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Well, I will share an incident I am not proud of, but a good "Never Again" lesson learned:

I accepted a request from my cousin (male, I will refer to as BM) and his girlfriend (MK) and 2 children to stay with me for a few weeks until he could collect his first paycheck and get his own place; I felt bad that he had burned all of his bridges and had nowhere to go. Well it wasn't long before my wife and I noticed there were about 24 dvd's missing from our collection; it's easy to notice as they way they are packed into the drawer. I approached him immediately to have him return them as they were finished watching them and was told they would. The dvd's never showed up and I decided to confront him. He explained that they had no movies of mine and they certainly didn't steal them, however he comes from a flock that has been highly accused of theft in the past, so at this point I am not believing him but I won't throw him out in the street with his kids either.

Then things take a slight turn, Facebook becomes involved. My wife posted a vague comment about a missing movie on her sister-in-laws page, and my cousin, BM, responds as well as leaving a negative post about my wife on his page the very next day, while they are still living with me. We decided it was time for them to go, since my wife is now furious and she is there alone with a hotheaded female, MK. My wife confronts MK in our home about the trash talking about her on FB and they end up having a venting session which seemed to end on good terms, however MK left the house with her children; a friend picked her up. The friend ends up jumping into the facebook argument and the trash is now flying in all directions. , (please note I did not partake).

BM and MK are now steadily trash talking my wife whom is firing back while I am face palming and trying to find my missing property in the horrible mess of a spare bedroom they left me. I decided I was mad enough to place all of his belongings in my driveway for him to pick up and waited for him. He thought it was best, for some reason, to bring the same woman whom injected herself into the facebook fray with degrading comments towards my wife, whom pulled her car into my driveway and with help from BM was loading it up. She was smug, laughing and talking load so my wife was sure to hear from the doorstep and as I noticed she was visibly mad I decided to tell her to "close your car doors get in your car and get off my property right now; you've packed enough". My wife was behind me saying the same thing: "She needs to get the hell out of here". The woman, instead of leaving, decides to approach and get into my wife's face raising her hand at her. There was some hair and face grabbing before I could separate them (it happened really fast). I pushed them both away from each other, middling myself, and the woman took a tumble into the yard and gets back up coming at my wife again. At this point, lame-brained BM decides to help restrain her and I told them both to leave. I called the cops and had them take a report of the incident, whom filed an assault record against the woman. They were long gone by the time the cops came out.

I am unsure of the process from here out, but I was told an investigator would call and take our statements. We said we would like to not press charges against her for assault, so who knows.

Now for the Never Again:
1. I will never again allow a person to come onto my property knowing he/she has ill will towards any of my family. Had I told her to turn around and leave immediately the scuffle would have never happened.
2. I will never again have someone move into my house for any period of time that is not a "sleepover". I also learned in this process that if you let someone stay with you, officially, you have to evict them from your home; you cannot have them just forceably removed. An eviction has to be written, and they have 30 days to respond, and if they dont I have to get an eviction authorization from a judge, etc, etc...

Learn from my mistakes.

No good deed goes unpunished.
Been there in your shoes, lesson learned.

That simply sounds like a typical day in my first marriage to me.

Hardly noteworthy.

Not belittling the impact that it had on you, but I am glad to hear that nothing horrible appears to have arisen during the incident.

Just a small tidbit from the 'Been there, done that' point of view.

a. Change all of the locks
b. Change the alarm code and password
c. Change all of your online passwords -- if they are stored in your computer, they may be compromised
d. Monitor your credit card and bank statements
e. Check your other accounts for charges they may have incurred on the 'way out' -- i.e. Pay-per-view
f. If you have a wireless network and they had the security key, change it
g. If they ever drove your car, go over it with a fine tooth comb, you might find something that could get you in a lot of trouble. If you ever left spare keys at home, they could also have keys to your automobiles.
h. Get a no-contact order based on the assault.

a, b, and g above are what cost us dearly in both time and money!

It is bad enough to get hosed by a stranger, however, when it is family it really stings. For us, we never thought about any of the above items because it was family. Now we know better!!!!

bzo311,

Glad you kept a level head during this. BTDTGT (Been There Done That Got the T-shirt) It's hard enough integrating 2 people when you are getting married but having relatives live you... Makes me shiver. Make sure you change all of the locks, keys, passwords, codes and make sure you clean everything out - Cars, house etc just to make sure no little "surprises" were left behind.

Long time ago we were in that same situation. However, just to even the playing field we did have my sister in law, her husband and three kinds move from Arizona and stayed with us for 6 months. There were bumps and bruises an item broken and some lack of "cleaning" issues but all in all we did well. everyone tried to stay out of everyones path and eventually her husband got a job and they got their own house a few miles away. So it worked but you really have to have the right people and they have to be adults about it. I sure was glad when they left though!!

Thanks all. I appreciate all of your feedback. I will definitely be changing locks, passwords and take much of your other advise. Since the incident I have talked with my family member and he's said that the woman has also called the PD and filed a report, so who knows what will happen. I am assuming an investigator will come knocking for statements.

Again, thanks for your good advise.

been there, done that. wife had a friend (loose term) that was down on her luck. lived on our cough for 6 months mooching. finally got her to leave after she racked up a $600 cell bill we were furnishing her. it's hard to help people who don't want to help themselves.