for the emotional damage as now she’s going to have to get used to calling her son by a different name. We laughed and said this would have never happened if she hadn’t stolen our baby name to begin with, and we didn’t owe her anything.”
Man-Child
“My brother-in-law is in his early thirties and still lives with his parents. From what my wife’s told me, they’ve spoiled him rotten his entire life.
He could burn water he’s that inept, eats nothing but junk food, is horrendously unhealthy, doesn’t have a job, and goes out to the Disney and Universal parks all day. He throws a tantrum any time he’s asked to do any kind of chores and is super creepy towards my kids. Given a history that’s not really mine to explain but you can guess, that’s grounds enough for me to not want him within a mile of my family.
We got married in 2015 and her parents invited themselves to our place on base housing to come see our new home. Of course, they brought their man-child son with them. That man-child had immediately stuffed his face with what little snack foods we had in the house and didn’t ask to my recollection. Not too long after, he started berating and bullying my 10-year-old son. A ‘grown’ man, bullying a barely double digit aged child by name calling.
I’m still new to the step parent/new husband role and didn’t want to overstep, so I let my wife start to handle it. She asked him to stop as it was upsetting our son. He did for a little bit, but went right back at it a few minutes later. Once again, my wife asked him to knock it off and that this behavior wouldn’t be tolerated in our home.
He started having another of his ungodly tantrums. As soon as ‘Well MOM says-‘ came out of his mouth, I put my foot down, both literally and figuratively. I do NOT tolerate any disrespect towards my wife. The entire house went silent when I spoke up,
‘Is this HER house? Is this YOURS? No? Then shut up when the people whose house you’re in tell you to knock something off!”
He just stood there looking like some flabby fish out of water with an open mouth gasping and wide eyed terror that someone had DARED to correct him. He then ran upstairs and cried to my in-laws about how I was aggressive and scary towards him and he didn’t feel welcome in this home.’ My father-in-law pulled my wife aside and demanded something be done about my behavior because that was no way for family to behave towards one another.
She told me all this and to this day I still don’t apologize for anything they deem as rude or unseemly because that one instance of their horrible behavior tells me they have no room to criticize anyone on parenting or general behavior.”
My Sister-In-Law Is A Thief
“I like to knit and crochet during the year and give the scarves and hats I make to my aunt’s church who organizes Christmas parties for low-income families. The parties are filled with games and activities for the children on top of quality gifts and food.
When my aunt talked about the church’s plan to still offer help during Christmas, I told her that I had a lot of scarves and hats at home to give. My aunt was delighted and asked me to bring them to her as soon as possible and I agreed. However, the day I wanted to bring them to her, I was called to come into the office to replace a colleague.
I asked my sister-in-law if she could pick up the bag with the scarves and hat that was sitting at the top of my stairs, not in my living room. I specified because I had some hats and scarves I made for family gifts in a drawer in my living room. Fast forward to that evening, I came home exhausted. I noticed my sister-in-law had come by and taken the bag.
‘Oh, great!’ I thought.
It reminded me I needed to wrap my family’s gifts I had made them.
However, when I came to get them, they were gone. I checked everywhere, thinking I had misplaced them. Then it hit me. Maybe I had put them with the bag by mistake. I immediately called my aunt, but she couldn’t find them. I then called my sister-in-law in a panic.
She picked up and told me she had seen the scarf and hat. Oh thank god, right? Nope! Turned out that my dear sister-in-law decided that I hadn’t given enough for charity, so she snooped around my house to find some more. She took four other scarves and hats that were for other people, my niece’s gift, and then decided to rearrange my drawers because they were not clean and organized.
I put my anger on the back burner because my niece’s gift was more important for now. When I asked her what happened to it, she responded that she had taken it and given it to her niece because her sister was in need. To say that I was offended and ticked is like saying fire burns.
I lost it. How dare she? She went through MY stuff, took MY belongings, gave away MY gift for MY niece and then had the gall to give me a lecture on how I should be happy that I helped a spoiled brat who has two parents making seven figures a year? I told her that if the scarf and hat weren’t in my possession by tomorrow night, I was going to sue. She scoffed and hung up. I called everyone in my family, especially my brother-in-law who’s a cop.
She ended up bringing me the scarf and hat back and apologised. She was in tears and begged me not to involve my cop of a brother-in-law. He had swung by her house and had threatened to have her arrested for thievery.
My niece got her gift, my aunt got the knitted stuff I made for her church, and my brother is now single. What a time!”
The Audacity
“My former sister-in-law is the most spoiled, rude, and entitled person I’ve ever come across. She and I were friends before I married her brother, but her parents constantly spoiling her and enabling her turned her into an unpleasant person to be around. Her mom and dad would pay all of her bills and continued doing so until she was in her 30s. A two-story condo in Los Angeles, bills, food, car, money for haircuts and nail appointments — you name it, they paid for it. They also hemorrhaged money for her to make super generic pop/alternative music and play make believe like she was a rock star.
I was also in LA about ten years ago when I was going to school and lived in an apartment complex. Some friends of my sister-in-law’s lived in the same complex and one night, she said she and her cousin were going over there to hang out and that she’d let me know what time. Cool! My husband was out of town, and I was looking forward to some company.
