A man has asked whether he and his wife are wrong for imposing rules on his mother-in-law. Picture: Pavel Danilyuk/Pexels
Are we a**holes? This is the question a man has asked the internet following an altercation with his 60-year-old mother-in-law over her rights in their home.
The couple – we’ll name them Tom and Miranda – recently bought their first home and invited Miranda’s mother (let’s call her Doris) to live with them.
However, when Doris invited Miranda’s brother to stay with them for a few days, without their permission, drama ensued.
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But let’s take a few steps back and start from the beginning: Doris has been living with her sister for the past four years but was told that she needed to move out. Doris wanted to buy her own property but did not have enough money to cover all the costs, so Tom and Miranda offered her a room to rent in their home while she built up her savings to buy her own place.
The rent they would charge her was 50% of the average price of a studio apartment in their area, and the couple would secretly put 75% of that money aside each month until she was ready to buy a property. They would then surprise her with the cheque.
But Tom told Reddit users that the offer was made on the condition that Doris builds up her savings to buy a home, rebuilds her retirement savings, and generally got her finances in order. At the moment she is working two jobs and has no money in savings or for retirement.
“To that end, I would sit down with her while she was here and get a handle on her finances...I would build a budget tailored to her needs and goals and work with her each week to ensure progress was being made,” he says on the social media platform’s ‘Am I the A**hole’ subreddit.
On moving day, however, tension started when the couple arrived to move Doris as she has not packed, and all of her stuff was strewn across her floor. She told them that she needed to get rid of junk and only move the essentials. Miranda got upset and told her mother that she should have been packed or at least let them know that she was not ready to move.
Doris then informed the couple that she had bought a washer/dryer set that was sitting in her sister’s backyard and asked if she could store it on Tom and Miranda’s property. Miranda told her this was not possible and that she needed to rent storage space somewhere.
Anyway, Tom and Miranda helped Doris pack and about 10% of her things were moved that day. In the evening, they had a braai at their house, but unbeknown to them, Doris had invited her son – Miranda’s brother (and his dog), to stay with them at the house for a few days.
“We were never asked if this would be okay,” Tom states, adding that Miranda’s brother is a narcissist who bullied and psychologically abused her.
“[Miranda] is low/no-contact with [her brother] and [Doris] knows this already.”
He explains further that, a few months ago, the brother-in-law called him and Miranda "the ugliest and most evil people" he's ever known, among other vulgar names. This was because they would not allow him to move into their two-bedroom apartment. They both work from home and use the second room as their office.
Miranda’s brother, according to Tom, is also a “leech” and “has probably contributed to 50% of [Doris’] money problems”.
“At one point he convinced [her] to drain her entire retirement portfolio and used a large portion of it to pay off his car. Then they gambled away the rest...”
But back to the story; after finding out Doris’ plan for her son to stay with them, Miranda asked her to leave and yelled at her, saying it was unacceptable that she invited him over without asking them first. She told her that if she was going to do this then she could not live with them.
Doris sent a message to the couple the next day telling them she would no longer move in with them.
This encouraged Tom to ask for opinion on whether he and his wife were wrong for imposing household rules on his mother-in-law. He says Miranda is now feeling guilty and wondering whether she was should have behaved differently.
But Reddit does not seem to think so.
“She has no money, no house, and for some reason, a brand new washer-dryer set. She’s already a nightmare,” states Joe-Stapler.
Tough-Inspection342 agrees: “You dodged a bullet here. She would have been a complete nightmare.”
Other users congratulation Miranda on her “victory”.
Sunnydays0306 says: “Good on your wife for putting her foot down before this hot mess actually moved in to your house. I have a feeling it would’ve been a constant battle to get her to respect your boundaries and a few months from now your post would read ‘aita for kicking my MIL out of my house’.
“Trust me, once they get into your house it is so much harder to get them out. I would know, I have three in-laws who have been driving me insane for eight months already with no end in sight. Mistakes were made. I believed them when they said it would be ‘short term’ to ‘get back on their feet’. I don’t even think they have feet.”
Speaking generally on the issue of elderly parents living with their adult children – and not on this situation, Riette du Preez, a Johannesburg-based clinical psychologist with a special interest in elderly care, says communication between all family members, from grandchildren to grandparents, is key when living in such a multigenerational household. Household routines will be affected so these must be carefully considered.
“It may be helpful to compromise to meet everyone’s needs, even if it means taking turns. Roles and responsibilities can often become issues in co-habituating families. Deciding on the daily, practical running of the household and who will take charge of what is key. We often leave them to chance, causing frustration and conflict in relationships.”
Problematic relationships that already exist can also be amplified when parties live together.
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