This is my mother-in-law's story. She is wonderful and I love her but she used to be petrified that she would do something and I would wind up hating her. Why? Because her husband's entire family hates her.

From what I'm told before I met my husband, his paternal grandfather had run up almost half a million in gambling debt. He was outwardly a nice man, community loved him and such but at home he was mean to his wife and just cared about his image. So my husband's father was PAYING this debt and supporting the grandparents. My husband's mother just couldn't do it anymore. They had 3 kids and couldn't support them, have a house on their own, AND pay for the house and farm the grandparents lived on. So a hard decision was made and the grandparents just had to move out. The farmhouse was in my in-law's name so they sold their house (gorgeous house, was really sad) and moved into the farmhouse in order to pay off the grandparent's gambling debt.

Well my father-in-law's siblings blamed all of it on my mother-in-law. Called her nasty names, threatened her, spread all these rumors about her through the community which fell on her kids, too. Small town, people talk, so on and so on. Made high school hard for my spouse and his siblings. They steal from the farm because they feel they're entitled. They're our crops. We raise them, pick them, sell to the community. They have no rights to them whatsoever. I was watching the farm for them while they were away and the sister was working and the paternal grandfather shows up. I'm nice to him while he wants to chit chat. The moment my mother-in-law is brought up he starts talking about "THAT woman" or "HER" I tell him if he plans on filling his truck up on apples he can go right home or I can call the cops right then. I grin. I'm on her side. These people steal, lie, sign my fath-in-law's name on leases for gas rights on their property and collect the money WHILE HE IS IN THE HOSPITAL BATTLING CANCER. How? My grandparent-in-laws are scum.