My father-in-law eyes nearly $400K worth of assets my parents left me

By Huyen Anh   November 12, 2024 | 04:05 pm PT
After my husband shared with his parents the two luxury apartments I inherited from my parents, my father-in-law is now asking to “borrow” money from me to invest in real estate.

I have been married for 10 years and am currently living with my in-laws. My father passed away 15 years ago, and my mother just passed away last year due to old age. I am their only child, and to this day, I am still grieving my mother’s loss.

I told my husband about my inheritance due to my trust in him. I suggested to him that we keep the properties to fund our children’s future education abroad. However, I never expected that he would share this information with his parents.

My father-in-law called me over to ask what I planned to do with that money. He is still healthy and driven to earn money, so he suggested that my husband and I sell the apartment since the market is favorable, and then lend him VND5 billion to invest in real estate. Previously, when we bought a car, my in-laws gave us VND500 million. My father-in-law reminded me of that and said: "In a family, money shouldn’t be divided by who owns it. When you need it, we are willing to give, so now that I need help, you should make an effort to support us."

Seeing that I hadn’t made a decision, my father-in-law kept bringing it up every day. He knows that my husband is the main breadwinner in our family, so he would remind me of this, even saying that he didn’t know whether I had used any of my husband’s money to care for my mother when she was ill. His implication was that since I married into his family, I belong to them, and if I had ever spent money on my birth family, I now had an obligation to "pay it back" to them. I have never encountered a father-in-law so unreasonable in my life.

My husband feels embarrassed by his father’s behavior, but whenever he tries to intervene, his father scolds him, calling him weak and saying he doesn’t know how to "discipline his wife." He even calls me "a snake in one’s bosom," accusing me of having been a daughter-in-law for years without wholeheartedly supporting his family.

My father-in-law is greedy, but I can’t move out because my husband is the eldest son, and we promised to live with his parents when we got married. I feel disgusted by him, yet a leopard can’t change its spots, so I don’t expect to change my father-in-law.

How should I deal with him?

 
 
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