OH's mum keeps buying us stuff!

Jojo_the_Tightfisted

Oh well.

I remember sitting on the floor in my first flat two weeks before I gave birth to my eldest.

I sat on the floor because I didn't have any chairs.

I had a cooker that was bought secondhand for £20. I had a fridge that was salvaged out of a skip. The fridge was empty.

I had a rug in one room.

I had a sleeping bag and pillow.

I had a Moses basket, babygros, a blanket, nappies and a pushchair that I had bought with my last pay packet, a five week old abandoned kitten that I had felt sorry for and three tins of kitten food.


I had no idea when I was going to get to eat again and was only warm because the block had a centralised heating system.


Now, I don't really think that, if you had been in the same situation, you would have been saying 'isn't it great that nobody interferes with how I live my life'.

Steel_2

Now, I don't really think that, if you had been in the same situation, you would have been saying 'isn't it great that nobody interferes with how I live my life'.

Obviously. But she's not in that situation is she? Her situation is different. And they want that pleasure of jointly choosing their own stuff, which they have the right to do. It's a rite of passage that the mother is interfering with. S-mother love.

My father was like the OP's OH's mother to start with but it got worse, to the point he could not be allowed to have a spare key to mine or my sister's house because he would turn up with stuff he had bought without telling us and rearrange our houses while we were at work. He certainly didn't like my taste and dressed it up as 'helping'. Any attempts I made to stop him resulted in me being called 'an ungrateful !!!!!' and being told that if I were him (not 'like him', he actually said 'if I were him'. I think they call that a Freudian slip) I would be happier and I should stop being so obstructive. In his case it was controlling.

It gets to the point where you life is not your own and it leads to friction over other things in the future, like kids and finances. If you don't dance to their tune you are reminded of all their 'help'.

OP - is the stuff currently at yours or is she storing it at hers? And is your OH's mother controlling or do you think this is just over-excitement? Did you have any say in the colours of the paint and the wallpaper she went out and bought or did she decide how she wanted your house decorated?

I'm afraid I would be very wary about taking that deposit money from her.

ViolaLass

Steel wrote: »

I'm afraid I would be very wary about taking that deposit money from her.

It belongs to her OH, not his mother, and he has every right to it.

Steel_2

ViolaLass wrote: »

It belongs to her OH, not his mother, and he has every right to it.

Nowhere in my post did I say the deposit belonged to the OP.?

And her OH doesn't have "a right to it"

You don't have rights to other people's money. Children don't have a right to their parent's money.

If the OP and her OH are setting up home together big financial decisions need to be jointly made, especially if the OP's name is going on the mortgage and eventually deeds.

She has a say.

Molly41

Nimeth wrote: »

If she wants to buy you things, that should be reserved for Christmas and birthdays only and YOU should pick something out and show it to her so that you're getting what you want and she can occasionally indulge and buy you something.

You make it sound that you are doing your MIL a favour by allowing her to buy you somethings. No choice for MIL in the matter, no thought, no pleasure. How ungrateful :eek::eek::eek:

I agree with you Jojo. I have also been in the position of "beggars cant be choosers". I was so grateful for the bits people passed onto me when I had my first flat and first baby. Nothing was new. Now I still have those things because they remind me of times when I struggled and they are still perfectly serviceable. I accept that it's difficult to tell your mother in law that you dont need the things but do it kindly. It sounds like she is trying to make amends x

Steel_2

Molly41 wrote: »

I agree with you Jojo. I have also been in the position of "beggars cant be choosers". I was so grateful for the bits people passed onto me when I had my first flat and first baby.

But did they ask you whether you wanted the stuff first? Or did they push it on you whether you wanted it or not?

That is essentially the issue.

You had the choice of whether to accept someone's kind offers or not. OP and OH do not have that choice and as the stuff is brand new, not secondhand, the sense of obligation is mounting.

sandraroffey

my ex mother in law did something similar. didnt lend us a deposit butwas continually turning up with stuff. when the kids went to see her, she lived in the next road, they always came back with something that was complete junk. at one point, things were so bad that she was telling everyone who would listen, that she ran our lives!!!!! my husband wouldnt say anything to her, in case it caused problems (and with her, it would have!!).

we just hung in there really, gratefully accepting whatever she cared to get us. sometimes ,things were really useful, like a fridge because she worked where they were made and it really cheap. and we didnt have the money to buy things ourselves.

she didnt mean to interfer im sure, it was just her way and it was always because she wanted to help.

it was her way of showing she loved us all. her way was that if you loved someone and wanted to help, you bought them something.

that old saying of dont look a gift horse in the mouth springs to mind.........

ViolaLass

Steel wrote: »

Nowhere in my post did I say the deposit belonged to the OP.?

And her OH doesn't have "a right to it"

You don't have rights to other people's money. Children don't have a right to their parent's money.

If the OP and her OH are setting up home together big financial decisions need to be jointly made, especially if the OP's name is going on the mortgage and eventually deeds.

She has a say.

As I understand it, it was inheritance to him from his grandparents so the mother has simply passed on money that was legally left to him. In that sense, I hold that he has a right to it.

paddy's_mum

The rock bottom facts of this tale are nothing to do with gratitude or kindness, obligation or generosity.

The M-i-L is choosing, compelling, dictating, insisting and indeed FORCING two adults to do whatever she decides they will do, even going so far as to 'gift' them her choice of paint and wallpaper. She has pretended, or chosen, not to hear their polite (and because of the only recently healed estrangement) gently worded objections.

She has trampled, completely and utterly, on their natural desire to run their own lives and home as they see fit. She is behaving as dictators through the ages have done. How long does she have to keep on being so determinedly deaf and blinkered before she brings about a permanent estrangement.

It is true that beggars can't be choosers but that is not the case here, is it? OP and her fiance are not in need and shouldn't be forced by their own kindliness into having every aspect of their lives dictated to them by a mother in law who is absolutely determined that things are going to be done her way. In short, she is a TYRANT! End of .... no?!

grey_lady

It does seem to me that it might take the enjoyment out of choosing your own stuff when setting up home together if someone else has already chosen everything for you. If someone wanted to help in this way then why not give them money or a gift voucher? Or ask if there was anything they could get? Rather than force things on them that they don't want.