A Fatal Error
My mother-in-law is prejudiced, obsessively Christian (read: in a cult) and, to be honest, an utter witch. She threatened to ruin my wedding, tried to have everything changed, and after we canceled our wedding, she tried telling people my fiancée (now wife) and I broke up. It’s been a year, and although we’ve tried to handle her, she’s getting worse. My wife and I eventually got married by going down to the courthouse to get it done as quickly as possible.
We didn’t mention it to my mother-in-law, but agreed that we’d have a ceremony at some point down the line. Things are going well, we keep it from her that we got married (kept our rings off around her) and it seems like we’re somewhat at peace. She’s still preaching about how us being together is wrong, and she still attends church. We keep the peace so we have access to my wife’s minor brothers, who are nine and 12. One day, the mother-in-law is over at our house to watch our son for us. We get home, and we made a fatal error. We’ve forgotten to take our rings off, and she sees.
She freaks out, but eventually calms down. We plan to get together at her house to talk about it, since she is hurt. Understandably, but we were worried about her reaction in the first place. So we go to her house. We had to bring our son with us since we couldn’t find a babysitter, but that was fine since my wife’s brothers got along well with him. We sit down with my father-in-law first, and we make small talk. The mother-in-law’s gone out to grocery shop, she’d be back soon. We were hoping she’d hurry up.
At some point, my father-in-law tells us that she’s late. That’s fine, we say, we can reorganize this meeting for another time. We go to grab our son and leave…but we can’t find him. Or my wife’s brothers. We panic; we get frantic. My father-in-law just sits there. We call the authorities, tell them we can’t find the boys, and they come over and help us try to find them. They search the neighborhood, and after asking my father-in-law again and again why he isn’t doing anything, he tells them the truth at last.
He confesses that my mother-in-law has the boys. It took the officers the rest of the night to find them, and both in-laws ended up being detained. To make a long story short, my father-in-law was released, mother-in-law was not, and she has a court date coming up soon. A CPS case was opened, and my wife’s brothers were temporarily placed with my wife’s aunt, who isn’t bonkers.
We’re not allowed to go into specifics, but due to some serious things found in my mother-in-law’s phone and in her house, it doesn’t look like she’s going to get away with it. I’ve been doing my best to comfort my wife since then, and all three of us (us and our son) have gotten into therapy. We’re doing well, and I’m happy to report that I don’t think we’ll have to deal with that woman again. Story credit: Reddit / Delicious-Drop