Reddit Stories - DECEPTIVE STEPMONSTER_ The SICKENING Scheme to Steal a Home_

Episode Date: September 8, 2025

#redditstories #askreddit #aita #deceptivestepmonster #sickening #scheme #home #familySummary:In this thrilling tale, a family's peaceful life is shattered by a deceptive stepmother's sickening scheme to steal their home, causing chaos and heartbreak. Secrets unravel as trust is betrayed, leading to a gripping showdown of loyalty and deceit.Tags:redditstories, askreddit, reddit, aita, tifu, deceptivestepmonster, sickening, scheme, home, family, betrayal, trust, loyalty, secrets, thriller, drama, heartbreak, deception, showdown, chaos, grippingBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/reddit-stories--6237355/support.

I hope you enjoy this story. Wicked stepmother pretends to be sick numerous times to deceive her son and daughter-in-law into relocating, but when the scheme fails, she warns of legal action against her own son after genuinely injuring herself. I, a 24-year-old woman, received married to my boyfriend of five years, Mark, 25M, two weeks ago. I've known as family and most of them like me, even my mother-in-law, Julie, 47F, used to like me until we told her that we won't be living with them after our wedding. I don't know why it came as a shock to her that we didn't want to move into my in-law's place after marriage since we'd always lived separately. Mark and I got an apartment right after college ended and that's how we've been living for five years

now. His parents have a trucking business and are pretty comfortable so they have a two-story house of their own with enough rooms for themselves, their kids, and their grandkids too. It had been designed by my husband's grandpa and then his dad had added more rooms as their own family grew so the house means a lot to them. Mark has two sisters, one older by three years and one younger by two years. His older sister has been married for three years now and even has a one-year-old son. She's continued to live at her parents' house with her husband and son and my younger sister-in-law also lives with her parents. So it was expected of us to live with them too, but they never discussed it with us and just took it for granted that we'd be living with them. After the engagement,

while we were preparing for the wedding, that's when my mother-in-law brought this up with me and I told her that we wouldn't be moving into their house after the wedding. She just casually asked me when I planned on shifting our stuff from our current apartment to their house so she could start cleaning the rooms because Mark's room hadn't been lived in since he left for college. Then I told her that we weren't moving and she seemed surprised,

as well as my father-in-law, but he didn't say anything and neither did Mark's sisters. But Julie had a lot to say about it and lectured me for about half an hour about the importance of family values. That I shouldn't be breaking a home apart and also that if I didn't live with them, it would become very difficult for me to handle a baby on my own and survive my pregnancy by myself. So I gave her some more bad news at the time and told her that this wasn't my decision alone. It was Mark who didn't want to go back because he liked living with me in our apartment

and soon enough, once we were financially better off, we'd probably move into a house of our own. It'd take a few years but it would happen for sure. Mark wasn't present in the room at the time of our discussion and when he came back, Julie took him aside to speak to him in private. I knew it could be nothing good since her face was already very sullen after I told her that we wouldn't be moving in with her and then after a while, I heard faint noises of shouting coming from their room so I knew that they were fighting about this. When Mark and his mom finally came back to the living room, both of them looked extremely upset

and Mark announced that we were leaving very abruptly. On the drive back home, he told me that he and his mother had had this conversation earlier as well and he'd always maintained that he wouldn't be moving back to the house at any point because he didn't like living with a bunch of people. He didn't hate his family like his mother was making it out to be but he needed his privacy and he needed his time alone with me. Even at our own house, Mark would occasionally retreat to the bedroom to read in silence or just have some alone time and I'd do my thing in the living room. It wasn't necessary for us to be fighting to get some me time and we believed in letting people.

have their space, which is why Mark and I found it so easy to live together because we didn't constantly smother each other. However his family and especially Julie was guilty of doing exactly that so he knew that living with his family in their house would mean that he would have to constantly make sacrifices with his personal space, privacy, and time throughout his life like he had to do in his childhood and even in his teenage years. His always had this never-ending need to know what her kids, and especially her son, were up to it every single moment in the day and it all felt a little crazy to him because he didn't think it was fair for her to constantly intrude and meddle in her personal life which she'd do in the past. Like go through his stuff when he wasn't home

