Letters to the Editor
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Carey missed out entirely on what is going on
Brother and sister (who curiously but irrelevantly seem not to be married) have unconsciously hatched a plan to get you written out of mom and dad's estate. Everyone is getting old and on in years and B & S resent that you do not have old folks duty due to distance. So they resent you and your husband pretending to be real family. So they pick a fight with you and your husband, in the unconscious hope of you giving them ammunition to prove that you and H are traitors to the family whereupon they will point out to M & D that you two don't really get along with the rest of the "real" family, that you've said all these awful things (either orally or in email) and that they will take care of the old folks, and their papers should be arranged accordingly, particularly the decisions on their health, and by the way, your share should be reduced while they are at it, etc.
This is not, mind you, a conscious scheme on their part. At least not in the sense that they sat down together and planned it out, but natural resentments are going to take this course.
You did not rise to the bait! You did not give them the nasty email, nor the nasty comeback. The oral conversation will, however, be reported back to M & D in an entirely different light than you intended it. H's "F you" to your sniveling, manipulative charismatic brother will be much enhanced. H is not terribly social with B & S because he can see that they are big phoney losers.
So what to do? How about this email:
Dear Sid and Nancy: I noticed that during our last visit that you picked a fight with H and tried to pick one with me. I'm sorry this happened. I gather that as a result, we are not as welcome in your lives as we used to be. That is most unfortunate. I hope that we are all too adult to make an incident of "cabin fever" (or the European idiom of the equivalent) into a wedge to drive our close family apart. Love you all lots. Etc
On the plus side, in my experience M & D, if they are not too old, probably see right through this crap for exactly what it is. Most parents really do know their children's weaknesses. The problem is that if they have become so old and slow as to not to truly understand that the old sibling rivalries are still in play, it will encourage this sort of thing.