Contributed by Cindi Pearce, Catalogs.com Info Guru

The relationship between daughters-in-law and sons-in-law and their mothers-in-law is the butt of many jokes.

Unfortunately, all too often this relationship is fraught with tension and sometimes pure hatred. If you simply cannot bear spending time with your mother-in-law because she is a ghoul you need to figure out some way to permanently avoid her.

Here is a list of our top ten ways to avoid your mother-in-law, permanently:

10. Assume a Foreign Identity

When she calls, feign a foreign accent. Pretend that you do not understand her. Lay it on thick. Pretend not to know who your husband – her son – is. Do not answer to your given name, of course, because you are … Fatima from the Arab Republic and you do not speak English. If you are really good this should fluster the heck out of her and hopefully she will hang up, not call back and not visit. If she does call back, resume the accent and this time you should get very irritated with her because she is interrupting you and you have simply run out of patience. Hang up on her. If confronted later on deny all knowledge of Fatima or of incoming phone calls. Tell her you were in Hoboken.

9. Vacation

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If you can afford it, send her on vacation, a long one, far away. Purchase a one-way ticket only. Don’t tell her. Let her figure that out on her own, much later.

8. Serious Illness

Tell her, with a sense of panic, that you have some highly infectious disease that there is no known cure for. Do some Internet surfing and come up with an esoteric disease that no one has ever heard of but which exists and that will convince her that you are to be avoided at all costs. Express how sad you are at not being able to spend quality time with her but you have been informed by your doctor that the quarantine period on this particular disease is six months, at a minimum. That will give you plenty of time to figure out a new plan of action.

7. Move

Move away and do not leave a forwarding address. This works.

6. Go Underground

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Join the government Witness Protection Program and swear your utter allegiance to government agents in exchange for complete and total protection from the mother-in-law. You may have to offer them your first born but what the hay? Priorities are priorities.

5. Plastic Surgery

Completely change your appearance. Plastic surgery is an option. When she arrives at your house pretend not to know her and convince her that she is at the wrong house. Make inferences to the effect that she is sun-downing and in the throes of Alzheimer’s. Say something about the drool coming out of her mouth.

4. Infestation

Tell her that your house is infested with fleas or rats or some other hideous vermin. This will discourage her from visiting. Tell her that you cannot come to her house in fear that you will inadvertently, oops, carry the hideous atrocities into her spic and span home.

3. How Do You Really Feel?

Tell her to **** off!

2. Threaten Divorce

Threaten to move in with her; you only, not her beloved son or daughter. Tell her you are divorcing her child, have no where to go, and would love nothing more than to be her roommate and you know that she will do the right thing, being the good Christian woman that she is, and put you up for a while … a long while. Also inform her that you are broke and will need to borrow money, lots of it. That should do the trick if she already hates your guts. Tell her you will cook for her. If you are a horrible cook, aaaah, this will work like magic. The last thing she wants is to be stuck with you on a daily basis. She will steer clear of you or maybe she will go into hiding and change her name and residence. You couldn’t ask for a better solution than that. Of course, you may have some explaining to do to your spouse.

1. Death

And the number one way to avoid seeing your mother-in-law … fake your death. Hey, sometimes you have got to do what you have got to do. According to Crunkish.com, this is do-able. You need some willing friends to collaborate the story. They can report to mother-dearest that your car fell into a bottomless pit in a ghost town. The water, of course, is so deep and so murky that your car cannot be retreived and your body has probably been devoured by catfish the size of humans. Or have your partners in crime to tell her you were torn to pieces by a crocodile while vacationing in the Florida Keys; whatever floats your boat; the ghastlier the better.