Grandparent visitation decisions

Sorry so long, but…... I have been with my wife for 20+ years. In that time my mother-in-law and I have had a good relationship and she often spoke of how I was a great son-in-law. My wife’s brother has had a long history of selfishness and emotional outbursts. Over the years I have not witnessed them myself or had to get involved with them. Earlier this year, however, was not the case. During a family get-together my wife said something to him about a disrespectful comment he made to his mother. He proceeded to yell obscenities at my wife, in our house, in front of his teen daughters and our 6 yo son. Hearing the commotion from the other room I walked out and firmly told him to lower his voice, stop with the obscenities and have some respect in our house. He proceeded to shout in my face and after asking him twice to leave I put my hand on his shoulder to try to get him moving to the door. At this point a shoving match ensued. After a moment I saw my son hide behind a couch and start crying. I walked away from the altercation to comfort my son while he continued to shout obscenities and beat on doors and bushes. My mother-in-law got him to his car and left with him. I was shocked to learn later that evening that she was mad at me for “starting” a fight, and my wife (her daughter) for saying something to him. The next day I went to her house and calmly and respectfully tried to have a talk with her, but she gave me an attitude and accused me of starting the physical altercation. When I firmly denied pushing first she proceeded to scream at me, make false accusations and started to talk trash about my family. In the ensuing days, as my wife and I firmly stood behind one another, she continued to blame us and defend her son 100%. She claims that my wife had no right to say something and that I “pushed” first. My wife pointed out the fact that neither of them could have seen who pushed first because they were around a corner where it was impossible to see. My MIL continued over the next week to email and leave voice messages for my wife containing desperate lies, obviously in an attempt to split us up. These accusations included that I didn’t really want to marry my wife, that I was violent and controlling, violent abuse of our dog (who adores me),and being lazy and deceitful to my wife. Please keep in mind, I have never been accused of any of these things in the past, including by her, and anyone who has ever known me would fully attest to the contrary. It has been 8 months now and she continues to stand by all her accusations and has basically dis-owned her daughter (even through my wife’s recent diagnosis of a cancer recurrence, now as metastatic). She scoffs at our offers of going to some type of counseling or mediation.
This all brings me to a couple questions we have painfully struggled with for 8 months now. While it greatly bothers me to consider not allowing my MIL to have unsupervised visitation with our 6 yo son, I do not trust her given the all out, vicious lies she has said and obvious lack of good judgment. My wife feels the same but reluctantly balks at restricting her to supervised visits, I believe because of fear of her mother’s back-lash, but will agree to whatever I decide. Am I wrong for feeling this way? Would I be wrong to follow through with restricting visitation? How do you feel about the situation? What would you do?

Strictly speaking, if you were the first to lay hands on the brother in law, you started the physical side of the incident. Technically it's considered assault. From a hand on the shoulder or throwing a marshmellow at someone, any undesireable physical contact is assault. I seriuously doubt it'd be pursued that way, but strangers things have happened.

As to the issue of visitation, I wouldn't let the mother-in-law on the same block as my 6 year old (if I had one like) let alone be left unsupervised with him. Never underestimate an irraitonal person's thirst for revenge, or who they'll visit that desire upon. Attacking a proxy isn't at all uncommon in these kinds of things. If this is an ongoing issue with no reconcilliation, and she has some current visitation going on I'd definitely look into a termination of those visits until she sees sense again.

There are legal charges you can claim to pursue such legal restrictions like making terroristic threats. It's always illegal to threaten people so if she's threatening you that's sufficient to get the ball rolling.

Your MIL and BIL sound NPD (narcissistic)
Narcs can turn on a sixpence. You can be their 'bestie' and then a circumstance or disagreement happens and suddenly you are 'The Enemy' , without warning or good reason.
They will twist events, lie, and manipulate, have rages. Start a smear campaign against and make up all sorts of untrue crap.
Unless their attitude changes I would not allow unsupervised access. I would not allow access at all, they cannot be trusted.
A person who is slandering a child parents, making up vicious lies is poisonous.
I hope you don't live close to them!

Has you BIL always been a favourite child of your MILs?

Thanks for the replies, they both agree with what I've been saying, I guess I just needed to hear it from impartial people.

-- Thu Nov 21, 2013 4:58 pm --

hesDeltonCaptain, I don't mean it in a snotty way, I'm just saying I understand completely what Assault is. It is also someone screaming in your face so loud that they are spitting on you....

Yorkshirelass, Yes, that's how my wife feels. She certainly was treated very differently.