Pitting my future sister-in-law

A very appropriate autocorrect mistake. :wink:

@Superdude: Trust us older (i.e more abused by life) folks on this one. @Jasmine and @Dinsdale nailed it.

You said upthread your fiancée is super honest. I believe you. And, indirectly, I believe her too.

But super honest people can have a huge blind spot. They simply cannot conceive of the depths to which dishonest people will sink and the stunning nonchalance with which they will do so. I was once one of those super-honest ingenues who’s mostly learned to expect much lesser standards from the rest of humanity. Mostly; I still get blindsided now and again while all the other witnesses are saying “Well duh! What else would anyone expect from that rat but more crooked dealing?”.

FSIL may be able to hoodwink your future wife over and over before this learning sinks in.

OP, did you change your PIN? It seems to me I was at the bank one day without my debit card, but I had my statement and consequently the account number. In the lobby they input my info, I typed in my PIN, and voila! I may have had to show them ID, though I can’t remember.

Set a thief to catch a thief—if you aren’t one, you probably won’t think like one. It seems critical to figure out the truth before proceeding, but I wouldn’t know how to trust my judgment. It would be nice if you had someone at the meeting (who was not in that family) who could compare notes with you afterward for an objective take on things, at least.

It seems likely to me that FSIL has been in trouble before. If sister A gets in legal trouble, do the parents tell sister B? It probably depends. If sister A,14 years old, gives in to a dare and gets caught shoplifting, do parents tell 4 year old sister B? If sister A goes to counseling, gets help, seems to be back on the straight and narrow…do the parents sigh and decide never to tell anyone, because they want their daughter to have a normal life?

Unless I missed it, OP hasn’t stated that detail—fiancee’s parents, alive or dead? They may have taken the secret to the grave. But I can imagine scenarios where fiancee truly didn’t know, yet someone in the family did. OP, have you tried googling FSIL’s name?

And I come back to the future situation: if you marry fiancee, things will change. If FSIL isn’t invited to the party, are sisters C, D, and E going to pressure Mrs. Superdude? Not this year, probably…how about in three, five, or ten years? Do you think fiancee should cut off ties, or is it ok to see her but not in your home, or…? Do the rules change if you marry?

Years ago I would get cash at an ATM in a gas station. One day I went to get cash and I had no money in my account. Someone had put a device on that ATM that captured the info and used it to take out something like $60 at a time every two minutes until it was rejected for NSF. The bank suggested I set a limit on how much could be taken out in a day, which I did.

Yep. New card in case she wrote the other info down. New PIN

As far as the family situation, her mother is alive, but her dad died last year.

I’m with @LSLGuy on this one.

This was the first time that it has been exposed that the OP is aware of. I would first want to get some background from the OP’s fiancee about what might have triggered such a brazen crime - and that’s what it is: a crime.

I’d want to know what the SIL is going through. Is the family aware of any debts? Any hardship? Any mental illness or even that would trigger sudden depression?

I’d also want to know more about the SIL and fiancee’s relationship. I wonder if there’s been some sort of estrangement or dysfunction that hasn’t been disclosed to the OP. And OP, I hate to be this way, but I would start paying closer attention to your fiancee and keep one thing in mind at all times: you don’t just marry the person, you marry their family too. That’s a fact.

Keep the PIN to yourself for now (if that’s not going to rock any boats).

Yeah, if I were the OP I would seriously be reconsidering if I want to marry into that family. My wife’s family often makes me reconsider my marriage and they are just annoying. They don’t steal from me.

The thing is, YOU never really come first over family.

Since this got bumped, hey, superdude, did you or your wife ever talk to her sister?

My fiancée talked to her sister. Her sister is denying everything. Despite being caught on camera and identified by my fiancée, she’s still denying it all.

The bank won’t release the ATM footage to me, so I can’t confront her with the actual photographic evidence.

It’s starting to look like I may have to press charges.

I feel for you. My own brother is a lifelong criminal. Family drama is just so much worse when family members are actually committing crimes against each other.

I think that the way the rest of the family reacts to this will tell you a lot. But you have to press charges, nothing good will come out of not doing it. It sucks and I’m sure it’s the last thing you want to do.

You should think carefully about what you want your future with your fiancée to be. Pressing charges against her sister is likely going to make you an enemy with a family you may be spending a lifetime with. It would be better for your relationship to just take this as an expensive lesson about the sister’s character and not press charges. This doesn’t have to be the end of the relationship or anything. Plenty of families have a black sheep. Sometimes they are bad with money, sometimes they are into drugs, or whatever. You just found out about this one before you were married. If you press charges, it is going to create a tense situation which will last for a long time and your relationship will have to deal with that stress.

Crap, I’d really been hoping she’d come clean.

It’s just me, but I would have a hard time remaining a part of a family that expected me to just roll with it and suck it up. I would want some sort of reassurance from my fiance that she would protect me from shit like this in the future - I have no idea what form that reassurance would take, either, but I’d need it, whatever it is. A better man would probably be more forgiving but my belief is you marry the individual and their family, not just the individual. This is the family you’re marrying into, superdude.

I know that’s a hell of a thing to have to be confronted with, particularly if you your fiance has been everything you’d ever wanted in a woman up to this point. Marriage is good and bad, beautiful and ugly, and everything in between. I’ve got no dog in this fight but I gotta be honest: see a whole lotta potential ugly in this.

I may have missed it, but did you ever get an explanation from the sister as to what might have triggered this? Do her parents know?

Be prepared: if you file charges, be prepared for a massive tsunami of shit. I have absolutely no idea what I’d do if I were in your situation. My impulse would probably be to avoid charges - I philosophically don’t believe in getting government to solve family problems, but by no means are you bound by my or anyone’s way of dealing with it. You gotta be you.

