# In-laws **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [December 29, 2016, 3:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-laws/775823 "2016-12-29T03:35:57Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 17\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![CookingWithGas](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cookingwithgas/32/485_2.png) [@CookingWithGas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CookingWithGas)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2016, 3:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-laws/775823/1 "2016-12-29T03:35:57Z")
If my wife’s father died before I met her, is he still my late father-in-law? ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2016, 3:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-laws/775823/2 "2016-12-29T03:38:18Z")
I’m not sure what else you’d call him. Why wouldn’t he be? ---
**Author:** ![Shagnasty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9dc877/32.png) [@Shagnasty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shagnasty)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2016, 3:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-laws/775823/3 "2016-12-29T03:43:14Z")
Yes, of course. Why wouldn’t he be? You don’t have to know someone for them to be in-laws. It is a simple genealogical relationship especially if you have kids and the father-in-law in question is the grandparent to your children. The grandparent relationship doesn’t go away either if the grandparent dies before the grandchildren are born. ---
**Author:** ![watchwolf49](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e9c0ed/32.png) [@watchwolf49](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/watchwolf49)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2016, 3:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-laws/775823/4 "2016-12-29T03:52:45Z")
> [@CookingWithGas](#): > > If my wife’s father died before I met her, is he still my late father-in-law? Technically … yes … however if your mother-in-law remarries and your wife finds the man acceptable … you’d be wise to consider this new fella as your father-in-law … just to be polite … ---
**Author:** ![TSBG](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/77aa72/32.png) [@TSBG](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TSBG)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2016, 3:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-laws/775823/5 "2016-12-29T03:58:56Z")
I dunno, if you never actually had a relationship with the guy, I think I’d call him “my wife’s father.” The “in law” part implies a relationship created by the legal marriage to a spouse, and you can’t have a relationship with a dead man. Not one sanctioned in law… 😃 I might even say this if my wife had an estranged father with whom I had no contact or minimal contact. This is totally IMHO territory, so sorry for straying if there’s some kind of official Emily Post-genealogical-heraldry answer to this question. But I had a father in law and still have a stepfather in law, and I consider myself to have (had) a meaningful relationship with each man. ---
**Author:** ![CookingWithGas](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cookingwithgas/32/485_2.png) [@CookingWithGas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CookingWithGas)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2016, 5:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-laws/775823/6 "2016-12-29T05:03:16Z")
> [@watchwolf49](#): > > Technically … yes … however if your mother-in-law remarries and your wife finds the man acceptable … you’d be wise to consider this new fella as your father-in-law … just to be polite … That is the case, and indeed I referred to my wife’s stepfather as my father-in-law. > [@TSBG](#): > > The “in law” part implies a relationship created by the legal marriage to a spouse, and you can’t have a relationship with a dead man. That was my thinking as well. Here a contrived hypothetical along the same vein: A woman becomes pregnant but is not married to the father. The father is married to wife W. Wife W dies during the pregnancy, then the child is born. Is W the stepmother of the child? There was never a step-relationship established, and I’m not sure it can happen posthumously. ---
**Author:** ![Shagnasty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9dc877/32.png) [@Shagnasty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shagnasty)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2016, 5:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-laws/775823/7 "2016-12-29T05:16:02Z")
> [@CookingWithGas](#): > > There was never a step-relationship established, and I’m not sure it can happen posthumously. Yes it can. People can make up their own rules but their are genealogical standards that apply in general for most people. Do you have any great-great grandparents? Of course you do because you are here. Did you ever meet them? ---
**Author:** ![TSBG](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/77aa72/32.png) [@TSBG](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TSBG)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2016, 7:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-laws/775823/8 "2016-12-29T07:57:31Z")
But your great-grandparents have a different relationship with you–a direct genetic one. The parents of your wife don’t have that with you. They do with your biological children, but not with you. It may be that there should be a term to describe the fact that MIL/FIL have a genetic contribution to your descendants. But in common usage, I suggest that the terms MIL/FIL describe an extended family relationship which may or may not be a happy and fruitful one, rather than an expression of genetic kinship as seen in your children. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2016, 12:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-laws/775823/9 "2016-12-30T00:31:45Z")
