Pay Dirt: What Do I Do About My Mother?

[minoanmiss]

My 73-year-old mom had a stroke this summer and was told she could not live alone anymore. Rather than sending her to a nursing home, I offered to let her move in with me and my family.

I have a husband and two girls (8 and 9 years old). I modified my house to accommodate her needs and turned my formal dining room into a bedroom for her. I am currently working from home, so I am able to care for her. She can walk with a walker and use the bathroom on her own, but for everything else she needs my help. I am responsible for laundry, dressing her, preparing meals, supplying meds (crushed) three times a day, and many other things. I take time off of work to take her to doctor’s appointments, including physical therapy.

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After a few months of therapy, she made great progress and started to get careless. She decided she could walk inside the house without anyone helping her on the last step, and she fell. She broke her hip and needed a full hip replacement. Again, I was the one to care for her, including keeping her at home for five days waiting for a hospital bed.

Now she is on her road to recovery again, and I told her it was time to schedule an appointment to get a trust done to handle all items once she passes. She told me her plan for distributing her money. She wants to give my sister (out of state and completely absent) 50 percent, me 25 percent, and my two girls 12.5 percent each. My sister does not have children. She said she wants to make it fair between me and my sister.

I am upset because I am the one caring for her. I am the one making all the sacrifices, and my sister barely even calls her. I cannot even leave for a weekend getaway without making arrangements for someone to care for my mom while I’m away. I feel totally trapped and it’s hard. I tried to get a caregiver for several hours a day and my mom complained until I canceled those services. Now, with the labor shortage, I cannot find anyone to help at home. Between holding a professional full-time job, raising two children, running a household primarily by myself and caring for a senior, I have no time to myself.

Now that I found out my mom’s plan for her trust, I am so resentful. I am actually thinking about finding a nice assisted living facility for her. What would you do? This is a very hard position to be in.

—Tired of Sacrificing

Dear Tired,

That was very nice of you to step up and be your mother’s caregiver after she fell ill. Stroke victims usually need a lot of additional care, which can be draining—as you have found to be true. It sounds like you have gone above and beyond what any child should do for their aging parents. There are limits, and it sounds like you’ve hit yours. You’ve altered your whole reality to take on your mom and this has caused a lot of stress on you. The estate split sounds like it was the final straw.

You are not a bad person for wanting your mother to be in assisted living. You have two children to care for, and you need to be the best person you can be to raise them. This includes making sure your own needs are met and you aren’t in a permanent state of exhaustion trying to balance everything. An assisted living home has trained professionals with around-the-clock care that can better suit your mother’s ongoing needs.

Since you were the one to start the conversation about the trust, open that conversation back up and add that along with her trust, she needs to figure out what her next steps are in making sure she receives the ongoing medical care you currently provide. You can say that you understand why she felt the division of her estate was fair, but that she has not acknowledged the fact that you are financially supporting her without any financial help. Remind her that along with providing the financial support she needs, you have also been her caregiver, which has left you at a point where you are now exhausted, and now would be the time to find an assisted living facility.

The shitty part about all of this is she’s going to be hurt and will probably lash out at you, which might make you feel worse. As hard as it’s going to be, stand your ground and remind her that she has an option to go live with her other daughter if she does not want to go into a home. Caregiving is not meant to be a one-person job. I’m rooting for you.

Comments

[minoanmiss]

I would really love to hear from people who get along with their parents on this one. I think my family history renders me unable to judge this.

[rmc28]

I love my mum dearly and I would not volunteer to get into this situation in the first place. Luckily she's had my stepdad when she's had need for caregiving recently (a nasty car accident a decade ago, a stroke this year), but if and when that stops being a workable solution, the conversation my stepsister and I will be having with our parents is what kind of facility and how will it be paid for, not whose house they will be moving into.

