The puzzler: What is the minimum number of individuals that it would take to hold these “titles”: My father’s brother-in-law, my brother’s father-in-law, my father-in-law’s brother, and my brother-in-law’s father?
The purported answer: With the appropriate arrangement of families and marriages, one person can have all those roles.
I can’t seem to find that appropriate arrangement. Can you give me one?
If your father married his sister he’d be his own brother in law. If your brother married his own sister your father would be his father-in law. If you married your uncle’s daughter your father would be your father in law’s brother, and we already established that your brother married your sister, so he’s your brother in law, and his father is your father too!
Ludovic’s solution works, but there are also solutions that would be legal in at least some US states.
If you count half-sibling’s SO’s as pure in laws, it would work fairly easily.
You have a brother and a sister.
Your father has a sister, your aunt.
Your aunt is married. Her husband is your uncle.
Your aunt and uncle have a son and a daughter, your first cousins.
Your brother and sister are married to those first cousins.
Your uncle (by marriage) has a brother.
You’re married to that brother’s daughter. (No blood relation at all.)
Your uncle (by marriage) fulfills all four roles.
Or -
You have a brother and sister.
Your mother has two brothers.
Her older brother has a daughter and a son - your siblings marry them
Her younger brother has a daughter - you marry her
Mother’s older brother is now:
[ul]The brother of your father’s wife: father’s brother-in-law
[li]The father of your brother’s wife: brother’s father-in-law[/li][li]The father of your sister’s husband: brother-in-law’s father[/li][li]The brother of your wife’s father: father-in-law’s brother[/ul][/li]Nice! 