Some in-laws can be the nicest people in the world, and feel more like a family than your own.

But other in-laws really do show why they are so often the punchline of jokes.

Take the woman in this story, for example.

She encourages her boyfriend to spend time with his mom, and even goes along too.

But when this guy’s mom starts disrespecting his dad, the woman has to take a stand.

Read on to find out how her standing up for her father-in-law changed everything for this family.

AITA for telling off my mother-in-law?

My partner Kyle (27) and I (26) spent a few days at his mother Mary’s home in January.

She is around 50.

Mary is what people call “a character.”

She has no understanding of boundaries, overshares, can be very rude – the type that picks a vegan restaurant then complains to the waitress that they don’t have bacon and eggs.

Kyle wants to have a good relationship with her but it’s hard.

I’m polite with Mary but spending time with her is difficult.

I actually suggested the trip because she regularly complains that Kyle spends more time with his father than with her, and I know it makes him feel bad.

Read on to find out how this trip became one to remember, for all the wrong reasons.

One evening towards the end of the trip, we were all sitting together watching TV and the conversation drifted to Kyle’s father, John.

John is a generally good guy, and both Kyle and I have a good relationship with him.

Mary and him were never together as a couple.

Mary started saying mean things about Kyle’s father, then suddenly went off about him, telling us how he’s a terrible person and now he’s got a cushy little life because of “all the money from the settlement”.

Kyle’s father is a victim of malpractice.

He went in for a routine operation and ended up heavily handicapped.

He almost passed & had to stop working.

He sued and got money from the hospital.

Yikes! Let’s see how this woman reacted.

I got angry and told her to stop this type of talk and that, considering he almost didn’t make it and was handicapped for life, it was hardly “cushy”.

She told me she could say whatever she liked and that he’d made her life hard back in the days so she could be mean now.

I answered I didn’t have to stay and listen to this and left for bed.

Afterwards Kyle told me he hadn’t said anything because he was so used to it, but he was happy I’d told her to stop.

But that wasn’t the end of it.

The next day she didn’t talk about the argument.

But then, three weeks after we left, Kyle called her to get some news.

She told him that we had hurt her when we were at her place, and that she found my attitude disrespectful and mean.

I feel kind of insane right now.

AITA?

She stood up for her boyfriend’s father while his mother was being cruel about him behind his back.

It sounds like someone needed to take a stand against her; it’s just a shame that this woman had to be the one to do it.

Let’s see what Reddit thought about this.

This person agreed that she’d done the right thing.

And this commenter suggested that they stop making an effort with the woman.

Meanwhile, others suggested that Kyle may want to make some changes.

The way that Kyle’s mom behaved was nothing but disrespectful.

Then bringing it up again later was just playing the victim card when she was in the wrong.

This girlfriend behaved nobly, in defending her partner’s boyfriend against his jealous co-parent.

She shouldn’t have to listen to that.

If you enjoyed that story, read this one about a mom who was forced to bring her three kids with her to apply for government benefits, but ended up getting the job of her dreams.