She never got back to me about hanging out. She and her cousin came to my apartment complex, hung out with the guys upstairs, and never responded to my texts asking her about it.
At 11:00, I decided to get in bed. At 11:30 or so, I got a text from her that she and her cousin were stuck in the parking garage. Her friends had gone to sleep and she needed me to come let her out. I laughed. She excluded me but expected me to get out of bed and let her out? I texted her no, I wasn’t coming down. She was ticked, but I went to sleep.
I woke up the next morning to her texting me that she wasn’t mad, but I should have come down and let her out because she and her cousin were stuck in the parking garage for thirty minutes. I told her I didn’t do anything wrong and that she should have invited me if she didn’t want to spend the evening stuck in someone else’s garage.
The audacity. I’m sure you can see why we’re no longer friends.”
Funeral Fight
“This whole fiasco started when my mother, her sister, and her brother met at my late grandmother’s house to discuss her funeral details. I wasn’t there for this, but I know exactly what went down. My entitled aunt showed up with her husband (my mothers brother) and her two grandchildren. While the three of them were trying to discuss personal and private things, my aunt was allowing the grandchildren to jump around the furniture. She then proceeded to prepare food in the kitchen without asking if it’s okay, raided through the cupboards, and was generally being obnoxious.
When she finally sat down with the grandkids, she turned around and points at a clock and asked her husband,
‘Do you think we can have that clock? I really like it!’
Not only was it not her place to say that, but it was also very immature. After that, they started talking about who was going to do readings at the funeral. My mother ask if me and my sister could do them as our grandmother had asked us to do her husbands so we thought it would be fitting. Her sister and brother both agreed. Out of the blue, my aunt asked to do one so my mother brushed it off and they carried on.
A few days later, it all blew up. My aunt (by marriage, let me remind you) desperate to do a reading basically caused a full blown argument between my mother and her brother. My uncle threatened to not even go to his own mothers funeral because his entitled wife couldn’t do a reading.
On the day of the funeral, none of that side of the family talked to us. Obviously, it got my sister really upset so me and her husband were both trying to calm her down. Not to mention my entitled aunt wore a light gray coat. Who wears a light gray coat to a funeral?
After we all go out to the carpark, she tried talking to me after ignoring me at first. I completely brushed her off and nearly got into an argument when she said,
‘I don’t know what lies your mother has been telling you, but it’s not all true.’
We never have to, nor will we see them again. If and when I do get married, they are NOT invited.”
Yard Of The Month
“Virtually every time my wife and I visit her parents, they are ranting about something a neighbor has done. From kids playing basketball in the cul-de-sac, to someone having a boat parked in their driveway, to someone not cutting their grass, there was always a complaint.
About a year ago, my wife and I were having dinner at her parents house and I made a compliment about how the yard looked nice. That sent her mom on a rant about how they’ve been living in the neighborhood for several years and have never been awarded ‘Yard of The Month.’ She then proceeded to say that her and her husband was at an HOA (homeowners association) meeting a few weeks ago and cornered the president saying,
‘We feel that we deserve yard of the month because we work really hard on our yard, have never received yard of the month, and our yard looks much better than other people who have received the award in the past.’
I was speechless that they would have the gall to demand being given yard of the month and then shameless enough to share the story with us. Fast forward to about a month ago, and they have decided to sell their home and move closer to us. Lucky me! They viewed several homes, put an offer in on two, and the offer was rejected both times. They went into the home buying process well aware that homes were selling in less than 24 hours, for 20-50 thousand dollars over the asking price, often with five to ten offers being considered.
After being denied on the second offer, the Mom threw a fit saying, ‘I don’t understand, why won’t they just accept our offer?’
I had no words, all I could do was stare blankly at them.
I’ve lost most of what little respect I had for them as I’ve gradually realized how entitled they think they are. My wife, while acknowledging that they have a warped sense of reality, thinks I’m over-reacting by being disappointed by their statements and finding it hard to relate to them.”
Disowned
“My aunt had decided to take her daughters and my grandmother on a two-week camping trip in France before the new school year started. It was something of a little treat after lockdown, my grandfather passing last year, and the restrictions to travel between Germany and France were lightened. All went well and everyone had a great time.
When they got back, my uncle (by marriage) told my aunt that he wanted a divorce so he could make his relationship with his much younger girlfriend official. I didn’t know how long the affair had been going on, nor any of the details, just that there was one.
Ever since, my cousins have been spending more time with their mother than their father and his parents, who had moved from Hamburg to be closer to them. That was a big deal, not just because they were aware of the affair, but that they’d been withdrawn from the family and family settings since before the lockdown. Moody and edgy, puberty and all that.
As a result, their paternal grandparents claimed the girls were no longer their grandchildren. It was something about them being ungrateful children for all that they’ve done (ie. moving across the country to be closer to them), and not being mature enough to treat everyone in the family equally despite the affair and divorce proceedings.
