My mother-in-law kept telling her son to divorce me. I didn’t waste time telling her to move out—I handled it differently.
“Divorce her. I’ll find you a normal wife.”
I heard Rimma Pavlovna say it from the bathroom.
My husband, Stas, was putting up a shelf in the kitchen. I had been helping him until I went to wash the concrete dust off my hands.
When I came back, my mother-in-law was sitting calmly by the window, peeling a tangerine.
“Mom, not this again,” Stas laughed.
“I’m serious. You’re forty-three. No children, no apartment of your own. You pay half the mortgage, but Nadya is saving this apartment for her daughter. What are you here, exactly? The man who hangs shelves?”
I stopped in the doorway.
“Rimma Pavlovna, do you remember whose apartment you’re saying this in?”
She didn’t even blink.
“I’m talking to my son, Nadya. Not to you.”
The apartment belonged to me. I had inherited it from my grandmother. Rimma Pavlovna had moved in temporarily because her own apartment had supposedly been flooded.
She had promised to stay for a month.
Seven weeks had passed.
“When are you going home?” I asked.
“When the repairs are done. The floor still hasn’t been laid. The wiring isn’t finished.”
“I can call the workers.”
“No need.”
I looked at Stas.
“Say something.”
“Mom, don’t start.”
That was all.
Not Don’t insult my wife.
Not This is her apartment.
Just: Don’t start.
Later, in the car, I reminded him that his mother had practically called me an unsuitable wife in front of him.
“She raised me alone,” he said. “Worked double shifts so I could have what other kids had.”
“I know. But that doesn’t give her permission to disrespect me.”
He asked me to be patient.
I agreed on one condition.
“December first. She moves out by then.”
He nodded.
A few days later, his mother called and asked him to come over because she needed help clearing boxes from a storage cabinet.
Stas returned late that night smelling faintly of sweet vanilla perfume.
His mother never wore perfume like that.
“Oksana was there,” he admitted.
“Who’s Oksana?”
“The daughter of one of Mom’s friends.”
Apparently, the table had been set, there was homemade pie, and Oksana had been waiting when he arrived.
His mother had arranged a matchmaking dinner.
“And the storage cabinet?”
Stas looked embarrassed.
“There isn’t one.”
I knew that already. I had spent childhood summers in that apartment.
“How long did you stay?”
“Twenty minutes. I drank tea and left.”
Then he added, as if it mattered, “She’s a hairdresser. Has her own apartment. A son in seventh grade.”
I laughed.
“So your mother has already found your ‘normal wife.’”
“Nadya, stop. I’m with you. But I’m not throwing my mother out.”
“She has her own home.”
“The repairs aren’t finished.”
“Then December first.”
He promised again.
But something bothered me.
A few days later, when I had a day off, I drove to Rimma Pavlovna’s apartment myself.
A young man opened the door.
“Can I help you?”
“I’m looking for Rimma Pavlovna.”
“She doesn’t live here. We rent the place.”
I stared at him.
“Since when?”
“October first.”
His wife appeared behind him.
“We transfer twenty thousand every month,” she said nervously. “We have a contract.”
I looked past them.
The supposedly unfinished apartment was completely renovated.
New laminate flooring.
Fresh walls.
Everything finished.
My mother-in-law had been living in my apartment for free while secretly renting out her own.
The only question was whether Stas knew.
He didn’t.
When I told him, the color drained from his face.
“She told me two days ago the floor still wasn’t done.”
“She told me the same thing.”
That Sunday, we confronted her.
“I saw your tenants,” I said. “So here are your options. Either you return home by December first, or you pay me sixteen thousand a month—the same rent I used to receive from this apartment.”
Instead of apologizing, she looked at Stas.
“See? Exactly what I told you.”
“Mom,” he said quietly. “Why did you lie?”
She opened the breadbox and pulled out a bank repayment schedule.
She had borrowed money for the repairs.
“The neighbors upstairs caused the flood and refuse to pay. I had to take a loan. My pension is barely enough.”
For one moment, I felt sorry for her.
Then she ruined it.
“I’m not paying Nadya anything,” she said. “This is family property. And I’m not leaving before spring. My tenants have a lease until April.”
Then she looked at me.
“And Oksana asked why Stas has been looking so unhappy lately. Even a stranger noticed.”
That was enough.
I contacted a lawyer.
He explained that because I had inherited the apartment, it was legally mine. My husband had no ownership rights to it, and neither did his mother.
I could ask her to leave.
I simply needed to give written notice.
So I wrote one.
Stas watched me.
“Can’t you just wait until spring?”
“She lies to us, insults me, arranges dates for you, lives in my apartment for free, and rents hers out.”
“She has a loan.”
“And my daughter needs money too.”
He sighed.
“Do whatever you want.”
I mailed the notice by registered post and decided to give Rimma Pavlovna a copy personally.
When Stas and I arrived, a woman opened the door.
About thirty-five. Blonde. Nervous.
Oksana.
She was holding one of my grandmother’s kitchen towels.
“Rimma Pavlovna is on the balcony,” she said.
My mother-in-law appeared moments later.
I handed her the notice.
“You have one month to vacate the apartment.”
She read it slowly.
Then she waved it toward Stas.
“Look at your wife. Sending legal notices to your own mother.”
“Mom…”
“What? Divorce her. I’ll find you a normal wife.”
She glanced toward Oksana.
“Actually, I already have.”
I waited.
I expected Stas to say what he always said.
Don’t start.
Instead, he looked calmly at his mother.
“All right. I’ll divorce Nadya and move into your apartment.”
Rimma Pavlovna froze.
“You’ll just need to tell your tenants to leave,” he continued. “Because I’ll need somewhere to live. After all, you keep saying I don’t have a home of my own.”
Her face turned white.
Oksana stared at her.
“What tenants?” she asked. “You told my mother your apartment was uninhabitable after the flood.”
Nobody answered.
Oksana quietly put down the towel.
“I think I should go.”
She left.
A month later, so did my mother-in-law.
She moved out one day before the deadline.
Stas brought back one key.
I had given her two.
“She says there was only one.”
There had definitely been two.
So I changed the locks.
Soon afterward, I rented the apartment to a young paramedic and her cat. The rent helped cover my daughter Liza’s living expenses while she studied away from home.
Stas, meanwhile, began paying his mother’s loan himself.
Ten thousand every month.
“This isn’t up for discussion,” he told me.
I didn’t argue.
I simply postponed the trip we had been planning for months.
He noticed.
Neither of us said anything.
His relationship with his mother changed too.
He visited her alone on Sundays.
She stopped speaking to me.
Then, on Liza’s birthday, something happened that hurt more than I expected.
For years, Rimma Pavlovna had always mailed her a birthday card with a small amount of money inside.
That year, nothing came.
“Mom,” Liza asked me, “is Grandma Rimma angry with me? I didn’t do anything.”
I didn’t know how to answer.
So I told her the mail was probably delayed.
It wasn’t.
I never saw Oksana again either.
And sometimes I still wonder whether she knew she was being invited there as a possible replacement wife—or whether she had been manipulated too.
But I wonder about something else even more.
Was I wrong to send my husband’s mother a formal notice, knowing she was struggling with a loan?
Should I have allowed her to stay until spring?
Or was the moment she began lying, insulting me, and trying to replace me the moment she stopped being a helpless relative and became simply someone taking advantage of my patience?
I still don’t know whether I made the perfect decision.
But I do know one thing.
After months of everyone expecting me to tolerate everything quietly, I finally stopped asking for permission to set boundaries in my own home.