Mother-in-law and money

MalMonroe

macman said:

If she has a income of £8k plus p.a. and only pays you £1K, then I suppose that you could take the long view that, unless she is spending it all, then your wife's inheritance is accumulating by an additional £7Kpa....
But £1K wouldn't have covered the costs ten or twenty years ago. Even if you are content for her to live rent-free, then your council tax and utility bills split 3 ways would cost more than that.
Does she contribute to food bills etc?

She won't have an income of £8k plus pa at all. I don't know where that rumour started. It'll be far less than £7k pa. And she'll have clothes and shoes to buy, birthday and Christmas gifts, toiletries etc. According to OP she doesn't contribute to food bills, no. IMO she'd be better off living alone because she'd be entitled to all the pension credits and housing benefits, etc. She'd be even wealthier then. 

elsien

No-one should be relying on MIL's 80K as an inheritance to make up for the low payments now.
We none of us know what life is going to throw at us. If MIL needs to go into care, that money won't last long at all. Or she may meet someone and decide to get married. Or various other scenarios.
It's not your wife's inheritance till MIL passes, the will is read and there's still something left to leave. 

MoneySeeker1

Wow! She is indeed taking the p*ss at £19 a week for food/extra on fuel bills/etc.

In your position - I'd only want what it cost in extra costs to have her there and no "rent" of itself. But £19 is in no way even going to cover her food - never mind what fuel and water she is using. Last I knew it was deemed the average person spends about £35 per week on food. Jack Monroe (the cheapie cookbook writer of VERY budget cookbooks) is probably about the only person in the country that could/would eat that cheaply. The rest of us certainly don't - and then there is that fuel/water/etc as well.

Difficult situation with your wife not on side on this. Your wife needs to remember that, just because she has been promised the inheritance, doesnt mean she'll get it. MIL could indeed be planning to leave it all to the equivalent of the local cats home unbeknownedst to her. Some people can be notorious for promising all sorts of inheritance to someone - to get what they want - and never meaning it for a minute and that can include own parents. Just think of the number of times we've read, for instance, of a middle-aged son or daughter working in their parents business/on their parents farm for peanuts wages because they've had this promise from their own parents that "You'll get everything after me". Come the time - and they don't get anything much at all - and they've slaved for peanuts on a promise that amounted to nothing - working all hours under the sun for less than NMW.

Maybe you ought to hand MIL your itemised bills from Tesco and the like for some weeks and say "there you go - you can see the weekly shop last week was £93 (for instance). Divide £93 by 3 and your one-third share comes to £31 for that week.

Same with the fuel bills. You could knock off any standing charge on them - as you'd have to pay that anyway - and say "That bill was £1,000 - deduct standing charge of £100 and that's £900 for fuel usage and so £300 each then".

That's the approach I'd take to MIL on the one hand - whilst showing your wife any tales you can find of adult children left in the lurch by underpaid wages/etc/etc on the promise of an inheritance - which they then never had.

Good luck.

JReacher1

Should really be down to your wife I would have thought. She must be aware of your financial situation and if she doesn’t want to charge more rent off her own mother then that seems the end of the matter. I don’t really know what else you can do? Would you throw your MIL out when your wife doesn’t want to charge her more either?

Personally my view on things like this is your MIL raised your wife till probably about age 18 without charging her rent. Now in her advance years your wife is returning the favour so I don’t think charging her £100 a week is really reasonable. 

lynneee

Perhaps you could write out a statement of affairs (SOA) so she can see how much it costs to run your household? It might be a good way to start a discussion, and open her eyes to how much everything costs. 

elsien

JReacher1 said:

Should really be down to your wife I would have thought. She must be aware of your financial situation and if she doesn’t want to charge more rent off her own mother then that seems the end of the matter. I don’t really know what else you can do? Would you throw your MIL out when your wife doesn’t want to charge her more either

Personally my view on things like this is your MIL raised your wife till probably about age 18 without charging her rent. Now in her advance years your wife is returning the favour so I don’t think charging her £100 a week is really reasonable. 

Completely different situations - of course MIL didn't charge her children rent. It's not like they chose to be born and to live with her, is it? She wasn't doing them a favour by not charging rent, she was being a parent and raising the children she chose to have with all the obligations that entails.  
Whereas MIL is a fully fledged adult with her own finances who has now, for whatever reason, chosen to live with family.  They've been subsidising her with varying degrees of willingness for 10 years. Now money is tight. Why would she not be asked contribute more? £19 a week is rather taking the proverbial.

Sea_Shell

I think you all need to sit down as a household, and really look at the real costs of running the house together, so everyone can see what the actual costs are now.   Then hopefully once all the figures are there in black and white (or highlighted in red!) you are able to get an agreement for an increase in keep, along with a schedule of review (every 6 months eg)

I also agree that as for the "inheritance" that's just words in the wind at the moment...could be gone (spent), could be left to someone else, and so on.   Do not rely on it coming your way.

So in the meantime, some of it needs to be paid into the household coffers.

JReacher1

elsien said:

JReacher1 said:

Should really be down to your wife I would have thought. She must be aware of your financial situation and if she doesn’t want to charge more rent off her own mother then that seems the end of the matter. I don’t really know what else you can do? Would you throw your MIL out when your wife doesn’t want to charge her more either

Personally my view on things like this is your MIL raised your wife till probably about age 18 without charging her rent. Now in her advance years your wife is returning the favour so I don’t think charging her £100 a week is really reasonable. 

Completely different situations - of course MIL didn't charge her children rent. It's not like they chose to be born and to live with her, is it? She wasn't doing them a favour by not charging rent, she was being a parent and raising the children she chose to have with all the obligations that entails.  
Whereas MIL is a fully fledged adult with her own finances who has now, for whatever reason, chosen to live with family.  They've been subsidising her with varying degrees of willingness for 10 years. Now money is tight. Why would she not be asked contribute more? £19 a week is rather taking the proverbial.

I don’t agree £19 a week is taking the proverbial. Compared to commercial rents it would be very low but this situation is not comparable to that.  Most bills in the house won’t be much higher because there is a third adult in the house so personally I think charging £100 a week would be taking the proverbial and allowing the OP to profit from his wife’s mother by taking a large chunk of her weekly state pension. 

I’ll go back to what I said before his wife doesn’t want to charge anymore so there isn’t much he can do. 

JamoLew

She should be at minimum paying her own way/share - £1000 pa is NOT enough for food on its own
Too many unknown variables - ages, income,remaining mortgage, other outgoings other family members
It's obvious that the arrangement was set-up when finances were rosy - now they aren't and you shouldn't be expected to subsidy someone who CAN afford to pay their own way/share
Honestly, if YOU can't afford to support your MiL, then maybe your wife needs to come out of retirement to help contribute

Marvel1

Your wife needs to get her head out the clouds and put the foot down and put her mother straight.