(and yes, we both have younger brothers, but as the eldest on each side and by temperament it'll be me and Stepsister who get things sorted; luckily we get on very well)

My advice to the LW would be to leave the planned money distribution entirely out of the discussion about how LW's mother will be looked after. It is enough to say "I am realising after these past months that caring for you on top of my other commitments is too much and I can't keep it up, so we need to find an assisted living facility for you, and discuss how it will be paid for." Given that the mother has previously complained even about in-home care for a few hours a day, I expect this will go down badly and be met with a lot of resistance and no doubt a bunch of guilt tripping about valuing her job over her mother, etc etc. LW needs to hold firm and keep repeating "this isn't working for me, we need to find you somewhere else to live by X date, and agree how it will be paid for" until it sinks in that she isn't budging. LW also needs to look into her legal standing for arranging a place in an assisted living facility with or without her mother's consent, and also for moving her out of her own home anyway. And to keep reminding herself that she is allowed to have a life of her own that is not subsumed into caring for her parent and offspring.

[ambyr]

My advice to the LW would be to leave the planned money distribution entirely out of the discussion about how LW's mother will be looked after.

THIS. I don't think the advice in the letter is a good idea--it makes it sound like going into assisted living is punitive, retribution for an undesired distribution of her assets, and, okay, maybe it is that in LW's head, but treating it that way is going to make it even harder to convince the mother to embrace assisted living.

[lemonsharks]

Tbh I'd have the "formal power of attorney" talk, then the assisted living community talk.

I'm also deep in elder millennial blue collar snark at "wow, LW's mom has an estate to leave that's significant enough to make LW pissy about future probate"

[melannen]

As someone whose family generally gets along well: LW's family doesn't. If they did, LW would be getting support from them, and they aren't. In my family it would go more like rmc28 described. Even if it did end with Mom moving in with somebody, it would be involve everybody else (including Mom!) doing what they can to make sure it's not an undue burden on LW and to make sure LW knows that switching to a care home is not something they will be given any blame for and that they are aware LW is probably the only reason there will be any inheritance at all.

(It's possible Mom used to be a delight and is dealing with cognitive changes. But even then, advice from people who deal with difficult parents is likely more useful at this point.)

[conuly]

Their parents, and also their spouses - I am reasonably certain that if LW was a man, his wife would be taking on at least half this burden.

[rmc28]

I notice that although she mentions a husband at the beginning, he is conspicuously absent from the rest of the letter, apart from the implication of "running a household primarily by myself" on top of job, parenting, & caregiving. What is the husband doing while his wife runs herself ragged?

[vindoletta]

I noticed that too. LW mentions him only once, but it seems she's the one in charge of taking care of everybody else in her household. And it doesn't look like he steps up to take on some of her burdens when she wants some time off for herself.

[delight]

I am an only child who is very close to my mother.

I also had a stroke when I was 21! And I didn't move back in with my parents, because I had just gotten married and for the most part my husband cared for me -- my parents did come help, though.

When my father was diagnosed with terminal cancer I moved back in immediately to help my mom. We managed because there were THREE of us: mom, me and my husband.

Now that my mom is in her 70s, has had her own stroke and has some mysterious fainting condition we are currently working to diagnose ... she would not *let* me take her into my home and take on so much burden like this. She would insist I hire help if I even had to (we currently live near one another enough it is easy to get to each others' homes via bus even though we're both mobility impaired) but for the most part absolutely would refuse to even let me take this much on.

So I think in close family dynamics this kind of ... uncomfortable burden combined with financial distress is overall less likely to happen. Only child and my brain injury happening first complicate my situation further, but I'm entirely independent at this point so that certainly isn't why my mom refuses to let me take on the caregiver stress; it's just because she doesn't want me (or my husband) to have to go through it.

[minoanmiss]

That makes sense. This kind of situation is less likely to build up when people can talk to each other.

(Also, a stroke at 21, that sounds amazingly rough.)

[cynthia1960]

I'm with you for noping out on this. My sister and I are estranged from our two brothers precisely because of inheritance issues, caregiving, and assisted living issues with our late mother.

[cereta]

As you know (Bob), I'm in this scenario in multiple positions: I live four hours away from a mother who has hit the point where she cannot live alone, and spouse and I live considerably farther from his parents, who have no other kids.

