Just gross. Did mom intend to have all the guests at the wedding bedside to make sure the marriage was consummated? 
I can’t imagine that consummation would matter in a legal marriage-is-valid sense.
The couple was married in South Carolina, and according to this page “consummation” means living together, not bumping uglies on the wedding night.
If the marriage was invalid, then a person has a reason or grounds for an annulment. The marriage could be invalid because:
- It was never consummated (the two never lived together)
- One of the spouses was already married (bigamy)
- One of the parties was under 16 and wasn’t legally able to get married
If they weren’t living together prior to marriage, she might have legal (if not moral) ground. But the argument made in the article doesn’t seem to have a legal basis.
ETA: I looked up the case and found this article:
Apparently the mother hasn’t actually filed any legal paperwork to contest the marriage but rather a “memo” threatening to do so. It’s possible that she knows there is no legal basis for her claim and she’s just trying to bully her daughter’s widower into giving her all of the estate rather than just the half he offered to get her to stop harassing him. She might have seen his gesture as a weakness and is trying to take advantage.
People can persuade themselves of all sorts of silly stuff where money is involved and stress is high.
I had been managing my aged MIL’s financial affairs and much of her practical care as well for about a decade. I wasn’t a hands-on caregiver, but I arranged all the folks who were. I also did the little things the staff at the Independent Living place would / could not: take her for haircuts, replace bulbs in lamps, fix her computer, etc.
We had a long and successful track record together. She was a dear old lady and I’m happy to have been her friend and honorary family member all that time. To the point that I, a non-blood relative, was named by her as a significant beneficiary in her will. Totally by her doing, not mine. I never asked for, nor offered any opinion on, her decisions about that.
Meanwhile my wife = her daughter was slowly declining with advanced metastatic cancer. When my wife eventually died, Mom went (to use a technical psychology term) apeshit. She very quickly spiraled herself into a maelstrom of grief-driven paranoia that now that her daughter was gone, I would either abandon Mom, steal all Mom’s money, or get a new GF who would inevitably inveigle me to steal all Mom’s money and give it to the GF. Or maybe all those all at once. I of course had no intention of doing any such thing.
She caused quite a stir amongst her remaining downline of blood relatives, but fortunately they all knew me better than that and I was able to muster the calm to wait this out. Three to four months later the tempest had subsided, we were back to normal and she had sheepishly apologized for all the difficulties she’d caused.
She too has since died, but we had no further issues before then, nor any familial issues with the distribution of her estate. But boy howdy was it exciting around there for a couple of months right after my wife died.
This might have some similarity to on what’s going on in that South Carolina’s Mom’s head. Or she’s just a greedy jerk. I’d rather start charitable and be unpleasantly surprised.
I mean… Grief does make people act in weird ways. No two people grieve the same way. These shenanigans started a week after her daughter’s death. That might be something of an explanation if this woman doesn’t have a history of these sorts of things. (I have no idea, the sparse amount of detail in the articles I’ve read don’t shed a light one way or another.)
It sucks because the guy is grieving too. His wife died on their wedding day. He only got to be her husband for a number of hours when they had planned a life together. And it’s not like she died due to an aneurysm or a tree falling; it was homicide when someone else decided to get behind the wheel despite being intoxicated at 3 times the legal limit. So your wife is killed by a drunk on your wedding day and within a week you’re dealing with this legal crap from her mom.
I might have a tiny bit of sympathy for the mom if this stems from her grief, but I have a massive amount of it for the widower who has had a lifetime’s worth of shitty luck dumped on him over the course of a week.
Oh, yeah. Other than the late bride herself, he is definitely the most-harmed party here. And wacky Mom is doing her damnednest to further screw up his life at the worst possible time.
I’m not trying to say Mom is just a bit overstressed but otherwise a wonderful person. Her behavior, like my MIL’s, is/was way out of line.
I suppose I could say it is kinda predictable, sorta comprehendable, but not at all acceptable or excusable.
But your MIL’s actions were mitigated by grief and it sounds like she was otherwise a wonderful person, and who knows, maybe this is similar.
As I said in my first post. It might well be.
But it still doesn’t alter the fact that both my MIL and this woman in the news, were / are being very big bulls in very situationally fragile china shops. Which is unfortunate for all concerned.
I was big enough and mature enough to sit calmly by while the flail went on. And luckily it did burn out, not go on to rift her family, drive me off, get me sued, etc. etc. Which was certainly a plausible foreseeable outcome when this first blew up in my life.
I hope this settles down well for them. We shall see. I have more doubts about this one than I had in my scenario just based on the differences in the depth of our respective mutual histories, and some guesses about the personalities involved.
The other problem is that once lawsuits have been filed then it’s much harder to back off.
This asshole just preyed on vulnerable people for money and his own kicks. Pure evil, IMHO. I’m all for assisted suicide in cases of illness and such, but this is not at all the same thing as far as I can tell.
FDA thinks applesauce was deliberately tainted with lead. Apparently lead is cheaper than cinnamon on a per pound basis. More than 60 under-6s in the US have tested positive for lead poisoning after eating the applesauce pouches.
The plant was in Ecuador. The mistake was shipping the pouches to a destination with robust regulation, robust enough to detect lead at up to 500 times the acceptable limit. That wasn’t intended. They only wanted to poison kids in middle income and low income countries.
In my opinion, poisoning small children is bad.
In my opinion someone out there is due a brick to the face, and I agree.
Lead tastes like cinnamon? (don’t try that at home)
Lead tastes sweet - there’s even a compound called sugar of lead that in less enlightened times was used as both a sweetener and preservative. Toxic, of course, but apparently it tasted good. Note that every pouch shown in the article proudly proclaims “no sugar added” - just don’t ask what was added…
Probably not, but it might look like it. I’ve heard of counterfeit eggs, of all things, in China, made from gypsum and corn syrup for half the cost of a real egg. They look more or less right when you crack one open, but of course cook completely differently, but by then the scammer already has your money.
It’s also possible that the lead was in the form of lead acetate, which is sweet.
I had the same confusion*, but reading the linked article leads me to believe that the actual cinnamon used is tainted with lead. So, not so much substitution, as use of a suspect ingredient. Not sure of the mechanism by which such tainting takes place.
*lead MIGHT taste like cinnamon. I’m not in a position to say.
Why do you think I ate paint chips as a child?
I need to hear the “pro poisoning small children” side before I decide.
Are they small British children greedily asking for more porridge?
Porridge? Luxury! We had to make do with gruel.
