Recently we celebrated my mother-in-law's 89 birthday. We all got together and celebrated over a weekend and went out to dinner multiple times. We decided to split the bill between her 3 children, each time we went out. The bill was often for anywhere from 14-18 people. Close friends and grandchildren were included.
To my surprise, I found out that both sisters were using credit cards that were tied to my mother in law's bank account. In essence my mother in law paid for their portion of the bill, and my husband got stuck paying the share of the bill with our own money.
I know my mother-in-law. If she had known she paid for 2 of her children and not the third, she would have paid it all.
She doesn't know they used her account to pay. When she see the bill, she will assume she paid it all including my husband's portion.
Am I being petty by being angry? I don't want upset my mother inlaw with this. But is there anything I can do? It seems awfully unfair to her son and the sisters to their brother.
You can handle this one of two ways. Be the better person and say nothing. Chalk it up to costly experience. And the next time you do something like this, ask for a separate check for you and your husband only. Or, you can tell your SILs you know what they did and you think it was pretty stinky of them. But first, make sure they didn’t pay Mom back and you didn’t realize they did. You can also mention to your MIL that she needs to carefully check her statement for unauthorized charges. But be prepared that you could start a rift with your husband’s family.
The problem is that most places don’t look at the names or signatures on the cards which they should. My sibling has used mom’s card to put gas in his car, take his girlfriend & mom out to eat, etc. I personally feel that it’s financial abuse of his authority since mom has dementia & has no clue of her finances.