Short answer: LW should start compiling thorough, organized information packets about local assisted living. She should also get a therapist who will help her through this process. She should also also kick her husband in the rear about the whole "running a household primarily by myself" thing.

Long answer:...{{sobs}}

[minoanmiss]

hugs you sustainingly

[cereta]

You will be happy to know that I just replied to my older brother's text about Christmas plans with, "We won't be coming."

[minoanmiss]

YES I AM HAPPY TO HEAR THAT and you will be happy to live it! \o/

[oursin]

What this actually needs is somebody close enough to the family but not too involved to point out to Mother what LW has been doing and what 'the fair thing' actually is. This was fortunately the case with my mother vis-a-vis my grandmother, whom she had been caring for a significant period. A relative by marriage (who was the sort of person she would listen to) stepped in and pointed out a) what Mum had been doing for her and b) the initial plans for her will involved pretty much giving away the roof over Mum's head by dividing it up with her brothers, who had not done a hand's turn or meaningfully contributed.

[harpers_child]

I am getting a giant whiff of preestablished family dynamics on this one. Also there's some missing background. Are LW and sister in similar financial states? Why did LW's Mom run off the aides? Have LW's parents always put sister over LW? (I've got an Aunt in a nasty family situation involving this dynamic and an ageing parent.)

LW should get compensation of some kind for the care she's doing. A portion of the utilities and groceries at the least.

Full time caregivers burn out quick. That's why nursing aides exist. Some times you can love someone with all of your heart, but you just don't have the ability to keep caring for them. (Why my grandmother ended up in a nursing home.)

[movingfinger]

The LW should look for a social worker specializing elder care issues and arrangements, they do exist in many areas and are knowledgeable about care options and the practicalities of it. They are also used to dealing with resistant, manipulative bitches like LW's mother.

[tielan]

Someone who gets along with her parents (and whose parents have been fairly foresightful and even-handed about the distribution of their estate), commenting on the advice:

You are not a bad person for wanting your mother to be in assisted living.

Correct. Busy life, sandwich generation, household and work and immediate familial responsibilities, plus The Mystery Of The Unmentioned Husband (a not-uncommon mystery in our modern advice columns about familial care) means LW cannot manage parental care on top of everything else.

Since you were the one to start the conversation about the trust, open that conversation back up and add that along with her trust,

No. Leave the inheritance out of the dicussion. Even if it's the core reason for LW's resentment and desire not to hand her mother off to assisted care, do not mention it. It should remain unspoken or else the accusations of bitterness and vengefulness will likely linger for as long as her mother lives and quite possibly after.

I am curious whether LW in any way, shape, or form expected greater consideration from her mother in the writing of the will. While, technically, splitting the estate evenly between the two sisters is fair in the broadest sense, LW being put out of her life and not being reimbursed has...problematic elements. Does LW's mother consider her daughter's care her rightful due "for all the sacrifices I made over the years" or whatever line it is that parents give.

she [mother] needs to figure out what her next steps are in making sure she receives the ongoing medical care you currently provide

Correct. That said, it sounds like LW will be the one making the arrangements because mother is unlikely to: she has everything she wants right there.

Caregiving is not meant to be a one-person job.

Absolute truth.

[vindoletta]

Oof.

To begin, I'd ask if LW and mom are from a culture where children are supposed to personally look after elderly parents, and where sending mom to a care center would be seen as LW's moral failing. Perhaps some of mom's resistance to care aides stems from there?

I'd also ask if sister can and wants to care of mom. If sister has no family then she might be better suited to care for her, as long as sister gets proper support to avoid burning out too.

In some of these "children must look after the parent" type of cultures, the child who cares for the parent also receives a bigger part of the inheritance to compensate them for the time and effort spent. If that's the case here, is getting a bigger chunk of the inheritance the reason why LW hasn't involved her sister? Because she could have asked her sister to take care of mom for a while, or to contribute in any other way.

I'd also love to know what the heck LW's husband contributes to the household, because as far as we know LW is the one taking care of everybody else.

[lemonsharks]

Sounds like LW's mother is trying to buy her absentee sister's affection to me.