My wife’s Dad died when she was a pre-teen. Her mom remarried a couple years later. That fellow died while my wife was in high school. I met my wife a decade later & married her a few years after that. So now I have a father-in-law and a step-father-in-law that I’ve never met? Both of whose deaths greatly precede me meeting, much less marrying, my wife? Bzzzt!!! I’m gonna side with \*\*TSBG \*\*here. Those people are, maybe, in some extremely artificial Miss Manners sense my in-laws. As far as I’m concerned they’re my wife’s father and her step-father. To me they are nothing. A nullity. They’re merely an empty position on the personnel wiring diagram. They are no more my in-laws than is the third man her Mom never met nor married but could potentially have done so. ---
**Author:** ![kayaker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kayaker/32/441_2.png) [@kayaker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kayaker)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2016, 5:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-laws/775823/10 "2016-12-30T17:47:40Z")
What do you call your in-law relatives post-divorce? I haven’t spoken to my ex-wife in 15 years; neither has her brother, yet he and I are great friends and socialize regularly. Ex-brother-in-law? (that’s how I describe him). ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2016, 6:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-laws/775823/11 "2016-12-30T18:45:51Z")
Brother-ex-in-law is better. It attaches the ex- to the part that’s changed. IOW … He’s still yo bro; he’s just not connected to you by a steenkin’ piece of paper. Y’all don’t need no steenkin’ piece of paper. ---
**Author:** ![DrCube](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a3d4f5/32.png) [@DrCube](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrCube)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2016, 7:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-laws/775823/12 "2016-12-30T19:51:16Z")
My wife’s father died before we got married (but not before we met – he didn’t like me much but helped me replace the heater core in my old Comet once anyway). I’d consider him my father in law, and my son who never met him considers him his grandpa. Anyway, my wife’s mom married another guy later and that guy was never “step dad” to my wife, who was an adult by that time. So to me he was just “my mother in law’s husband”. So I do think there’s some leeway in what you call people. In my opinion, “step dad” just doesn’t fit for a guy who didn’t enter the picture until we were all adults. Maybe if we had liked him more or had a closer relationship it would be different. But he was a jerk and mother in law divorced him a few years ago. Now she’s married again, and it’s even weirder for a 35 year old to start calling a sixty year old person you recently met “step dad”. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2016, 9:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-laws/775823/13 "2016-12-30T21:32:53Z")
This too. My Dad remarried when I was about 35. That woman was his wife. In no sense was she my step-mother. She was a pleasant enough person, but she and I had no parent-child role at all. When Dad died she went her way and Dad’s descendants went their way. No hard feelings; just no real relationship. ---
**Author:** ![TSBG](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/77aa72/32.png) [@TSBG](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TSBG)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2016, 9:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-laws/775823/14 "2016-12-30T21:55:43Z")
Another angle on this, my wife’s mother has been with her current husband for about 25 years, married for about 20. This guy didn’t raise my wife at all but he has always been closer to me and our daughter than my wife’s father (now deceased). There are a lot of reasons for the way these relationships worked out the way they did that I won’t get into, but my technical stepfather-in-law is a lot closer to me than my actual father in law ever was. I’ve always reflexively referred to him as my father in law, and now that my “actual” father in law is gone I don’t even bother correcting myself. And though there’s no genetic connection, my daughter has always considered this man more her grandpa than her genetic one. ---
**Author:** ![Giles](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/giles/32/60_2.png) [@Giles](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Giles)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2016, 7:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-laws/775823/15 "2016-12-31T07:22:27Z")
In my case, my wife never met my father-in-law, since he died before she was born. (Her widowed mother never remarried, so the family tree is nor complicated by a stepfather.) ---
**Author:** ![guizot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guizot/32/3636_2.png) [@guizot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/guizot)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2016, 7:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-laws/775823/16 "2016-12-31T07:31:55Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#): > > Brother-ex-in-law is better. It attaches the ex- to the part that’s changed. What about his children? Are they now ex-nephews and and ex-nieces? ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2016, 6:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-laws/775823/17 "2016-12-31T18:19:00Z")
As we’ve talked about many times over the years, English is pretty sloppy compared to most other languages in distinguishing between blood relatives and relatives-by-marriage. We English speakers just dip our toes into the water by tacking “in law” onto a couple of close relationships but not onto the rest of them. And terms like “brother in law” apply equally to my sister’s husband and to my wife’s brother; two very different relationships. So my answer is this: Was (e.g.) she your niece-in-law before? If not, then not. If you did, however eccentrically, refer to her as your niece-in-law before, then niece-ex-in-law would be an equally good term to use post the divorce.