and even occasionally use his phone or computer at home. When he'd confront her about it. She'd dismiss it by saying that she just wanted to know so she could protect him because she loved him and he ended up having to accept it because he'd start feeling overwhelmed and guilty while asking for some space from his mother who seemed to love him so much. He wasn't willing to make those compromises anymore during his adult life as well, and that's why he'd moved out in the first place. After the fight with his mother about where we'd live once we were married, he and I didn't speak to his mother for some time, although we kept in touch with the rest of his family. They'd been wise enough not to meddle here. But then a couple of weeks later, Julie came to

our apartment to make things right. We apologized to both of us for assuming things and then arguing with us about it in the months leading up to our wedding. We fixed things and were back on good terms for the rest of the days. Our wedding went beautifully without a hitch and we thought everything would be just fine, but that's not how it's been for the last few days after our marriage. Two days after our wedding, Julie called us in the middle of the night and told us that she was having trouble breathing and would have to be rushed to the hospital. We told her we'd be right there, but she insisted that we come home first. We were in a state of panic so we didn't question and both of us drove as fast as we could to my in-law's house. Upon reaching there,

We were told by Julie that her breathing issues had subsided and she felt kind of better but said that we needed to spend the night there so she could feel better. We were almost 100% sure that she just cried Wolf to trick us into coming over and spending the night there but we didn't say anything because nobody else in the family was saying anything either. We didn't want to offend her in case she was telling the truth so we spent the night there and left the next morning. Then this happened again a couple of days later and this time.

She said that her nose was bleeding profusely and it refused to stop. This time we were prepared and told her that we'd meet her at the hospital, but she said that she wasn't going to the hospital because she was too exhausted and had their family doctor come over to see her. Once again, she insisted that we come over because it apparently made her feel relieved and safe. I don't doubt that it does, but it was beginning to feel really manipulative at this point and of course, when we got there, she was perfectly fine. We couldn't even say anything because she hugged us and told us that she was so happy to see us.

It's very difficult to call someone out for lying and manipulating us when they're squishing you with their hugs and yet again, we spent the night at their house against our will. By then we'd caught on and I think so had the rest of my husband's family because they'd just stand there like silent spectators while Julie would welcome us. So all of us knew that we'd been deceived and manipulated into coming over to spend the night but nobody said anything. We knew we were being pushed into doing something we didn't want to do and eventually, this would mean that she'd bring up the topic of moving in with her so we needed to

to put an end to this. So when three days ago, she called us up yet again, I convinced my husband to let it slide and switched off our phones so she couldn't contact us. Unfortunately, we'd forgotten that there was nobody at home that night and Julie actually was on her own. Her daughters and their families were out of town attending the wedding of one of their friends and her husband was working late. She'd called us half an hour after midnight and that's when we'd turned off our phones and

gone to sleep. We didn't find out until the next morning. what had really happened in this time, something actually had taken place, but we hadn't been there to help her out. The next morning, when we woke up for work, we turned our phones on and saw about a dozen texts from both my mother-in-law and father-in-law. My mother-in-law was requesting us to come by because she'd apparently skidded and fallen off the stairs. She couldn't get up because her ankle was all twisted, but, thankfully her phone had fallen just a couple of inches away from her so she was able to grab it to call us. She'd tried to call her

husband first, but he hadn't answered so then she called us. I don't understand why she didn't just call 911 first, but I didn't say that to anyone because Mark's really upset and so is my father-in-law. He texted us this morning to tell us that he was disappointed in our behavior and a bunch of other texts telling us that we needed to be a little more grateful that we had such a loving person in our family even if it meant having to put up with her overbearing nature. When we found out that she'd fallen and hurt herself, we rushed over to their house where she was out of guilt and there, we first ran into my father-in-law who was very annoyed with us. He told us that she'd eventually called 911, had to be taken to the hospital all on her own,

and driven back home by a bunch of strangers with none of her loved ones. His phone's battery was dead so he hadn't been able to receive her calls and we turned our phones off on purpose. There was no point in her calling her daughter since they weren't even nearby and so, she just had to deal with this all on her own with none of her family by her side and she was very upset about it. He warned us that she was in no mood to talk to Mark, but he insisted on seeing her, mostly out of guilt and because deep down, he did love his mom. I liked Julie too, but I just didn't want to live with her. We went ahead anyway and decided to speak to her so we could apologize, but we'd underestimated just how pissed she was at what had

