How To Manage Your Former In-Laws

Susan Shapiro Barash — Sat, 12 Jan 2008 15:09:41 -0500

Being involved with your ex in-laws is almost inevitable when your children are small. As the children grow older, it's still in the first wife's best interest to encourage her children to remain close with their grandparents, as well as aunts and uncles on their father's side, regardless of her own personal feelings.

Of course this can be dicey for the first wife and it's often a very difficult part of the divorce. And there is a moral issue at work too — for the sake of the children — you should be respectful of your ex in-laws. This means that you should keep the communication and visits between the grandparents, aunts and uncles and the children alive.

However, within this mix, there are some women who describe an alliance with their former mother-in-laws who took their side during the divorce or lamented the dissolution of the marriage. Conversely, there are many women who report that a perk of the divorce is not having to answer to their former mother-in-laws or sister-in-laws anymore.

To complicate matters, if and when your ex-husband remarries, there are times when your children are with their stepmother, their father and his parents. This can cause you to feel disenfranchised, especially if the divorce wasn't your idea. If the children are young (under the age of 10), these machinations can be confusing, and if they're adolescents or older, it can be upsetting and unsettling.

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How To Manage Your Former In-Laws