My inlaws have always been a pain in the ass. My wife's Puerto Rican and my mother in law hated the fact she married a white guy. They've offered to take the kids when I've deployed, only to say they need money afterwards to 'help them out'. They've lied to me before when we were all stationed in Korea by telling me my father in law was on his death bed. I pay to fly us all to Puerto Rico, almost $5,000 in total for the whole trip, only to get there and see my father in law outside cutting grass. All because my mother in law has some freakish obsession with my oldest, who is my step daughter that I started raising over 15 years ago when she was 4 but I treated her the exact same as my youngest knowing what it's like to be a step kid myself.
I mention this about my stepdaughter because of the actual story I wanted to tell. In 2014, my wife went into the hospital with a horrible blockage in her intestines. The initial surgery caused her to develop more scar tissue and create a need for a second surgery in 7 days. At this time, we weren't even speaking to her parents because of a train wreck relationship. Basically them lying, me falling for it being Mr. Goodguy, and them screwing me over in the end. Well they call my wife crying to come help. First off, I didn't need any help, I was doing great and had no issues taking care of them but they really wanted to see my wife since it sounded pretty serious. My wife calls me about it and I tell it's up to her since it's her parents but I don't need any help. They arrive and everything seems ok. Time goes on and finally my wife gets released from the hospital with a TPN line and stomach drain tube. This is where hell starts.
They confront my wife about taking my oldest daughter to Puerto Rico with them permanently. A little more story about my oldest is that we had to have her treated as an inpatient at a mental hospital for a lot of issues. They new that but didn't believe it even though 4 different psychologists came to the exact same diagnosis. My wife hasn't even been home but a week and can't hold down food, she has to get nourishment from a TPN line. Anyways, my wife came to me with it and I said a flat out No. They come back and make demands, I tell them they are going to leave my house within 2 days without my 17 year old daughter. If they take her, I'll press charges. So they leave but we find out more about what was happening while they were 'helping'. They were working my mentally unstable daughter since week one while my wife was in the hospital. They continued to work her via instant messenger behind my back after I threw them out. And finally after her 18th birthday, she disappeared from the high school where she met my mother in law who took her to PR. The kicker is I told my daughter that if she wanted to go after her 18th birthday that she could go and I'd fly her there but it'd be a 1 way ticket into adulthood. Things even sounded great before this, my daughter wanted me to adopt her formally so she'd take my last name but I too forgot about the manipulative lying part the psychologist talked about.
I still talk to my daughter and love her obviously but my inlaws are dead to me and my wife. She lost a pretty good sized trust fund from my family because of how it went down and because we know my inlaws would just con her out of the money. So while others talk about them conning money, they ultimately took something even harsher. My oldest kiddo