Reply to Sibling Relationships after Parents/ILs Pass Away

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Did the siblings and their families drift apart or did the siblings who previously made minimal effort [b]without a parent guilting/harassing[/b] them decide to put more effort in, resulting in more time spent together?  
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There is a lot of backstory and bias in your perspective.  For your family, if it takes parental "guilting/harassing" to get together, it sounds like you and your siblings will drift apart.  For families that have a better dynamic then they will have a different outcome.[/quote]

You're right that it was loaded phrasing. It is actually DH's family and it isn't bias, it's honest. MIL admits that is what she does. We debated a bit about softening it but hoped it would provide a bit of context. Right now, they only see each other when MIL goes after them even though SO is willing to put in the effort-his brother only bothers him when he wants him to do free highly technical and time-consuming labor.

They used to go on holiday (1-2wks) regularly but that has fallen away and any encouragement to spend time with just them or just them and their mother fails to be followed through on. While BIL is generally okay, his wife is quite unpleasant to be around. BIL never sees or even hangs out with SO without his wife. They can't even speak on the phone without her and also share an email.

We're looking at moving but also have the option to stay within driving distance of them. MIL has a neurodegenerative disease and isn't likely to last another 5y even though we are all quite young (early 30s). She is also the person who has triangulated her children off of one another, completely missing that the competition she's stoked between them has been eroding their relationship, especially for the younger and more insecure brother.

The only thing that we can all agree on is that it would be nice for our children to know and spend time with each other. If there is sufficient hope the relationship would recover after MIL passes, we'll consider staying relatively more local and see how it goes. We know that we'll have to move or go private for the children's schooling, though. It's basically stay, move 2h further away, or move 14h drive away. I have family everywhere we would move to but SO does not.

This is his only remaining family which is why we're hesitating. If moving effectively ends the relationship, though, then perhaps there wasn't much left of a relationship at all? The entire responsibility should not be on SO rather than on both of them. .

My family has always been very close and hasn't drifted anytime within the last five generations so I don't have much experience this type of situation. We haven't had the triangulation issue, either, so I haven't seen this scenario play out before. [/quote]

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