My mother-in-law was/is actually pretty awesome. Even as an ex-mother-in-law. Both my in-laws were pretty awesome. I felt shittier for disappointing them than I did for disappointing my wife.
That said, I've heard enough in-law stories to know my situation was rare.
Good on ya, MZ. The house condition sounds like the state of my grandfather's house after he died and my mom had her two "friends" and their shit-factory rat-dogs move in. All of them, mom included, were hoarders and none of them ever cleaned. We wound up ripping up all the carpet and just burning it. And now my half-brother is living there and hasn't paid me a dime of the rent we agreed upon. It's a tough situation -- I don't want to evict him, and frankly he's doing me a service by keeping the place from becoming even more of a wreck. But he's not really fixing it up either, which was part of the plan. And he's not paying me, so it's gonna be a stretch to pay the property taxes which are coming due in a few months. And he's supposed to be saving up to get a mortgage and buy it from me down the road, but he can't seem to hold down a job and his credit is shit. *sigh*
That house is the one I grew up in, and it's really hard to see the condition it's deteriorated to. It's also the only asset of any value that I own, and it's my kids' college fund basically. I'll never live there again, because lolfuckno not moving back to that wretched town.