Honestly this sounds like a huge train wreck from well before the official transition happened.
Let's just list the facts I'm aware of:
- New Owner (NO) called your wife for advice instead of the previous owners
- NO is asking for shady things from your actual inlaws
- I'm not sure your inlaws were doing a good job of running things in the first place
- It sounds like the continuity plan was approximately 0% effectively utilized
This whole thing sounds like it's straight off of a mockumentary type of "how not do to business" - maybe it's less absurd in reality but I'd want absolutely nothing to do with this trainwreck if I were in your situation, given what you've listed here.
I agree wholeheartedly. Part of the reason she called my wife is because my wife was helping out *a lot* during the transition before and after my in-laws left for Asia per the family emergency (this happened in early Feb so they've been gone for a long time!).
My in-laws allowed the employees to run the restaurant, and maintained the status quo of silently allowing their employees to walk all over them. If you look at what has happened, it basically sounds like a bunch of whiny spoiled employees who had it good for so long and who are now upset at change - many of them have been working there for more than 10-15 years, so it makes sense that they would feel entitled! In short: they had it coming and should have seen the writing on the wall. But the culture of entitlement, which my in-laws fostered, definitely didn't help.
At the same time, my in-laws were working 10-12hour days *every day* - it was ridiculous. I'm not the first to say that they're not very smart people or business owners but it is what it is.
So many things about they way they ran their business just sounds terrible but somehow they did enough to make it work - I guess after doing it for 20-30+ years, even if you're not "great" at it, you learn how to work with what you have. They weren't even making much off the place either...
Even the whole process of how escrow was done was a nightmare - they, with great risk, decided to hand the business over to the new owner *before* close of escrow due to the length of time it would take to get the liquor license.
But despite all this, my wife loves her parents very much and wants to help them get out of this situation and on with their lives as well as trying to help make sure that they're living relatively comfortable without burning through all their savings (which isn't much at all). I think she's the type who grew up plagued by being forced to experience all the mistakes her parents have made (at one point they were in the negative and she recalls water and power to their apartment being shut-off). So she has learned to be so extremely conservative about anything she does that she's nearly entirely risk averse, to the point where things are at a standstill and there's little to no progress when it comes to decision making or figuring out how to do things self-sufficiently. This translates to a lot of things in her life but she has gotten better - for all of us, it's just a part of growing up.
Anyway, I think she feels like she has to help her parents "fix" themselves - I know she knows that she can't but there's this urge to do as much as she can to help them out. I generally support her in this, as long as it doesn't take too much from our family. I WFH full time so I already get to spend a good amount of time with my wife and kids. Her dealing with all this crap, well at least when it was still in escrow, was sort of like a part time job w/ heavier hours.