agonyaunt | (no subject)

Dear Carolyn: What do I owe my siblings, if anything? My husband has been fortunate enough to make a lot of money, and we agreed long ago that it was for us and our adult sons, not our (many) deadbeat relatives.

My older brother pretty much raised me and helped my husband when starting out. Brother had a severe stroke three years ago, and Second Wife claims they have gone through all their savings and are now $140,000 in debt with all the costs. She is trying to guilt me into helping them. I do not feel this is appropriate.

She did quit her job to take care of him, but they were improvident and did not buy long-term care insurance. I ask her why she does not put him in a home or hire a full-time aide and she says they can’t afford it.

Brother’s adult children tell me Second Wife is horrible, which is why they choose not to help, either.

Second Wife had the nerve to ask me to help buy Brother an oxygen concentrator. It is expensive: $2,500. I think this is pushing it. She comes off as bitter, so we said no.

Now she tells me she will have to launch a GoFundMe, because otherwise they will lose their house. This will be extremely embarrassing to my husband and me, because we are prominent in the community. What do you advise?

— Family

Family: I don’t even know what to do with this. Your prominence is a priority so misplaced I’m surprised you found it. In fact, I’m starting to wonder if you’re the wife posing as the wealthy-ogre sibling.

This is not about siblings, plural — this is what do you owe the brother, singular, who is suffering! And who “pretty much” made you and your husband. He is debilitated and utterly dependent on the kindness of others.

Like a child.

His wife could be a monster and it wouldn't change his vulnerability.

If anything, it would make his safety even more precarious. And yet your entire cost-benefit analysis is calculating how much you will allow him to suffer for his wife's faults. Whew.

So I’ll just answer your original question. If a sibling needs help, then you help — especially one to whom you’re indebted.

If you can't trust his wife, then pay providers directly.

Have you asked yourself why you're working so hard to stiff your benefactor?

Readers' thoughts:

· If you can afford to help, HELP. You can set terms, appropriate boundaries, a timeline. You can also help in non-monetary ways that show your family member that he/she is not forgotten or unimportant. Deliver a hot meal. Call. CARE.

· Ignoring the writer’s callousness, I want to say getting involved might save you money. Medicare and Medicaid can cover oxygen concentrators, a nursing home or home services through their local council on aging. Since insurance covers what the wife is asking for, perhaps there’s a reason to be suspicious, but you won’t know unless you get involved. A little compassion goes a long way.

· Seriously? Lots of people don’t buy long-term care insurance because it’s not clear that it’s beneficial based on the cost.

· You’re depriving your brother to punish his wife. These can’t be the values you want to represent as pillars of the community.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

You know, I'm on LW's side here. It's not their job to support this irresponsible deadbeat. Sure, he raised LW, but that's just evidence of his poor priorities! If he had wanted to be able to weather out a minor medical crisis he should have invested in himself first and let his siblings sink or swim.

And what sort of lesson would LW be teaching their sons if they didn't insist that this freeloader and his lazy wife, who probably just eats bonbons all day, didn't start pulling themselves up by their bootstraps? Surely somebody who could afford to help out his sibling and brother-in-law when they were "starting out" understands the concept of bootstraps and long-term planning? Since when did his failure to plan become his sibling's emergency? Why is LW suddenly their brother's keeper here?

The only thing I don't understand is why on earth LW thinks they might be embarrassed if other people in their community realize that they aren't helping this guilt-tripping inlaw and her slugabed husband. They're not doing anything wrong, are they? Surely they have nothing to be ashamed of or feel guilty about whatsoever and everybody will completely understand. It's not like they have any sort of responsibility here, right? Who could possibly suggest that they do?

/s

Edited 2021-11-02 15:42 (UTC)

*splorfle*

Not only is it unclear if long-term care insurance is beneficial based on the cost, everyone I knew who bought it in middle-age had the insurance providers go bankrupt or otherwise get corporated out of existence before they needed to use it, with the result that if they have any remaining coverage now that they're old enough they might need it, it's extremely minimal and not what they thought they were buying.

I am currently watching someone I love spend a full time job's worth of effort battling the Long Term Care Insurance company his mother faithfully paid into for decades, who are now refusing to pay out a cent for her care. Things like this are why I was not allowed superpowers, as I would already have gone on a rampage through their offices.

My grandparents have Long-Term Care insurance; it took my mom a full year, during which she averaged 20 hours a week on the phone every week, to get the insurance company to start reimbursing expenses after my grandparents began needing care. Nothing in that experience persuaded me to buy into Long-Term Care; I'm not at all confident that someone would be able and willing to take on an unpaid part-time job getting it to pay out for me.

Yeah, my parents and uncles bought it mostly due to not wanting to make their kids go through the financial and paperwork hassles they did in getting my grandmother onto state medicaid for her nursing home. But from everything I've heard, getting long-term care insurance to pay out is possibly even more of a hassle, and not necessarily going to pay for better care, even if it's theoretically gold-plated.

To be extremely cynical, the problem with long-term care insurance for end-of-life is that the insurance company knows that if they ignore the problem long enough, it will go away.

I am very lucky that I have a sister who is a lawyer at a big law firm and who took the time to go after the long term care insurance people, and they still gave my parents a hard time paying out. (I think that if she hadn't been a lawyer, it would've taken even longer -- my sister is, as one might imagine, very organized and good at procedures).

Edited (fixed html, sorry for missing slash) 2021-11-04 01:17 (UTC)

Geez. I hadn't realized it was so bad.

So aside from the "yes of course help" stuff...

LW, if it would be embarrassing for you for them to have a GoFundMe, then gosh, I guess you have to help them in order for you not to get embarrassed. It's just an if/then proposition...

Not that this is the most salient detail, but I personally looked into long term care insurance for myself and decided not to buy it because it seemed like at best a bad idea and at worst a scam.

I am suddenly feeling much, much better about cutting my not-this-awful-but-awful siblings out of my life.

It would be fair for LW to tell horrible wife¹ "send me a link to the O2 concentrator you need and I will buy it for you, but I am not helping you with money”.

That is not what she's doing.

It would be fair for dude's kids to fight to remove him from horrible wife's care² and remanding him to their own care. They are also not doing that.

On another note this is why I'm picking up long term care insurance along with a term life policy when I pick that up to provide for my animals in the event of buss contingency.

1 assuming she is in fact horrible, which I kinda doubt 2 if she is in fact neglecting or abusing him, which I also doubt