Background – my MIL (63 yo) has been living with us for around 9 months, due to previously living alone, but subsequently getting herself into a lot of debt due to not working & thus being unable to pay rent/bills. We offered her a room, on a short term basis, in an effort to give her a slight reprieve on her financial commitments, allowing her to focus on replaying her debts and getting back to a more stable financial position.
The first red flag should have been us finding out that she had quit her job the week before moving in, so currently had no income…
Before moving in it was agreed that she would pay £100 p/w to live with us, which is significantly less than she was paying and helped us to pay towards food/bills. Also, it was made clear to MIL that she needed to apply to go on the housing register, as living with us is only a temporary solution. She assured this was done. For the first 12 weeks, we received no payments due to her not having a job. She was offered a permanent position in care work. She turned this down to work for an agency care company, which meant she got no sick pay, holiday etc.
Fast forward 1.5 months. Husband and I find out we’re pregnant. MIL lives in our spare room. Husband tells the MIL that we are expecting. She makes a comment to DH that we’re ’going to be kicking her out then’.
1 month down the road & MIL is made redundant from the agency. She is unemployed again.
For the last 8 weeks, MIL has worked two 4-hr shifts (totalling £120 paid). She shows no willingness to look for more work. We also find out that she has not applied to the housing register. We have told her that she needs to be out by Dec to allow us time to sort the room/have space for clothes/baby things. She has no savings & still has alot of outstanding debt due to not having worked properly for the last 6 months. She has nowhere to go & no sign/willingness to sort anything.
What do we do?! I am scared she’ll say that she has nowhere to go, so we’ll be the ‘bad ones’ making her homeless & we’ll be manipulated into letting her stay.
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Give her a very specific deadline in writing of when she needs to be out. Start the eviction process if needed. She will continue to stay if she is allowed
In your previous post, which you deleted, you said that you and husband had told her she needs to be out by December. Make it very clear to her that November 30 is a hard deadline. She will not be staying beyond that. You have given her plenty of notice to make a plan and you will not be deviating from that, even if it means she has nowhere to go.
Then, you need to tell your husband that either she leaves by the deadline or you will move out until she’s gone because you are NOT having her in your space with a new baby. Do you have parents or family you could move in with if your husband decides to prioritize his mommy over you? You should definitely make a plan in case that happens. You should also make it clear to him that there will be no finacial help for MIL to leave. She’s had 9 months to save money and it didn’t seem to be a priority for her, so now she’s no longer a priority for either of you.
Give her a formal, written 30-day notice to vacate. Her poor life choices are not your emergency, especially with a baby on the way. Protect your peace and your immediate family.
She has already manipulated you. She planned this out so she would stay forever. Oops, I have no money.
Nowhere in the UK will get her into social housing in 2 months.
She’s in the uk, send her to the council! She can be put on their list and she can bid on houses and bungalows, she’ll be eligible for benefits until her pension kicks in. There’s no excuses.
She is not planning to leave. There need to be consequences for her actions. I don’t want to suggest anything cruel, but what is she doing all day? Can you limit those activities when she isn’t working? Like, move the TV out of the living room if she isn’t working, and so on. Show her you are serious. Sorry, you are having to deal with this, OP.
Share your concerns with your husband (fears that she won’t apply for other housing/find a place to stay until the social housing is open/manipulate his and your emotions to allow her to stay), and tell him that you and he are not responsible for his mother’s poor life choices, but you are responsible for providing for the life you’re bringing into the world, so you need him to set a hard deadline for to leave, and if he does not do that or fails to have her gone by that date, you will be moving out until she’s gone, because you’re not going to have her in your space for the entirety of your pregnancy/postpartum. Then, make those plans, so that if he fails you and your baby, you’re off to your mom, sister, best friend, whoever…
Set the hard move-out date. IMO and considering the time she’s squandered already, December seems far too generous. I’d tell her that Oct. 31 will be her last day living under your roof. If she has to live in a shelter for a while because of failing to apply for social housing, well, those are the consequences for her lack of action. Those places all have waiting lists, and she should have applied day one.
Stop making things so comfortable for her. I’m assuming she’s staying in baby’s room? Move her to the couch or a cot on the living room floor. You need that room cleaned out and to be getting filled with baby accouterments.
This should be your husband’s job since it’s his mother, but one way or the other, she needs to have expectations: This week, she must apply for more jobs, no argument. Next week, she must begin sorting or packing her belongings. So on and so forth, but by having no expectations of her, she’s free to do nothing because she expects you to take care of her. If she’s using your wifi/streaming services, change the passwords and don’t log her in. Again, you don’t have to be rude to her, but there are a myriad of ways to make someone uncomfortable when they’re invading your space.
>I am scared she’ll say that she has nowhere to go, so we’ll be the ‘bad ones’ making her homeless & we’ll be manipulated into letting her stay.