happened. As soon as we entered her room where she was resting, she yelled at us to get the hell out and that she didn't even want to see our faces right now. I left the room because she seemed a little too hysterical, but my husband stayed and tried to pacify her. I could hear everything from outside the door, and he was trying his best to explain the situation to her. He told her that he'd forgotten that everyone else would be busy that night, and so he'd switched his phone off,

but we'd only done that after she called us the first time, so she knew that we'd switched our phones off to avoid her. She brought that up to argue, and so Mark was forced to confront her about the previous, times that she'd called us urgently even when there had been no medical emergency at all. He told her truthfully that this time, we'd actually believe that there was no problem like the other times and so we ignored her calls and went to sleep. Now that the truth was out, we expected her to at least acknowledge it and own up to it, but instead, she lashed out at

Mark even more for questioning the truthfulness of her previous claims that she was sick and needed us to be there for her. She told him that he'd failed as a son and even told him that she was going to sue him. At that point, I felt like it was necessary for me to defend my husband because it wasn't fair for her to put all the blame on him when she had also played a part in creating this situation. I went back into the room and tried to tell her as calmly and politely as I could that if she hadn't cried Wolf and manipulated us the first two times, then maybe we wouldn't have

doubted her this one time when the emergency was genuine. I didn't want it to come off like I was blaming her for this situation, even though it was partly her fault. So I tried to make it sound like we were all at fault here so we could just be done with this. She waited for me to finish and glared at me while I was speaking, then told me that she didn't even consider me a part of her family so me turning up or not made no difference to her anyway. That stung, but I still didn't back down and told her that whether or not it mattered to her.

Both my husband and I were sorry about what happened, but it would be unfair for her to threaten us with a lawsuit when she'd made some mistakes here too. She ignored that altogether and went back to talking to Mark and told him that she needed some time to think and wanted us both gone right now. Mark was very disappointed and so was I. We left the house and while I headed to work, Mark went back home. I moved on with my day but I still felt bad about what had happened. It's been two days now and while I've been able to go back to normal, Mark is still upset and

he's taking this very hard. I tried to talk to him about this and insisted that it wasn't really his fault. But he said that he feels awful about what happened with Julie and is taking all the blame upon himself. Nobody else from his family has reached out to check up on him either and I thought that was odd so I decided to call my father-in-law to talk about this. This morning we spoke and he told me that Julie was still upset and he didn't think apologizing right now was going to help.

He wasn't supposed to tell me this but she was actually really angry, more than sad, and was planning on going no contact with Mark. I was a little alarmed when I heard that because I felt like if she cut him off then part of that would be my fault too. I don't think that what happened was entirely our fault and so the way that Julie was acting made me feel like she was taking things too far. I know how sad Mark is and he's beating himself up for this. And because he feels bad about it, I feel bad about it too because I was the one who

convinced him not to answer Julie's call the other day. I had my reasons but even then, I don't understand what to do now. Ida for convincing my husband not to answer my mother-in-law's call after she manipulated and tricked us into staying over at her place by pretending to be sick two times previously. Update 1. Hello, guys. Firstly, thank you for commenting and reaching out to us. I didn't expect so many people to read and react to my post, but I'm thankful that you guys did. I made my husband go through the comments on my original post too and now he's finally feeling a little better since most people agree that he wasn't wrong in ignoring his mother's calls. She'd already lied to us twice and we hadn't said a thing, so of course, what else were we supposed to think? As for the lawsuit, we're not too worried and I'm 100% sure that she was

bluffing to scare my husband. Mark's a really sensitive guy and he can't stand it when people are mad at him, especially when it's people he's close to. So Julie acting this way with him hurt him and her threatening to sue him for neglecting her made him feel even worse about what it happened. We talked and he told me that he really thinks that we should have been there and I agree with him, we should have been there under normal circumstances, but that's the problem. The circumstances were not in Julie's favor and that was her own fault. She was the one who was crazy enough to lie to us the first two times and that's why all of this happened at all. It's not fair for Mark to take the blame all on himself and for Julie to let him. A good mother would

