Reply to How did your sibling being a "dud" impact your relationship with him/her, and with your parents

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I have a brother who is now in his 40s.  He has worked for a total of 4 months in his life.  My parents pay for his house, his car, his health insurance.... well everything.  He literally doesn't earn a penny.  He is now talking about going to Europe to study some ridiculous thing.  It's a joke.  My parents are in poor health and may require millions in care over the next decade.  I have been working for 23 years.  I am raising three kids.  My budget is tight.  My parents say they will leave more to me in their will to "even things up", but that assumes that they won't burn through most of their money and that my brother won't need my financial support once they pass.  I don't think the arrangement will change with my brother - he simply will never work.  He is a nice person and pleasant to be around when I see him.

I have been surprised to learn that many people have someone in their family who is like this - just doesn't pursue any kind of job.  My question is how this affected your relationship with your parents and sibling?  My parents get really angry and upset when I suggest I don't want to include my brother in something, or I acknowledge that I think he's a loser.  It is obvious I will have to be the person coordinating care for my parents as they age, and I'm really resentful that I will likely do this while they are supporting him financially.  It's all such a shame, but I just can't have the same warm feelings for any of them that I want to have because I'm so mad about all of this. [/quote]
Your parents are making their own choices.  You need to stop trying to argue with them about this.  It's not helping to tell them that you think your brother is a loser or trying to exclude him from a family event.  You need to (1) assume you will get no inheritance, (2) make plans now for how you will deal with their care.  Talk to them about what they want, run some numbers, figure out what your end of things looks like, what you can do and what you are willing to do.  Front-load the work so that it's not a crisis.  And (3) make it 100 percent clear that you will not be supporting your brother financially after they pass, so no one should count on that.  Unless he has a disability that prevents him from working, in which case he should be ON disability, you will not be supporting an able-bodied adult.  If they want to leave him more money, fine, but it's not coming out of your pocket.  [/quote]

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