My late wife has a brother. Is he still my brother-in-law and what’s his wife’s relation to me? Sister-in-law?
In the long run, it depends on what you want it to be.
It would be interesting to know what exactly “in-law” means in a legal sense, although I presume it’s context-dependent (and perhaps also dependent on the state you’re in).
If you’re the mayor of your home town, you probably shouldn’t award either of them any no-bid contracts.
sorry to hear about your wife:(
No formal relation, since you’re no longer married to his wife. He’s a former BIL. His wife wasn’t your SIL and still isn’t.
My brother died ten years ago. Since he and his wife remained married (and apparently happily) until death did they part, I consider that she is still my sister-in-law and always will be.
In contrast, my other brother got divorced about 30 years ago, making her his ex-wife (although they have been on amicable terms ever since). So I consider her my ex-sister-in-law.
Despite the term “in law”, there’s nothing legal about these terms. They mean whatever the culture deems them to mean. In the OP’s specific case those people can be ex-, former- or current in-laws as you choose.
We’ve had discussions in the past about relations-by-nmariage and have found that different cultures have very different terminology. E.g. some differentiate between brother of spouse and spouse of brother. English calls both “brother in law”.
Also IIRC we found that US folks differed on whether the spouse of a sibling of a spouse was or wasn’t a brother/sister in law. Some folks said yes, others no. **Chefguy **and I would be on opposite sides of this divide. He said “no”, I say “yes”. IMO there’s no way to determine who is more right.
Actually, a Google search (by me, a layman) indicates that the question posed by the OP (whether death ends an in-law relationship, called affinity) has been addressed by courts and laws multiple times. Some rulings say that the relationship ends on the death of the spouse, while others say that it continues (or perhaps it continues if there are children). The issue comes up with regard to marrying one’s wife’s sister (is that incest?), inheritance law or the right to file a lawsuit.
But in general I’d say to the OP that both he and his late wife’s brother both loved her, and that should be enough to sustain some sort of relationship.
True enough. The usual definition of ‘brother-in-law’ is (a) the brother of your wife, or (b) the husband of your sister. Depending on one’s relationship with those people after a death will depend on the relationship with them prior to the event.
My dad has one brother, and had one sister (the sister passed away in 1976 or so).
The sister married a man whom I grew up calling my uncle, and my dad (correctly) considered this man his brother-in-law all the way up to my uncle’s death last week. And my mother also considered this man her brother-in-law (until her death in 2009). Again (in my view) correctly.
Oddly, the woman who my dad’s brother married is considered a sister-in-law by my dad. But was NEVER regarded as a sister-in-law by my mother.
Not true. See definition #3.
While customs are changing somewhat on this matter, it is still relatively rare for an English-speaker to call the spouse of one’s brother a brother-in-law. The more common term for that relationship is “sister-in-law”.