She began insulting me, but my husband interrupted her, asking her to apologize again. That was when my father-in-law got involved. She quieted and let her husband speak.
“Hans, listen to your mother. She has a certain intuition for these things,” Manny suggested calmly. I just shook my head at the man. He and I have never had problems, mostly because he was quiet. But I knew for a fact that he was his wife’s enabler. I was not sure if he actually believed I cheated or if he was just playing along.

“Dad! How can you say that? In our house? Right in front of my wife?” Hans questioned, and I recognized the pain in his voice. He wanted this moment to be special, but they had ruined it with these accusations.
Manny raised her hands. “There’s a simple solution here. You can get a DNA test, and we’ll see the truth,” he continued, shaking his head as if it was the simplest option in the world. I still couldn’t believe it, but I was tongue-tied.
“No!”
“YOU WILL GET THAT TEST IMMEDIATELY!” his mother burst out after being quiet for only a few minutes, and I flinched at that.
“That’s it. Get out of my house. If you don’t want to meet your grandson, that’s fine with me,” I told them and took my child to the nursery room.

I heard some more yelling, but my husband eventually made them leave. When the baby fell asleep, I went to the living room, and we talked for a while. We agreed that we would go low contact with them until they apologized.
Unfortunately, my mother-in-law convinced her side of the family that I had cheated and that the baby was not Hans’. We were getting messages from everyone. Some demanded we get a DNA test and others insulted me. People I hadn’t even met did this.
I finally broke down. I couldn’t take it anymore. I also saw the pain in my husband’s eyes every time he heard a notification on my phone. “Let’s do it. Let’s get the DNA test and shut them all up once and for all,” I told him, and we did.

Unsurprisingly, Hans was obviously the father, but we had to invite the in-laws to our house once again to give them the results.
“This can be tampered with. What did you do?” Georgia sneered at me after passing the results to her husband.
“I didn’t do anything. Hans took the baby on his own to get tested. I was not there at all,” I sighed.
“Mom, there’s the test you wanted. I’m the father. Now, will you stop this, and just enjoy your first grandchild?” my husband begged, and although he tried to hide it, I knew how much he had suffered. I hated her for it, but I would be civil for his sake.
“Fine,” she said but kept her arms crossed, not glancing at her grandson, who was on the living room crib we had bought. Hans’s head slumped, and I patted his back.
But Manny finally spoke up after surveying the results quietly for a while. “Wait a minute, Hans’s blood is B+? How come I never knew this?” he asked, looking at both her son and his wife.
Hans shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“Maybe, you forgot about it or saw a medical result that added that information,” I suggested, but Manny now focused entirely on his wife.
My mother-in-law was quiet once again, but her sneer had been wiped off. She was flustered. It was subtle. But I could tell.
“Georgia, why is our son B+?” he asked her slowly. Hans and I stared at each other in confusion.
“What’s going on now? What does my blood type matter?” he asked his parents, who refused to acknowledge him.
Finally, Manny said something; his eyes never strayed from his wife’s face. “Because both your mother and I are O+. Logically, you can’t be B+, but here,” he slapped the DNA results with one hand, “it says you are. So, I’m asking your mother. Georgia, what does this mean?”
My jaw dropped so low I thought I might have pulled a muscle. I never imagined this scenario in a million years. My eyes went to Georgia, who was looking at her husband quietly and wetting her lips nervously. She was also wringing her hands. Finally, she broke eye contact with him, closed her eyes, and confessed.
Hans was not Manny’s biological son. She had cheated during their marriage with a friend of the family. And finally, everything made sense.
“That’s why you accused me, right? You were projecting. You thought I was just as low as you,” I said, quirking one eyebrow at her. I felt my husband’s hand on my arm. My comment was a little harsh and added salt to the wound. But I was so angry. I couldn’t control it.
Georgia started sobbing, going into her typical histrionics until Manny stood up and walked out. She followed him, and we let them be. They had many problems to deal with, and who would want to get involved?
“Are you ok?” I asked my husband, hugging him from behind.
“I guess. Well, I don’t know how Dad and I will deal with this, but at least, we won’t have to worry about our questions regarding our son,” he replied, calmer than I expected.

“Still, it’s a lot to take in.”
“Yeah, but whatever. We’ll be fine, and you and our baby are all that matters now,” Hans added, turning around and putting his arms around me. I leaned my head on his chest and just took it all in.
If you’re wondering about my in-laws? Well, they got divorced, and the rest of the family found out why. It was a colossal disaster. To make matters worse, Georgia started dating her affair partner – Hans’s biological dad – and tried to introduce him to us. They had apparently kept in contact for years, and he knew he was Hans’s father. Crazy, right?
But my husband shut that down immediately. We decided to cut contact with her definitely afterward. Manny was his father. No one else. Even if he had enabled his hysteric wife for a long time, he was done with her and apologized to us for suggesting the DNA test in the first place. All was well with us. For now, at least.
You just never know what can happen in a family.

What can we learn from this story?

Don’t make accusations if you don’t have the proof to back them up. Georgia accused Barbara of cheating, but things turned on her when they did a DNA test. She had been projecting her own insecurities on her daughter-in-law, and her marriage was destroyed forever.
Extended family can be tricky, and you must know how to lower or cut contact. It’s not easy to stop talking to a family member, but your mental and emotional health is more important. Barbara and Hans did the right thing to cut his mother out of their life.
Share this story with your friends. It might brighten their day and inspire them.