If it were me, I’d probably tell the fiance that I’m having some second thoughts about marriage right now. It would be hard as hell - every bit as hard as pressing charges - but I’d probably cool my jets on the idea of marriage and explain that I have serious concerns about the kind of situation I’m marrying into. I wouldn’t expect her to cut her family out of her life, which is why I’d wonder how this gets resolved, but I think that it would have to be the family - mainly her family - that helps resolve it. And if they show no inclination in doing that, then fuck it - the whole thing is off.

The way I look at it, with my wife, the government doesn’t solve a family problem (her family); her family solves her family problem - and hopefully everyone can work together as a family to move forward. And be willing to forgive of course, but only when the situation’s been resolved.

My husband does. I’m glad he has stuck with me through 3 decades of “my family crap” as I call it. His family isn’t spotless, either, but nothing like the crap we’ve seen and went through with my family.

I knew he was a keeper the night (my 21 st birthday) my mom and an elder sister showed up totally drunk at his house (before I moved in with him). He was restrained and didn’t punch either when they were swinging at him nor call the cops (the house was like 4 blocks from the local PD).

I moved in the next day (we’d been dating for almost 1 year 1/2) , paid rent so his housemate w/couldn’t complain and then almost 2 years later* we got hitched. The 15th vs the 29th :smiley:

*We wanted to be certain, despite our families, that we could get along no matter what.

Yes. I’ve been married twice, and both times I was fortunate that the families were decent. Well, I guess “fortunate” isn’t the word; I’d have been really nervous about going through with either marriage if I did not get along with their families. I spent a lot of time with each family, even though my in-laws from my first marriage lived on the other side of the country from me and I rarely interacted with them in-person. I’ve been divorced for more than 10 years and I am still involved with that family because I have a daughter that lives with them. Fortunately things have almost always been cordial at the very least.

With my current marriage, my in-laws are really cool. I’m pretty much buddies with my father-in-law. My wife has extended family with some issues but it’s not a problem keeping out of that drama. And going the other way, my problems with my brother could certainly have caused trouble for either of my wives, but I haven’t had much of a relationship with him since before my first marriage. Neither of my children have ever met their uncle, nor will they.

Either the future sister-in-law needs help and should get help, or needs to be someone you somehow never interact with in any way (not allowed to go near anything you own, not given information about you or your habits, and so on). Otherwise you will be an easy and frequently accessible mark.

Here’s the least bad approach IMO. Not that it’s a good one; it’s s sucky one. But you’re in a sucky situation.

Talk to the entire extended family. Not all at once, but in whatever groups are natural. Your fiance plus her parents, then any siblings and their spouses. Tell them what happened, what evidence there is, and what FSIL said & did when confronted. Just the facts ma’am. Invite them to join you at the bank watching the video of her committing multiple felonies against you.

They’re either horrified at FSIL and totally supportive of you or they’re the opposite. I predict there’s not going to be a middle ground. In a big enough family you may find some of each, but any given individual will go hard one way or the other.

If you and future wife are prepared to move to the other side of the country, then you can withstand a couple of FSIL excusers. If not, not.

If anyone supports FSIL, press charges to the hilt. Let the courts evaluate and determine the reality here.

Despite some severely misguided advice upthread, you are not the bad guy here. Nothing you can do will make you the bad guy. You might be out of step with some very bad people, and they will be angry with you, but that’s a good thing. Knowing what you’re up against before you’ve got a marriage tied around your neck is essential.

When someone candidly shows you who they are, pay attention. FSIL did so, and handed you a perfect litmus test to apply to the rest of the family. They might be wonderful people and they might be disastrous enablers. Now is the time to invite each of them to candidly show you who they are.

You need to know the difference unless you and future wife are truly ready to disappear off the Earth to these people.

Good luck; you’re going to need it. I’m genuinely sorry you’ve been painted into this corner by a useless bag of shit.

Let’s start this off with an understanding that you’re not getting this money back, no matter what you choose. She isn’t admitting to the crime, and isn’t going to volunteer to give the money back.

If you press charges, she will be arrested, and you STILL won’t get your money back. The police aren’t going to raid her bank account or give you all the cash from her house. They’ll just arrest her, and she’ll spend more than $2,500 on lawyers and is definitely not going to up and volunteer to give the money back.

That means you’ll have to sue, which you’re sure to win, with a conviction / guilty plea on your side. And she still won’t give you the money back. You’ll have to file papers to garnish her wages and she’ll claim she can’t pay, and who knows if you’ll get a dime out of her, even to just pay for your lawyer.

You’re not the bad guy here, but it will look like you went scorched earth on her ass, and I’d bet after all that, you don’t get your money back anyway.

I meant to add: it’s possible that sister A’s misdeeds affected sister B in the sense that the parents went above and beyond to make sure sister B didn’t go down that path. Your fiancee may not have known what happened with FSIL back then, didn’t realize that’s why the parents were so adamant about that “Don’t steal” commandment, but she took it to heart. That could explain the McNugget thing.

Agreed. Families stick together but if you marry, first loyalty has to be to the spouse. Before siblings, before parents…even before children from previous relationships. Your spouse has to have your back.

I was asking Mrs. L what she thought about the situation and she said it’s an expensive lesson but the money’s gone, almost certainly not recoverable. You should not pursue charges if you really want to marry the woman. It’s unfair but you’ll always be perceived as the one who got FSIL in legal trouble.

I really don’t know what I would do in your situation.

Yeah…I wouldn’t want to deal with all that. But that’s me.