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[quote=Anonymous]First, you should know that when I say "excessively dependent," I mean she needed my dad to turn on the TV for her, open mail addressed to her and tell her what it said, "dial" a phone number and then hand the phone to her when she wanted to make a call, that type of thing. (She married at 21 and has never lived alone. She is now 88.) Obviously, she never wrote a check or handled anything that went wrong with the house.

About a year ago, my dad became quite incapacitated, and he moved - along with my mother - into an assisted living apartment at $12,000 a month (which would have depleted their savings if it went on for years). Because my mother could no longer depend on my dad for her needs, she "enjoyed" the attention from the round-the-clock aides. Everything was done, from the laundry, to making beds, to discarding trash, to room service for meals, even to adjusting the volume on the TV.

Sadly, my dad passed away a few months ago, and we temporarily kept my mother in the assisted living apartment, where she was happy. (Almost eerily so, given my father's passing after 67 years of marriage.) My sister and I discussed leaving my mother in the assisted living apartment during the early adjustment, after which Mom agreed it made sense to move to an independent apartment in a nearby facility that still provided meals, weekly linen service, and 2x daily medication management, and lots of social activities. She also has a pendant to call for emergencies. (The cost dropped to $3,600 a month.)

Now after two weeks in the apartment, which she selected and loved, she is in total meltdown. She says she has nobody to "help her" - with changing TV channels, putting the trash in the basket (it's cluttering up the kitchen counter), or adjusting the water temperature in the shower (as examples) and wants us to call the movers back to get her back into the $12,000 assisted living apartment where, she says, she can be "cared for." Assuming that an assisted living facility would even take someone who is physically able and showing no signs of dementia, this of course is a terrible waste of money and is enabling my mother's dependency.

My sister and I are at a loss. Should we reschedule the movers after only two weeks to reverse the move? If so, and she lives there for another five or six years (her mother lived to be 97), she will deplete the savings and have to go on Medicaid. I am saying that it's her money, and if she ends up on Medicaid (eventually), so be it. My sister is saying that we would have to pay for Mom's continuing AL apartment to keep her off Medicaid, and of course that means I will be depleting my own savings for my own old age.

Advice?[/quote]

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