Your fears aren’t groundless because this is almost certainly exactly what she will say but at the same time if you and DH allow yourselves to be manipulated into letting her stay then that’s 100% on you.
Either you’re prepared to take the hard line here or you’re not. If you’re prepared to take the hard line you have to accept that you will indeed be seen as the bad guys in MILs eyes and possibly the eyes of some third parties and be prepared to own that.
OTOH if you’re not prepared to take the hard line then you have to accept that MIL will keep living with you and you will need to learn to make the best of a bad bargain.
Not ideal, but I would pay her rent for a couple of months if that means getting her out of my house. I would do anything and everything to get her out.
Yes, tell your husband that if his mooching mummy isn’t out by Nov. 30, 2025, you will think about letting him know the new address where you and your LO will be staying until she actually DOES get her smothering ass out of YOUR home. And that you may or may not let him visit you at that new address. And then make plans to stay elsewhere (family, friends, AirBnB) until Moochy the Cow leaves completely, as in, no calling and saying “oops, forgot my toothbrush, curling iron, Depends, etc., and need to stop by really quick to pick that up” (but really she wants to slither her way into your house to babyhog while you are supposed to wait on her instead of recover during your PP). If he won’t do it, I’d go one step further and start moving/packing some of yours and baby’s things and storing them at a friend or family member’s house (if that’s where you’d be staying), so you can have everything you think you’ll need until he understands you’re serious.
Kick her out, she can phone the emergency housing line, the council will find her a temporary place in a hotel or something, then a long term place.
She is an adult, she is more than capable of being independent unless she has some unknown health issues. Even so, it still isn’t your problem to deal with as social services provide support in the community.
Husband needs to make the final call and see it through. You could even phone the emergency phone line yourself.
No parent should burden their children financially, its also not your job to keep her afloat.
She knows you have no backbone. She’s stayin. That was the plan all along.
if she has no savings or any sign of a job she needs to sign on for universal credit and housing immediately.
Others have good advice. I’d like to add that one of you you should take a day off, invite her for a ride, and physically march her into the housing register’s office and make her apply right then and there. If she refuses, make sure to loudly ask why she seems to be planning to stay forever in front of the staff. If she says she has, tell her to ask for an update while you’re there.
I’m not big on public pressure but if she’s lying and plotting to make you look like the bad guy, you shouldn’t just let her, make it harder for her to continue.
In the UK should would get Universal Credit to cover Rent and Unemployment so why can’t she get a Council Flat like millions of people do everyday????
She’s an adult. She didn’t take the help she was given therefore if she ends up homeless that’s her problem. You guys need to give her an eviction notice.
I would move.
As you are from the UK, you can serve your MIL an official eviction notice, which she can then take to the council. They will provide her with emergency accommodation, and if she has health conditions or is vulnerable, she will receive priority for permanent housing. Also, is she receiving Universal Credit or other benefits, which she could contribute to you to help cover her expenses and bills? There is plenty of help and assistance available for her, but you and husband need to give her a reality check and a big pus so she can take the initiative to seek it. In some cities there are also HMO temporary accommodations for anyone who is on UC or other benefits, fully furnished shared housing, the rent is covered by the council and she can work up to 10 hours a week.
Go and sign her for housing yourself! Yes it’s a pain but at least you know it’s been done. Any government stipends she(you can apply for her) apply for? Then start gathering boxes and start packing up her unused items. Unfortunately you and your SO will have to be the adults in this situation and force her hand. Keep pushing for a Dec. 1 move out date every chance you get. Make a giant calendar and hang it in a public spot in your home the mark move out date on it, then cross off each day so she can see the visual reminder she’s got to go!
Give this spiteful woman an eviction notice and then block her. You don’t need a grandma like that around your kid. If hubby wants to keep contact with her he can but you do not need to. But her being homeless isn’t your problem or fault.
Are there no other relatives whose turn it is to house this 60-year-old toddler?
Make sure she knows that if she doesn’t get her act together, she will be living on the streets come December. She doesn’t believe you will do that, has always thought you were good for a free ride, but now you have to convince her that you are deadly serious.
Change the locks and pack her stuff up. In the UK she’s a house guest and can be booted out. Book her into a B&B for three days and move her stuff into it. Give her leaflets on what to do and then just say you are away for a week. It’s down to her to get her shit together. She’s been given plenty on notice and warning.
Tell her it’s time to go. It’s obvious she is playing at being the victim instead of working for independence. Also, playing your husband and his feelings so she won’t be asked to leave but stick to it. It’s a her problem, not y’all’s. Congratulations on the baby and get that room ready!
Purchase a tent and a prepaid phone for her to use. Maybe that’ll get her moving. My BFF did that to her MIL. She found a place pretty quickly after that.
