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Can I let my in-laws starve? If they deserve it? [1]

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Date: 2023-09-03

My in-laws are amazing people. They met when he just a few years out of the Air Force. A former aircraft mechanic, he was working at an autobody shop as a single father when he met her and quickly fell in love. A few years later, my wife was born. Now, many years later, my father-in-law is unable to work due to physical health and my mother-in-law is unable to work due to mental health. They think they'll miraculously fall into some money soon, but most likely, they'll both be destitute within the next few years and expect us to fully support them. What are our responsibilities to them? Currently, I have a very good income, rapidly paying off some substantial debts, and I am a few years away from being able to slow down at work and spend more time with my kids. I would rather not work as hard and any money we make go towards our children and ourselves than my in-laws. Am I being selfish?

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To fill in a few details, when they met, my father-in-law was in his mid-30s and my mother-in-law was his twelve or thirteen year-old babysitter. After getting kicked out of the Air Force with a Bad Conduct Discharge, he was working "under the table" in case there was a warrant out for his arrest, since he had kidnapped his son in a child custody disagreement on the west coast. Actually, he had tried to kidnap his daughter too, but he drove away when she ran back into the house to wake up her mother. Out of his first six children by three different women, that kidnapped son is the only one he was willing to have a relationship with. He also (kind of) has a relationship with his two most recent children, my now-wife and her brother.

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Well, continuing the story, my mother-in-law was a bit of a wild child. As I understand it, she wasn't exactly the best babysitter, since she would smoke marijuana with her ward, who was only a few years younger than her. She got pregnant within a month of her fifteenth birthday, and they found a rural southern judge who was willing to marry them before the baby came without parental consent. She had a second child, who later became my wife, a year later. Those first years were hard, and they barely made ends meet. She dropped out of high school as soon as she became old enough.

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Their first big break was insurance fraud. They burned down their trailer and got a big settlement check. By this time, the husband was making good money at the auto shop and had gotten his young wife an office job there. They supplemented their income by growing marijuana in the woods and embezzling from the auto shop. They bought a big piece of property way out in the woods and built a two-story barn on it. The plan was to build a giant underground house in the side of a hill and stay in the barn temporarily. However, they had to change employers several times, taking a big hit on income - maybe the embezzlement was discovered? I'm not sure... In any case, they never built the house and just lived in the barn. And by barn, I mean a building with framed walls but almost no sheetrock, no bathroom, and very little insulation. Depending on work, sometimes they earned a lot of money, but it was spent on recreational drugs. Other times, they begged money from their parents to make it through to the next month. They made some great friends during this time and were honored to attend a barbeque at a "former Grand Dragon's house." Was it really a "Grand Dragon?" I have no idea, since nothing they say is ever completely true... I don't think they ever joined the KKK and they did not maintain any of those friendships.

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Their next big break was getting access to his parents' bank accounts. After a sudden decline in his father's health, they began to help with day-to-day tasks. Naturally, my in-laws believed they were entitled to their inheritance early and emptied as many of the accounts as they could. My in-laws sold their barn and bought a big house in town and all-new furniture on credit. Unfortunately, it didn't last. There were no criminal charges, but there was a civil suit. My father-in-law's step-mother died of a heart attack while testifying against them. At the climax of her testimony, she became extremely angry, collapsed, and died soon afterwards. Naturally, my in-laws lost the case and their new home. He never saw his father again before he died, though he did burglarize his house. As far as I can tell, there is no remorse for the thefts or for indirectly causing his step-mother's death, only anger that they were "falsely" accused.

