Maintaining sibling relationships while dealing with toxic parent

[Anonymous]

I'm the OP of the mother refuses to support herself thread: http://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/450767.page

My sister threw my mother out last week. She has decided to cut my mother out of her life. That's understandable, even necessary. My brother feels stuck with her, and seems annoyed with is for upsetting her. I don't think he blames us, but would prefer things smoothed over so it doesn't cause him a lot of grief. When he tried to stay out of it, she threatened suicide. Now he feels like he must answer her phone calls because she could be suicidal. It's emotional blackmail.

All of us have dealt with varying levels of abuse from my mother. My sister had it the worst. My brother caught the least amount of her venom. Our willingness to help her is directly related to that. I want to do whatever I can to maintain the relationship between my siblings and I, but see the unfair position we're all in with regards to my mother. With the age split, I'm closer to each sibling more than they are to each other.

Has anyone successfully navigated this before?

[Anonymous]

Been there, done that. It's very tricky to navigate, especially if you're not all on the same page about her. What I found helpful was to sit down with my sibling and talk in detail about what was actually a need of the parent, and what were just her wants/preferences. To the extent there were actual needs that had to addressed, sibling and I split those evenly. When it ventured into the territory of wants, a sibling could choose to take that on if they wanted to, but the other one wasn't obligated to share in that. Having laid it all out in advance and agreed helped to keep us from fighting later when someone felt like they were doing more, because it was clear based on our agreement that it was their choice to do more rather than an obligation.