They are both 14, so they were acting accordingly for their age and showing favoritism to their mother. The situation was an uncomfortable one as my aunt and her family lived in the same building as the in-laws with a semi-shared backyard/garden where the grandmother liked to hang out and drink.
They claimed the girls would be their grandchildren again once they fixed their attitudes and their appearances. The girls are very into anime so they tend to mimic the fashion tastes and have ‘unorthodox’ piercings. They were demanding that two 14-year-old girls change who they are and how they express themselves in order to once again be part of their family.
The entitlement of their grandparents is unbelievable.”
Evil Parents
“First and foremost, I love my husband dearly. He truly is my soulmate. We have been married for 15 years and together for 17. I was diagnosed with PTSD at the tender age of 12 because of my traumatic early childhood and have only been with my my husband. Before I met him, I had given up on ever being comfortable with any kind of intimacy but my husband was so patient and caring with me.
We now have two beautiful kids, a boy and a girl. His parents live two hours away and I have only met them once. It’s been 12 years now since they have spoken to my husband. The last conversation they had, his mother told him she would pay off his debt and buy him a home if he left me and ‘my kids’ so he could be with his family where he belonged.
The point is, I worry about my husband. I worry that they could make him grow resentment towards me. I never intended to come between him and his family. Recently, his aunt reached out, begging us to meet her and his grandmother for lunch. We took the kids and it was so wonderful. My husband was so elated, and my kids were happy to finally meet some of dads family. They were so nice to me and the kids, and didnt understand what happened and why we disappeared.
My husband and I decided beforehand we wanted to make this meeting about healing, but didn’t want to bring up alot of the negative that had happened between him and his parents so on that subject, we dodged alot of details when pressed. His aunt informed us she was meeting his parents the next day, and out of respect she wouldn’t tell them where we lived but she would show them the pictures she took of us and the kids.
Two days later, his aunt called in tears telling us she was so sorry for how we have been treated, and that she would understand if we never wanted to see them. She said the ‘ball was in my husband’s court.’ I guess the things they said about us ‘horrified’ his aunt.
So now, my husband says he’s fine, but I can tell this hurts him. I just want to help him and take away his pain like he has done for me.”
Back Off!
“My husband and I recently announced our pregnancy to our parents. It was way earlier than what I’d have ideally wanted, but in the end, I was okay with it because my husband wanted it. Yesterday, we had our first ultrasound, and the reports came back normal, aside from a small internal bleeding issue.
We came home and told our parents every single detail about it aside from showing the actual picture. They were worried about the minor issue but we told them the doctor had prescribed certain medications and they had nothing to worry about. Later in the evening, my mother in law saw my file on our bed and proceeded to look and read without wasking. I asked her not to read it, but she continued anyway.
Straight out snatching the file from her hands seemed rude, so I couldn’t do anything. I told her no multiple times, but she continued to read, saying she was worried so she just wanted to read my sonography report. However, she kept reading beyond that. I didn’t know what to do so I froze in place. My husband piped up saying it wasn’t for her to read because it was someone else’s medical history.
She said, ‘That’s not just anyone’s, it’s my daughter-in-law’s file,’ and ignored him.
By that time, she was way beyond reading the report and went further into the history and would have continued had I not gently took it from her hands, saying I had had enough. She’s not even a doctor, so she would not be understanding anything new, other than what we’d truthfully told her.
She is now miffed that we said no when she would be here to take care of me during this time (we live with my in laws, as it is a custom in my culture). I’m not sure why she’s mad because ultimately, despite our protests, she got what she wanted.”
Don’t Hurt The Baby
“I was living with my boyfriend (fiance) and his mom at the time. I had been getting sick a lot so we all thought I might be pregnant. For my 18th birthday, I went and stayed at my mother’s house for a while and we went to see my grandma. My grandma offered me a Smirnoff and I accepted because I took a pregnancy test that morning that came back negative. We then headed to our local lake that I had been swimming in since I was a kid.
When I got done swimming, I noticed I had missed a few calls from my boyfriend. When I called him back, he was freaking out saying lake water was bad for pregnant women. I didn’t want to deal with that on my birthday so I hung up and called his mom. I thought he would listen to her because she used to be a nurse. To my surprise, she was ranting about the same thing and how I was going to hurt her ‘unborn grandchild.’ She said I was going to get an infection that would hurt me and the baby.
When I started crying, my mom and grandma came to my defense and told my boyfriend’s mom they both swam in that lake while pregnant and were fine.
After leaving the lake, I met up with my boyfriend at my Aunt’s house. Within ten minutes, his mom called him saying she was on her way and we both better have our stuff ready or I would not be welcomed back in her house because she was going to ‘protect her grandbaby at any cost.’ I shook my head no but my boyfriend immediately agreed with her without asking me about it.
My Aunt heard what happened and agreed with my boyfriend and his mom. I got so upset that I ran out of the house bawling my eyes out. When my boyfriend came after me, I screamed that we were through and he should take his ring back. Eventually, I calmed down and listened to his side of things. He said he didn’t want to start an argument over the phone and was going to decline once his mom got there.
He ended up doing and saying nothing when his mom arrived but I was in love with him, so I went home with them despite my hurt. I ended up not even being pregnant.”
