Reply to Shared family beach house - how to handle politely?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]MIL co-owns a beach-house w/ her nephew (her brother died, and he was original owner with MIL, and it went to nephew/DH's cousin).

For about 20 years we have split up weeks during the summer between DH, DH's twin brother, nephew and nephew's family. MIL is typically the liaison coordinating the summer schedule. We've split up weekends all summer for years. As more people have gotten involved and kids have gotten older, it's become tougher. We rarely go and didn't at all last summer during the pandemic. Others go a lot more.

MY DD's 16th birthday is in July. Two of her camp friends are considering traveling a distance to surprise her at the beach house, which requires some coordination. We're trying to nail down summer dates and offered two possible weekends before/after her birthday. I'm trying to coordinate it with the camp friends' parents and keeping it a secret from DD.

MIL says she'd coordinate timing with nephew but we did not hear back. This was maybe three weeks ago. Yesterday we gently brought it up again and she said she doesn't want to press her nephew because he's really busy and doesn't want to make him feel like he has to arrange his vacation or change it based on anyone else. He lives 20 minutes away from the house and goes a lot, so it doesn't require as much coordination for him to plan. Meanwhile, our kids have camp, summer job, etc., and we do need to plan our travel soon, to say nothing of trying to coordinate with these other friends of DD and their families. And it means a lot to us to give my DD a nice birthday of course.

DH and I don't want to rock the boat at all, but we also just need to nail down our plans. I don't think nephew, who is 74 (he's MIL's age but is her nephew due to huge sibling age gap), remembers what it's like trying to organize kid schedules and stuff. And I get that he needs a vacation and is the rightful co-owner...we just need to plan around it accordingly. Everyone else is on board with our proposed dates. WWYD? MIL has asked us not to ask nephew directly, so we won't. Thanks.

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Rent your own place at the beach (with a good cancellation clause) and tell MIL. She'll either work it out or not, but you won't be left hanging.[/quote]

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