When in-laws become out-laws ...

MADDIE: After we got engaged, my mother-in-law told me, "If I were picking a wife for Kenny, it wouldn't be you!" She wore a white dress to my wedding after she was asked not to. She gave the minister money to add "in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit" at the ceremony after we'd specifically asked him not to.

She completely redecorated her house after my husband and I bought our house so hers would look better. She dropped in on us, using the key we had given her for emergency use only, even though we told her not to. She dropped off stuff she no longer wanted, including mountains of old magazines and just plain junk.

She invited us for dinner, but it was actually a birthday party for my two-year-old daughter. When we were there, she told everyone it was unnecessary for them to show up at the party I had invited them to weeks earlier. She even used the same party theme and ordered the same birthday cake!

She asked us what to get our kids for presents, and then bought them toys we expressly said we didn't want them to have. She told my seven-year-old daughter she wasn't special and should stop behaving as if she were!

My husband never stood up for me. We've been married for 26 years. We're still together because of our kids. My mother-in-law has managed to destroy her own son's happiness. What an accomplishment!

JEN: The first time I visited my boyfriend's parents, his father told me his son would never marry me and that I would never get a cent of his money! We got married a year later. I'll just mention a few things that have transpired in the last 22 years.

His youngest sister lectured him — within my hearing — that he was making a huge mistake marrying me. Neither of his sisters came to our wedding. I haven't seen them in 15 years. My kids have no clue who they are!

When I told his family I was pregnant, they said, "Oh that's why he married you!" They've called me uneducated, ignorant and a spend thrift.

I could go on, but it's making me depressed so I'm going to stop.

ALICIA: When my husband told his mother that we were expecting our first baby, she asked him, "Is it yours?"

EMMA: We let my mother-in-law babysit when our son was two months old. When my husband went to pick him up, she gleefully told him that she'd given him baby food. She knew we weren't doing solids yet but wanted to be the first to feed him. The next time she was allowed to watch him, when he was eight months old, she was supposed to take him out for 45 minutes. Instead, she was gone for five hours. She had put her phone on vibrate so she didn't hear my increasingly frantic phone calls.

At my son's first birthday party, she read a newspaper. At his most recent birthday party, she sat on the couch and didn't speak a word. My father-in-law changed the oil of our cars in the driveway while we were having a children's dinosaur dig in the same driveway!

I knew it was love . . . I knew it was over . . . Fill in the blank and send them, along with your questions and problems to [email protected]. And check out my ebook, "Dear Cheryl: Advice from Tales from the Front."

Photo credit: Quinn Dombrowski