'AITA for telling my FIL they won't ever be living with us?'
"AITA for telling my FIL they won't ever be living with us?"
Prior to my wife and I trying for our first, we spoke with both sets of parents and said would they have any interest in helping with watching their grandkids until preschool starts?
Both were over the moon excited, all 4 fully retired, and they all said absolutely! The plan was to trade off weeks so they know their schedule for booking their own appointments, etc.
Wife gets pregnant and around 10 weeks post-birth she's getting ready to transition back to work and her parents said they've changed their minds and decided to travel more and want to enjoy their elder years.
Ummm, ok.
My parents did their absolute best to pick up in-laws slack but daily childcare was too much with my wife and I working full time so we ended up with my parents watching on Mondays and Wednesdays, paying for child care on Tuesdays and Thursdays and my wife and I working half days on Fridays to handle that.
With my parents taking the Friday whenever we needed them too. They're incredible! It was very frustrating to have in-laws say one thing and do the opposite. In 6 years, they've never once watched any of our kids for a single day.
So my wife and I bought a house about a week ago. They're over checking it out as we're unboxing and my FIL sees this house has a 1st fl Master with full bath. He turns to MIL and says "oh thank God, we wont have to do stairs." I said "come again?"
MIL says of my wife and her two siblings, we are doing by far the best and it would make the most sense for them to live with us, as they're in their 70s and a house is becoming too much for them already.
I audibly laughed hard and loud and said "Hell would freeze before you live here." Which was met by shock from both of them. I explained that when we needed their help, they turned their backs so we were simply doing the same.
My wife agreed. She expressed how expensive it was and how difficult it was with zero help from one side of our "village". That was their call but we were now returning the favor.
They're incredibly upset and hurt over this revelation. Were we TA for this stance? I don't think so at all but if the votes are a bloodbath I'll reconsider as we have the space.
Here’s what people had to say to OP:
The best part is that you and your wife are on the same page.
NTA at all!!!
NTA. The sheer audacity of not just assuming they could move in but they get the main bedroom with a full bath. If they can’t/ don’t want to deal with a full house, they can buy a condo or something. There are a lot of 55+ communities popping up everywhere.
NTA. All these folks saying you should not laugh are missing the part where they walked in your house, talked between themselves about the appropriateness of your master bedroom for themselves WITHOUT EVER DISCUSSING IT WITH YOU OR YOUR SPOUSE. The audacity.
Any time they try to bring it up again, you just need to say “the audacity you two have trying to claim a room in a home you didn’t pay one cent toward and didn’t even have a conversation with us about before we purchased it. The freaking audacity of you two.” You both did good calling out these entitled goobers.
Childcare is expensive, sometimes an actual mortgage payment, and your parents minding your child perhaps saved you money that you could then put into your home. It is audacious of your wife’s parents to want to move into a home that they could have helped make possible sooner. The laugh was deserved.
I mean, they're lucky he didn't say it was reserved for his parents just to be spiteful. Some people.
NTA and forget being “nicer”. They don’t owe you help, and you don’t owe them a retirement home. Also a bigger deal than daily childcare is not watching the kids a single time in 6 years?!?! What kind of grandparents aren’t involved at all???
"MIL says of my wife and her two siblings, we are doing by far the best and it would make the most sense for them to live with us, as they're in their 70s and a house is becoming too much for them already."
How nice for them that they have the option of shopping around for the wealthiest kid to impose themselves upon!
NTA.
NTA Only thing I would have done differently was agreed “oh yea the space will be perfect for the two of you” & once they sold their home and were on the way “well you know with the kids getting older, we’ve decided it’s just not gonna work; sorry”.
My mom and dad helped a lot with my kids when they were little. They also came to ball games, school events, etc. A few yrs ago my moms health took a nose dive and my boys and I moved in to help with doctors appointments and managing a new form of chaos.
Unfortunately it was my Dad that surprised us and passed in his sleep (unfortunate it was so sudden, not that it was him vs my mom). Leaving my medically fragile mom heartbroken. My boys and I have stayed and I manage her meds, do all her driving, run her errands, etc. I have no qualms about it. She was there for my kids and I without question. We will be there for her.
My response would have been along the lines of the only reason that you and your wife are doing better than her siblings is because you actually had your family stepping up to make it possible. NTA, this is a hill to die on.