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My mom lives farthest away, aka a plane ride is needed to visit. She pays her own way UNLESS as some pp's stated she is doing us a favor or it's a last minute request that she visits. Usually if daycare is closed and we need her to watch the kids. She pays for all other visits, although at Christmas time last year we paid for her to come. This was mostly bc DS was due in FEB and she paid for those tickets and she's on a fixed income so we just felt it was the nice thing to do.
ETA: luckily she can fly the "discount/cheap" airline to and from so the tickets are usually pretty reasonable. the dates are not very flexible but we make it work. if we need her Monday for kid coverage we'll fly her in at the closest flight prior to that. Might mean she's here for 2-3 extra days but she's retired so it's ok.
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@Truth Bombs: I agree. If op is asking for help at all, even just one night, then I think it's fair to pay. If the flight is too expensive, it's better not to ask MIL to help at all going forward.
We've asked my mom to come 3 times this year and have bought all the flights, because we are the ones that asked her to come and help for specific events/ child care transitions and that seems fair to me and not like my mom is taking advantage at all. If anything, I feel like she's being really generous with her time.
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I never answered the second part of the question. Never in a trillion years would my husband accept either of our parents paying our way for anything at any time. All of our parents sacrificed a lot to get us where we are today and now we want our parents to enjoy their retirement and use their money on themselves--fun tours and trips.
If for some reason we couldn't afford a visit, we just wouldn't go or cut down on other spending categories. My husband is really frugal in many areas so we can afford things that are important to us, like family visits.
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Just stop offering to pay for her flights. But if you do that, you also need to stop asking her to visit in order to help you. If she chooses not to visit, that's her choice.
And I don't think it's at all appropriate to tell her she needs to pay for your entire family to visit her.
Personally though, if we end up moving away from MIL, I'd much rather invite her to visit us and pay for her to do so. Rather than to have to pay to fly my whole family to visit her. We're the ones that decided to have two kids, our travel expenses are our responsibility. But it would be sooo much more expensive for us to visit her - we'd need a hotel, flights for 4 people and a car rental. We would never expect her to pay for any of it though, especially since she isn't in the same financial position that we are.
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My parents are broke so we always pay for their flights when they come see us. They also want us to come see them once a year where they live since the rest of my family lives there, but they don't necessarily press it because we can't stay with them and we have to pay for a hotel on top of travel costs.
My inlaws fly out to see us generally once a year and they pay for their own flights and stay at a hotel because we don't have a guest room. We also fly to them every other year for Christmas because DH's entire family lives out there.
In your situation, I would just stop offering and see what she does. If she wants to see her kids and grandkids, she can figure it out.
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@littlejoy: this is our biggest issue with going home. My parents and my in laws live about 25 minutes away from each other. With my parents it just them and it's super chill and relaxed and they basically wait on us hand and foot
But with my in laws, they all live there and we are paraded around like zoo animals so everyone can see us (and they each get their chance to scold us for not coming home more often despite the fact that none of them come to see us). My MIL will literallly count the hours we spend with my family vs her family and it's just exhausting.
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@Anagram: yeah ditto this on not accepting our parents paying for things for us. We are grown adults and perfectly capable of paying our own way and we want our parents to enjoy the money they saved for their retirement years, not spend it on us when we have plenty. My husband's sister and her husband let my in laws pay for everything for them and weirds me out.
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I would totally accept it if my parents wanted to pay for a flight, that is my dad's love language (gifts). I have learned it's easier to accept it over putting up a huge fight. My parents treat all of us equally, so that helps too, I think.
Now, if they were in dire straits financially, that would be a different story.
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We pay our own way when we go home. My parents would likewise pay their own way. MIL has come out on our dime and on her own, mostly her own. FIL only comes when we offer to pay. He's not in a great place financially and we think it's worth it since he only comes once a year anyway.
When we are in town we visit my parents and MIL but we ask FIL to come down to where we'll be on the east coast. It's about 4.5 hours. He's retired and doesn't have room for us in his house anyway. He choose not to come this last trip and I wonder if he's getting frustrated with the situation. I don't see it changing though.
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Everyone pays their own way. I'm fine with that, but it does annoy me somewhat that it's usually on us to do the traveling. My mom doesn't fly, so the two times they've been down here have involved days-long train or car trips for them. And my ILs just don't visit much. So while I think it makes sense for people to pay for their own travel, it does annoy me that if we want to see family WE have to do the traveling the vast majority of the time.
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We pay our own way unless either set of parents is coming up expressly to watch LO while we travel
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I don't enjoy visiting my family and will not go unless they offer to pay. They also rarely come to visit us, so I the pat when we were on good terms it was obnoxious to have to buy tickets all the time to go see them. Now my mom knows it's the only way I'll go up there is if she pays so I oblige 1-2x a year.
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I only skimmed the comments but I think we're in the minority in that both my parents and mil always pay for everything during visits, whether we are there or here.
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We pay to go visit our families once a year (otherwise we'd never see them as they aren't able to afford to travel). We do pay for my MIL's flight (and groceries while we're gone) to come visit us when we go visit my family as she stays at our place & watches our animals so we don't have to board them for 10 days.
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Everyone is responsible for their own travel. Often times the travellers stay with the family they are visiting so it all even out in the end. I think your MIL should pay for her own flight.
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