Wow, luckily my inlaws are tolerable and actually pretty nice at face value! I think my suggestion is to cut off contact & communication unless they initiate it. However, I don't know if they are the ones initiating things now. This is what we do with my MIL. She goes months without talking to my DH. How do you go months without speaking to your son?!?!? I get that he is an adult, but DH doesn't even get a once-a-month how are you. We did our part for a couple of years, making all of the effort but the train doesn't go both ways in our case. We hear from MIL if there's a medical emergency with elderly sick grandma grandpa in law and for holidays. That's it. However, she is always with DH's sister; babysitting, taking my niece to dance, etc. Its kind of like a cautious but peaceful distance, and I'd maybe aim for that if I were you. However, if you absolutely can't stand them, say goodbye. Sometimes its better without certain people in your life when all they do is bring you down for no good reason. Good luck.

I seriously doubt 1st wife cut them off for no reason. They did this on your wedding? They are not acting like this due to 1st wife, they are acting like this because they have poor boundaries and are toxic.

I did meet my H online and did move across the country to be with him. I was a foster kid and am very close to my siblings (some). My MIL constantly made references like "This is what family's do!!! (e.g. come to MILs house for every event known to man). She's been pretty bad and IMO has taken the place of a bad BM (BM never gave me a problem).

You are going to hate to hear this but I think you will likely need to cut them off. I wish I had disengaged from MIL from the start instead of doing backflips to please her.

After what they did at your wedding, I would seriously disengage. You can make the same mistake as a DIL as you can as a SM. That is "once they know me, they'll like me" or thinking the more you do the more they will like you. It usually doesn't work out that way and it leaves you angry and mad at yourself for trying too hard.

I'd let H. do all the relating. Take no responsibility, this will save you much headache later.

My inlaws from my marriage were great, they were separated and both had partners and I got along great with all of them until we separated. And thats fair enough, I have limited contact with them but we still talk from time to time.
Technically I have no inlaws now as SO and I arent married, however, all I can say about SO's mum is suffer!! She interfered so much between my SO and his son, even to the point where it appears as though she takes the ex's side in most things over her only son, now however, she has her FIL (who has altzheimers?) living with her and is pretty much house bound coz he is losing the plot. She has had a gutful, but, you reap what you sow does come to mind. I would happily write her off and never have anything to do with her, except that she is my SO's mum. Lucky for me she doesnt like me all that much so doesnt make the effort!
You could limit the contact the skids have with the in laws if they are going to come home with attitude towards you.

Good Luck

i can't stand fdh's sm. she's nosy, gossipy and constantly negative. if she can rain on your parade in any way, she will. she thinks every aspect of our life is her business and tries to get people to spy on us for her and constantly tries to get info about us from everyone. the ironic thing is that in the beginning (7 years ago), she was my favorite person in fdh's family. i don't know what the hell happened to her, but i absolutely cannot stand her. i haven't seen her since bs's 3rd bday, and he turned 4 last month. i could happily go another year and have no sadness about not seeing her.

I agree with the posters who say disengage and they wished they had before. I have a toxic MIL and like you, took her criticisms of BM at face value at first only to realise that on this one, I actually would side with BM against someone else. The issue is do you let the kids have a relationship with the ILs despite not having one yourself. I would say that your intentions are good, and children need to know all family at least a bit, but you have to judge the situation as to how vulnerable you think the kids are. For example, I have never allowed my bios to stay alone with the ILs until now when my elder boy is 13 because I knew they wanted to get him on his own to have a go at him about various things. I was finally worn down by DH's need for this to happen, so I allowed it last month. To my amazement they gave him a great time and did not personally abuse him or me, but they also bent his ear endlessly on political issues upon which they hold pretty fundamentalist views which they knew that both I and DH would try to temper and moderate had we been there. He was subjected to a huge polemical tirade of extremist crap, as they had wanted to do for years. Luckily he is somewhat otherworldly so this passed him by. I know this is not direct abuse, but I experienced it as an attempt to twist and trouble his mind, behind our backs and without our protection, and I will not repeat the experiment with my younger son until again he is mid teens. I suppose I was relieved that the ILs did not abuse and criticise him, or me as they constantly have BM in front of the skids -- so foully abusive. Listening to your story unfold, I would say there was a high chance of your inlaws doing that to your skids in respect not only of the BM but also of your DH and you. They won't be able to resist it. I would not allow that to happen in your shoes and I would explain it to DH that way -- that there is too much unfinished business and the skids should not be exposed to it. If they go, he goes too, if only to protect them (and yes, I do know that syndrome whereby DH does not even notice what ILs are doing -- hear hear to Jennaspace who pointed out that your DH might need things pointed out as a result of blind spots caused by his upbringing). And I agree, involve them as little as possible in any child you ultimately have -- speaking of which, if you establish the boundaries now with the skids, you can then relax when it comes to any fight over your own child, which you won't want when you have all the pressures that come with a baby. I can't say how great it is getting out of the clutches of people like this when you finally do it.

Most of my IL are insane all except for the MIL. We did get her blessing when we got married.

Everybody else is pissed because we did not have a family wedding. We went to another state to get married. I honestly prefered it this way. I didn't want the drama that the rest of my husband family would put into the marriage. It would not be my wedding it would be their party.

I knew that my husband oldest son would invite the exgirlfriend or the ( booty call ) to my wedding. "she is already phsycho" I can just hear her screaming when they say if anybody objects to this marriage. If not that I would had to put up with the BM being invited because where there is a party and his family she must be with her kids and part of the crowd her proabably screaming in the crowd wondering why she spent 8 years trying to get this man to marry her and he would not do it.

A family wedding would be a joke.

I am glad I had it out of state, just us, and we had a nice honeymoon.

Though we had hell getting back home. the BM filed some stuff in court on CS and had all of our assets frozen. We made it to the State line and could not buy anymore gas off the bank card, called the bank up to find out why and they said the State froze our accounts. That is the day I learn to not share accounts with my husband.

It is a good thing I checked out some extra cash for back up because we would never made it home. We still had 300 miles to go.

yeah I could just imagine how my wedding would have went if I had a family wedding.

Strangely until last week I would have said no, my FDH's MIL was always lovely to us and could'nt speak highly enough of my FDH, BM always resented this, well she ffed that up, BM has concocted a string of lies to dicredit FDH in MIL eyes. We have dedided to disengage with her family now.

As for your DH family my God put them in a Zoo, so I can through vegetables at them, what a nightmare, no respect, manners, no sense of what is appropriate, they missed the day life skills was taught lol.

Seriously though their behaviour is so shocking, don't let them spoil things for you, however much stress they put you through, stay strong and together, they cannot hurt you unless you allow them too, for someone to hurt you, you first need to value their opinion, it looks to me as though your DH may stop contact eventually, good luck honey x