Make it clear: she is not staying, because I think you’re right, she’s trying to manipulate this into being permanent. So basically she has two options: she has a hard deadline to have something sorted out (say a plan needs to be in place by November 10 at the latest even if she can’t move till December 1) , at which point in time either she will be leaving willing or you will be removing her and taking her belongings to whoever you can logically leave them (another family members? Someone with a shed they don’t mind you using?) So she can take advantage of the extra time and her open schedule to figure something, anything, out (couch surfing? Rent a bedroom fur cheap? Women’s shelter? Low income housing?) and you’ll help (if that’s true) but she needs to acknowledge that she’s not in a position to turn anything down at this point so if you’re going to the trouble of helping, whatever is available doesn’t have to be forever, but she will have to accept it. The alternative is, the day her time is up, her stuff will be packed and the locks will be changed. You don’t want it to end that way but you did not agree to her permanently living with you and you’ve offered to help, beyond that, it’s up to her. And yes she probably will cry and freak out and say you’re throwing her onto the streets but the options here are pretty obviously, she lives with you for the next 3 decades or you will help to firmly help her out your door so instead remember that this is the choice she’s made, not you doing something to her
Contact the housing register with her. Make sure that they know & that she knows Dec 1 is eviction day. You & hubby are going to have to go scorched earth to get her out. Prepare yourselves mentally. Take charge & be a bitch if you have to or you will never get her out. I had to have my BIL’s car towed to the fleabag motel where I gotten him a room to get him out of my house. Be that Badass Bitch! It may save your marriage
Evict her. Don’t wait until December!
Give her the notice in writing and tell her to be out by 1st December. She will have to sort something in the meantime: don’t let her emotionally manipulate into letting her stay … not your monkey, not your circus
She’s not making efforts to move out because she thinks you’ll be upset to be portrayed as ‘the bad ones’.
Anyone who calls you ‘the bad ones’ should be thanked for offering, and told you’ll drop her and her things off at 6pm.
Your baby matters more than your MIL and as you get closer to your due date and want to nest you’ll be far more comfortable telling her to leave.
Your husband needs to sit her down and walk her through applying for universal credit and getting on the housing list.
Since she’s living with you and not, say, a landlord, you would need to provide a letter stating that you are no longer able to house her. You’ll need to put a date on her moving out or the council won’t help. On the morning of the day she becomes homeless, she will need to present with her essentials and the letter. They have a duty to prevent homelessness and should step in 42 days before, but very often they won’t and you’ll have to drop her off at their offices and force their hand.
Congratulations on your pregnancy!
this is almost exactly what i went through. turns out she assumed she could stay indefinitely. we told her that we wanted to use her room to be the baby’s nursery and asked that she find a place before baby arrives (i would give a hard date if i were u). i ended up having baby 6 weeks early, almost dying, stayed in hospital for 2 weeks without seeing baby due to complications. she did move out while i was in maternity ward, but did called her other son crying that everyone hates her and no one wants to take care of her, blah blah, blah. good luck lol
Send MIL a certified letter, return receipt required. In the letter, tell her that she has until 30 November to vacate the premises. If she doesn’t leave by then, evict her.
Who cares if she paints you as the bad guys? She’s squatting in your home. Anyone who has anything to say about it can house her.
Go ahead and start the formal eviction process. It can take a while and you don’t want to be dealing with this when baby arrives
Baby could come early- tell MIL that she has to be out by October 31. Make her eviction feel imminent. She can SAY she has nowhere to go, but it sounds like your country does have mechanisms for the unemployed and unhoused. Fill out the paperwork for her. Bring in boxes to go into the room she is mooching so that packing can commence next week.
If MIL grouses to anyone and they criticize you, tell them “Thanks for giving her a place to stay. You can take her home with you today.”
Don’t tell her to leave; notify her in writing that as of X date (the legal minimum requirement for eviction in your locality) she is to be out of your house. Make it cold and impersonal. Your impending child takes priority over her refusal to work, and if she ends up homeless because you need space for your kid, she only has herself to blame. Look up the exact process for an eviction in your area and follow it to the letter. No cutting corners.
You evict her legally. Give her something in writing advising she is being evicted and her last date will be [date] and do not engage her in any argument about it.
Would you consider moving yourself? Tell her the lease is being terminated and find a new place to move to?