never have put us in a position like this at all. I'm not denying that it. I'm not denying that he's Julie loves Mark but her way of expressing it has been really skewed and totally messed up. I don't think it's healthy and so Mark and I have come to the conclusion that now, if she does want to go no contact then we should probably let her. There's not much that we can do because she's already made up her mind about this. He has apologized several times now, but she refuses to see him or even talk to him and I think she's actually waiting for us to move in with her to compensate but that's not going to happen. She cannot guilt-trip us into moving in with her and living in the family home because we'd made it very clear, right from the beginning,

that all of us living together under one roof was never on the cards for us. I'd been living away from my parents ever since college and so had Mark and we like we're not going to do something we don't want to just so that Julie forgives us. Most importantly because the thing that she's making us feel so guilty for isn't even our fault. Mark has said that he's going to stop trying to contact her now and if she does reach out to him to talk to him, he's going to keep it civilized, but he's not going to entertain any demands that she's bound to make. Update 2, it's been close to nine days since we last met Julie and she yelled at us both for

disappointing her. In my last update, I said that Mark and I were not going to contact her or apologize to her anymore since we weren't the ones who were completely at fault here. And we'd thought that she would be the one to reach out to Mark if she didn't hear from him for a while. Turns out that we were right about all the things that we'd guessed and she had indeed been planning to hold that one incident against us to make demands that we probably would have given into, had we not already discussed the possibility of her trying to guilt trip and manipulate us into

moving to their house. Today, she called Mark while he was at work and he answered since it was during his lunch break that she'd called. She told him that she'd thought things through and had decided to finally forgive us both for screwing up colossally and Mark thanked her. Then she went straight to business. and said that even though she had forgiven us and understood our side, she now wanted us to move in with her so something like this wouldn't take place again. At that point, her agenda was pretty clear.

She wanted to first make us feel guilty for whatever had happened and then used that guilt against us to manipulate us into doing her bidding. It was sly and calculative which is something I never would have expected from Julie because, in the past, she'd always been really sweet and supportive of us. But now, she was demanding that we move in with her or else she'd be forced to go no contact with us. Mark said no without missing a beat and told her that he appreciated her for giving us, but he also stood up for himself and reminded her that she'd lied to us twice already before the incident and us deciding not to show up when it counted had a lot to do with her previous attempts to lie to us. So it wasn't fair for her to dump the entire blame onto us and

act like she was flawless in this situation. She got mad and called him ungrateful and selfish and then went on to accuse me of turning him against his own family and forcing him to choose between the two. That's never been the case and Julie knows it but she just needed a scapegoat because she didn't want to believe that Mark was his own person now and wasn't obliged to spend every living moment with his mom. She couldn't handle that and so she dragged me into their argument which made it even bigger. After Julie started talking crap about me, Mark disconnected the the call without another word because he knew there was no point in trying to talk to her anymore. She'd made up her mind and wasn't open to listening to anyone else's perspective and besides,

he didn't want to waste his lunch break arguing with her. He told me about all of this a couple of hours ago and I'm glad that he chose to stand up, not just for us, but also for himself. I know it must have been really hard for him because he grew up in an environment where family was everything. He'd been taught right from his childhood that family comes first and he was never to do anything that hurt his family. But something that he said today while talking to me about all of this touched me. He said that his mother was his family, but I was also his family and he needed to stand up for me more because I was the family he'd chosen to have and he owed this to me. I don't cry easily, but that made me tear up a little bit because it was just really sweet.

He and I are probably not going to hear from Julie or the rest of his family for a while now because she was really pissed off on the call. But we're honestly okay with that. Update 3, Hey, guys, it's been almost a week since my last update and Julie has been acting pretty horrible but she hasn't said or done anything to us directly yet. She's blocked both of us so we can't see her posts and stuff, but she has been sharing a lot of sad posts on Facebook and claiming that she's lost a really important member of her family. She isn't naming Mark but when people, mostly her relatives, are texting her to check on her, she's telling them about how heartless Mark is and how I'm responsible for tearing their

apart by poisoning him against them. She hasn't told anyone how she tried to manipulate us first so we'd come live with her but sure, with the bad guys. It's fine with us though because most people are coming to us with this to ask if it's true and once they get the whole picture, they don't believe Julie anymore. She's always had a tendency to exaggerate things so nobody's taking her seriously. I don't know how she takes herself seriously, to be honest. But whatever, Mark's happy and so am I so none of these things should matter to us anymore. We're trying not to let her pettiness get to us, but if she messes with us on a personal level then she'll have hell to pay for.