Sister blames me for her "taking care of" our parent.

[Anonymous]

Sister "took in" parent. Sister blew all her and parent's money. Now sister wants parent to move in with us. Not gonna happen. Sisdter and parent get along best of entire family. Parent and I do not. At all.

Should I respond to sister's request, which would basically be telling her where to go, or should I ignore?

[Anonymous]

If you and parent don't get along well, then I completely understand saying you won't take in your parent. You do need to talk with her, though, and come up with a plan for your parent's care. It's not fair to your sister to have all of the burden fall to her, both physically and financially.

[Anonymous]

Medicare bed in a nursing home, if sister doesn't want to care for parent.

[Anonymous]

Is your parent ill, without LTC insurance, and incapable of living alone? In that case, I would decide on a reasonable monthly stipend I could afford and send it to sister. If she's completely irresponsible, I'd send monthly groceries + route medical copays to me to pay directly.

If your parent moved in with sister simply to have company, then I would respond to your sister that you're sorry it's not going well but it will only be worse if parent moves in with you. I would not ignore or tell her to go to hell.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If you and parent don't get along well, then I completely understand saying you won't take in your parent. You do need to talk with her, though, and come up with a plan for your parent's care. It's not fair to your sister to have all of the burden fall to her, both physically and financially.

+1 OP, it can get very expensive caring for an older parent, and I'm not really understanding why you think the responsibility should fall entirely to your sister.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Is your parent ill, without LTC insurance, and incapable of living alone? In that case, I would decide on a reasonable monthly stipend I could afford and send it to sister. If she's completely irresponsible, I'd send monthly groceries + route medical copays to me to pay directly.

If your parent moved in with sister simply to have company, then I would respond to your sister that you're sorry it's not going well but it will only be worse if parent moves in with you. I would not ignore or tell her to go to hell.

Medicare pays for nursing homes. If the money is gone, she won't even have to do a spend down.

Find a Medicare bed.

[Anonymous]

Just state fact ~ I'm not taking her in.

You don't tell her "where to go" because that would be immature.

You ignore her because that would be immature too.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Is your parent ill, without LTC insurance, and incapable of living alone? In that case, I would decide on a reasonable monthly stipend I could afford and send it to sister. If she's completely irresponsible, I'd send monthly groceries + route medical copays to me to pay directly.

If your parent moved in with sister simply to have company, then I would respond to your sister that you're sorry it's not going well but it will only be worse if parent moves in with you. I would not ignore or tell her to go to hell.

Medicare pays for nursing homes. If the money is gone, she won't even have to do a spend down.

Find a Medicare bed.

Medicare pays fora limited period of time and only if you first have a qualifying hospital stay. This is not a sustainable plan if it would even work at all.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
Medicare pays for nursing homes. If the money is gone, she won't even have to do a spend down.

Find a Medicare bed.

Medicare pays only for skilled nursing care, and that only for a limited time. You may be thinking of Medicaid, which is means-tested. Finding a nursing home to accept a patient on Medicaid without an initial paid-in-full period can be challenging.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Medicare pays for nursing homes. If the money is gone, she won't even have to do a spend down.

Find a Medicare bed.

Medicare pays only for skilled nursing care, and that only for a limited time. You may be thinking of Medicaid, which is means-tested. Finding a nursing home to accept a patient on Medicaid without an initial paid-in-full period can be challenging.

Medicaid pays via a special long term care program. They do go back five years. It is very difficult as very few nursing homes will take it. You have to find a bed, then apply. It takes months to apply and the workers sit on it so it easily takes six months to get approved. Easiest way is through a hospitalization. Let your sister deal with it. We just went through this. It was a nightmare.

[Anonymous]

Ah, the joys of having siblings. All you ladies paranoid about having onlies, read and weep LOL

[Anonymous]

The op would be in no better place if she was an only child. Her mother would still need somewhere to stay

[Anonymous]

Medicare pays 100% of the first 21 days after a 3 night hospital stay. They pay 20% for another 3 weeks, and you are maxed out after 100 days.
Medicaid is the program that will pay for nursing home bed , you have to be eligible , ie , no $$, to qualify and you have no real choice on where you will be placed.
This is a very common and unfortunately costly mistake to make by confusing the two

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Medicare pays 100% of the first 21 days after a 3 night hospital stay. They pay 20% for another 3 weeks, and you are maxed out after 100 days.
Medicaid is the program that will pay for nursing home bed , you have to be eligible , ie , no $$, to qualify and you have no real choice on where you will be placed.
This is a very common and unfortunately costly mistake to make by confusing the two

If you go to a medicaid bed from home, you are responsible for finding the facility and 100% have the choice. This is absolutely not true. If you go from the hospital, usually the hospital takes the first bed available but you can refuse and choose your own. Medicare will not pay in less someone is hospitalized and needs rehab. Then you get transfered from Medicare to Medicaid. The issue with medicaid is most facilities do not want to accept someone and gamble that they will get approved for medicaid. You can apply prior to finding a facility but they will not review the case or approve it until your loved one is in a facility, in an actual bed and most do not want to take the gamble of housing someone for six months and no one pay for it. We did it from home on medicaid, but it took a long time to find a bed-most had us apply making promises and then claimed no beds (but when you call for private pay, they have them) for months on end. Only one facility was honest and very good.

The catch the OP has is how much did the sister spend the past five years and can she prove minus shelter and housing costs, that that money was spent on mom. They look through several years of bankstatements and have to provide proof of things like sale of house and car (we could not prove where the car went as someone stole it from our family member, sold it and kept the money lying about it). They did work with us, but it was not easy.

It is best to go directly after a hospitalization through medicare to medicaid. BUT, assuming the mom is healthy enough not to need one, your only option is to do a direct placement.

I doubt the OP sister is looking for that. She's looking for OP to pay her monthly on top of mom's social security or other income. I would not do that personally. We were in that situation where the caregiver who stole all the money was demanding more and doing lots of shady things. The nursing home is a much better situation (we did provide care for 8 months but could not continue due to her needs). Sister will not want to giver up mom as it is a loss of income for her.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Is your parent ill, without LTC insurance, and incapable of living alone? In that case, I would decide on a reasonable monthly stipend I could afford and send it to sister. If she's completely irresponsible, I'd send monthly groceries + route medical copays to me to pay directly.

If your parent moved in with sister simply to have company, then I would respond to your sister that you're sorry it's not going well but it will only be worse if parent moves in with you. I would not ignore or tell her to go to hell.

Medicare pays for nursing homes. If the money is gone, she won't even have to do a spend down.

Find a Medicare bed.

Medicare only pays for short-term rehab but not long-term nursing home care.
Only Medicaid will do that and OP's mom may be eligible if she truly has spent down her savings.
Obviously we don't have the whole story but it is quite easy to "blow through" all financial resources when caring for a sick or elderly person who needs regular care.