AITA for shutting my ILs down when they brought up issues with photos of my children’s mom in our home?

I (46m) have two children; Fia (13f) and Cael (10m). Their mom died five years ago in a car crash.

We had been married at the time but only legally. For the last three years of her life we were pretending to still be together and we stayed married, but it was all pretending for the kids.

We did not want to divorce for our kids’ sake. Both of us came from divorced families and what I consider broken homes because of how badly our parents handled the divorces.

We didn’t want that for the kids. We feared we couldn’t do better.

The end result was us hating each other.

This tragic story taught a lesson to OP.

And you can feel the regret in his words.

It ran deep too. I regret that now.

The last words we exchanged were not kind. Our kids deserved better than that. Better than having parents who hated each other because we were so afraid to divorce.

So after she died I was determined to let go of all that hate and I was determined to make sure the kids knew they were loved by both parents and were not burdened by the issues we’d had.

Their mom and dad both love them. I truly believe their mom’s love still exists for them in them.

And they deserve to know that love.

And he made sure that he kept those tokens of her love for the kids.

That was what I focused on.

So I saved everything of hers for them. It’s all stored safely for them one day.

And a couple of years after she died, I did remove most of the photos of our married life. But I let the kids keep two photos of their choice out in the open in common areas of the house.

The rest are either in their room or stored for them with the rest of her stuff. My kids love and miss their mom so much and it brings them comfort to have her photos out. I make sure they can always talk about her or ask questions.

They also have a very close relationship with the three siblings she spoke to.

This is my children’s home above all and I make sure it always feels that way.

But here’s where the problems started arising from this wonderful family decision.

When I met my wife (I remarried last year) I told her about the photos and said a partner of mine needed to accept this.

She did.

We got married. Nobody has taken the photos of my kids and their mom down. But my ILs do have a problem (and maybe they’re speaking on behalf of my wife and she’s not open I’m still figuring that out).

They were staying with us at the weekend and during a dinner they questioned my kids about keeping the photos out when my wife now lives with us.

My kids said they like having photos of their mom they can see in the house.

So leave it to selfish people to only think of themselves and their needs and literally let children’s love for their mother be a PROBLEM.

My ILs began to say that it was inconsiderate of my wife and they should not be in common areas when I stepped in and shut them down and I told them that this is still my children’s home too and part of that is displaying photos of their mom in their home where they can be seen.

I told them it did not need to be discussed more.

The following day my ILs said I had no reason to be so rude and I had an unhealthy attachment to keeping their mom present in their lives when she’s dead.

They told me they should be allowed to question things about their daughter’s home and I overreacted.

AITA?

Let’s see what folks had to say.

This person thought the in-laws threw some low blow jabs.

While this person can’t believe the wife is this out-of-the-picture.

One commenter gave OP his flowers for managing this so well.

And one Redditor spoke from similar experience.

Can’t help but feel for this guy and those kids.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a daughter who invited herself to her parents’ 40th anniversary vacation for all the wrong reasons.