Never. Ever. Ever. allow other adults to move in with you. Ever. My hills to die on
Before you kick her out or make any moves to remove her. Make sure she doesn’t qualify as Elderly because the last thing you want her to do is call Social services (I think thats who you call.) to claim Elder abuse!
you are almost certainly going to have to put your foot down and she is almost certainly going to demonize you for it. i strongly believe there’s a right and wrong way to evict someone/tell them they have to leave – but someone behaving like her has no grounds to accuse you of ruining her life. her decisions were clearly deliberate, which is something you need to keep in mind at every stage here. eventually, you’re going to tell her that.
you and your husband need to sit her down and tell her she needs to leave by the end of november and you are no longer asking her to get her act together. instead, you’re telling her when you expect her to move out and she is responsible for doing everything she needs to do by then. expect tears and misery, some of which is sincere because she’s in a bad situation. however, this is where you and your husband remind her that deliberate inaction was her choice and you are no longer able to host her.
if you are interested in helping her, all of the support has to require her to make the followup moves. so if you drive her to view an apartment, she talks to the owner and she gets zero reminders to follow up if she wants the place. give her the numbers for rental support stuff, don’t call them for her. the only exception i can think of is hiring movers. if you’re willing to pay to help her move, book everything because otherwise she’ll conveniently screw it up. you can also hire a packing service, which will prevent her from refusing to pack.
She never had any intention of leaving once moved in. This was her plan from day 1. Her arguments will now be a baby doesn’t need a whole room and she can babysit and save you so much money, that you should be grateful for the help.
She is going to say she has no where to go. She may, in fact, have no where to go due to lack of looking, trying, and employment. She is going to make you the bad guys to anyone who will listen. She is going to cry, scream, and take zero accountability for having not been on the housing register and for not worrying about employment. Upon being offered your home as a temporary solution, MIL immediately saw that she might be able to get away with never having to adult again (after all, who would kick out their poor, destitute, unemployed mother?), and ran like the wind with it.
She will keep running with it for as long as ya’ll let her.
You will need to find the most legal, official eviction process to follow and follow it to the letter. Make sure that you do not change or budge on your date based on her employment, tears, or sudden helpfulness. Especially the employment. If her leaving is conditional on her being employed, because your husband cannot bring himself to evict her while she is unemployed, she has already shown that she will stay unemployed to avoid having to pay bills.
She needs to move out by 8 months pregnant. You officially serve her with eviction as far ahead as necessary to make that happen. You can provide her with links and even make one (ONE) appointment with a social service to help her sign up for whatever aid she needs. I would, in the meantime, cut any luxuries she might be enjoying with all her free time, like putting a password on the TV.
Is there any chance she’s in the early stages of dementia? That would explain her inability to pull herself together to do stuff.
OP, you’re making her too comfortable. Stop it now.
If she has no job, she can’t afford anything. Give her shelter, a block of soap and 3 meals a day. Change your passwords and lock everything down.
Don’t ever give her an inch again.
This is your husband’s issue to handle. You tell him flat out- MIL needs to be gone in 30 days or I’m moving out and you won’t ever live with me/baby again.
He needs to grow a pair.
Off to the women’s shelter she goes then. Tell her, calmly. She’s conning you both.
Do you own your home, or rent? If you rent, YOU guys move out.
Give her a deadline in writing and be prepared to follow through with an eviction or you move out without her. Either way, she’s going to cry about not having a place but she’s chosen to not look or get a job.
Tell your husband that it is either you or her. Do you have family you could move to temporarily?
I’d say MIL planned all the way along that the move would be a permanent one and she created the financial situation to manipulate so you wouldn’t kick her out.
I’d start going into the spare room moving things around which indicates lady, this is starting to happen make no mistake about it.
You can start therapy – either together or separate or both to learn how to stand up to a bully and also have your husband be accountable.
Are your parents close?
Of course she won’t move out, she may even propose she raise your child while you go back to work and provide for her
Check out legaladvice UK as there are loads of posts about lodgers and how to evict them..
She can fairly quickly become the councils problem if your husband
Really wants her out too.
Good luck she sounds like a childish nightmare.
You should ask your husband whether this behavior is consistent with how she acted in the past. Was she always flakey with following through or is it surprising that she said she’d apply for housing but didn’t?
I’m not saying this is the reason, but I have a dear friend whose husband was about that age when he started behaving oddly. She nearly divorced him because he was spending money and couldn’t explain where, but when she went to a divorce attorney the attorney instead suggested she take him in for a medical work up. It turned out he had early onset Alzheimer’s. That totally changed how she approached things and she cared for him for the next 4-5 years until he passed away.
It’s a very hard ask to your husband to let his own mother be homeless, even if it’s justified. I’d talk to him first about what he thinks you guys should do and what boundaries to set, since he will be taking on the bigger emotional brunt here. Don’t threaten to take away the baby, that may damage things beyond repair. Just be clear that there have to be consequences if she continues to stay with you. Maybe he decides to fill out the housing application for her or something.
She needs to tell the council she’s being made homeless on X date. Pass the problem on to them.
Write an eviction notice and contact citizens advice. Tell her she has to be out by x date and then get all.your locks changed on that date and put all her stuff outside. If your partner doesn’t agree then he can go with her.
In the meantime, tell her McDonalds are always hiring and the supermarkets will be taking on soon for seasonal staff.
Not your circus not your monkey.