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Marriage problems got the better of them. After both dramatically threatening suicide and murder repeatedly, they divorced. The kids witnessed their parents begging for their lives while being threatened with shotguns, their cars shot up, and other fun drama. Naturally, my in-laws put the kids in the middle of the bitterly contested divorce, making them testify in court. Both children chose to live with their father. Normally, he was indifferent to them and let them do whatever they wanted. Fortunately, he rarely hit my wife or her brother, unlike their older half-brother, who was repeatedly beaten in front of them until he was unconcious. Living with their mother was worse, since she would alternate between kindness and emotional abuse and extreme rage at unpredictable intervals. Their mother never let them have any friends and rarely let them finish a full year of school without either changing schools or pulling them out to homeschool because of disagreements with teachers. However, the divorced period did not last long, since my in-laws reconciled and they moved back in together. Their relationship changed, though, and after this my father-in-law was never allowed to express an opinion contrary to his wife. He increasingly became a haunted shell of a man, following her around like a servant. His older son left home as soon as he was old enough.

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My future wife, however, did not want to live with them either, but she was not old enough move out. She managed to get accepted into an elite private school as a boarding student on a full-ride academic scholarship. She did not make many friends, but at least she was finally free of her parents, for a while... After a year, her parents moved near the school so that she could live "at home" with them. Fortunately for my mother-in-law, her mother ("Grandma") had saved money her whole life, received an inheritance, and was willing to cosign on some property loans. A cult leader had suddenly died and his entire compound, including multiple cabins, storage buildings, workshops, kitchens, and sacred temple were for sale rather cheap, so my in-laws started a boat rental and repair business on the property. My future wife spent the rest of her high school years living in one of the cabins on the compound separate from her parents but working for their business. Eventually, she went to college, supported by Grandma, where I met her and married her. Her brother worked for the family business for a few years before he got disgusted at the abuse and moved away also.

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For a while, the boat business grew rapidly and they made tens of thousands of dollars on some weeks. Unfortunately, they forgot to charge some of their customers and vastly overcharged others for fraudulent services, wrecking their reputations. They also angered their main competitor, who was the brother of one of the county commissioners. After approximately twenty civil suits for misappropriating property, trespassing, and various kinds of business fraud, my in-laws finally agreed to shutter the business.

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Things were tough now without very little income - just what they could make from renting out one or two of the little cabins on their compound. Their next business venture was bees, but they had no idea how to handle them and no interest in learning. After the bees flew away, they tried supporting themselves through selling the eggs of 20 chickens and the vegetables of a quarter-acre garden at a farmer's market. They had no interest in working very hard and a fox killed the chickens, so that did not work either. Their next business venture of making their own jewelry was also a failure. My father-in-law's social security paid some of the bills, and Grandma made almost all the mortgage payments on the property. After Grandma agreed to pay off the last of their mortgage on their compound, my in-laws set their next plan in motion and tricked Grandma into transferring her house into their names. They quickly evicted her and sold her home, making over $300,000 in profit. Grandma moved in with us. She refused to press charges, although she is bitterly angry.

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The money from the house theft has lasted a while. It has been supplemented by a medical malpractice settlement and trafficking marijuana from California to the southeastern U.S. I think they also took out fraudulent COVID PPP loans, but I am not sure.

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Now, the new business plan? They want to become cult leaders... After all, they live on a "sacred" property and some of the original cult members still live in the area and want to worship in the temple on their property. My mother-in-law thinks an appearance on "Ancient Aliens" might help get the cult new converts, but the show has not responded to her repeated requests yet... I don't think she believes any of the kooky religion, but she sounds like she does. Will their brilliant plans work? I'm not sure... Somebody else has the same idea about restarting the cult, though, and has talked about buying the property from them for triple its market value. My in-laws might sell.... If they do, all the money would go into drugs, cars, and stupid, and they would be destitute again.

So, what are our responsibilities to my in-laws if they become destitute and unable to work? Without our support, there isn't much of a government safety net. My wife is a compassionate, hard-working, wonderful person, but trauma leaves a mark. Sometimes she says we should eventually buy them a small place to live, maybe on our property and support them with groceries. Other times, she says "never."

[END]
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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/9/3/2191421/-Can-I-let-my-in-laws-starve-If-they-deserve-it

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