Reply to 82-year-old mom refuses to plan, share info, discuss

Forum Index » Eldercare

Reply to "82-year-old mom refuses to plan, share info, discuss"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous]OP I have been through this, to some extent, with both my MIL and my own mother. For MIL, she had a plan in place (an independent living retirement home near her) but that flew out the window after a bad fall which turned into surgery which turned into post surgery dementia (fortunately short term)--suddenly her plan of moving into the retirement apartment 2000 miles from any family fell apart. Who would move her stuff, take her to doctors, get all the forms,etc? who would be there after the next fall? who would watch over finances? who would help her get around, now that she was in a wheelchair?

We ended up moving her to be near us in a fairly high level of assisted living and had to figure all that stuff out under more difficult circumstances (although she was good about providing info in files for the future). Now its fine--took a while to deal with all the paperwork, getting authorizations, selling her home, etc, but having her in assisted living nearby means that there's 24/7 care and we are near if something happens. Between social security and her penson, she covers 85% of her costs and the rest are coming from the ever dwindling funds from selling her home. We honestly didn't think she'd make it this far (she's turning 93) so we'll have to chip in soon, but its manageable.  So this is the example of crisis putting kids in the driver's seat.

In my mom's case, I saw symptoms of cognitive decline, mostly in her inability to deal with anything complex. So in this case I  took weeks off work over the summer had to spend time at her home and go through everything and act as a detective. I also could not give her too many options. It was overwhelming. So like a PP suggested, I drafted some simple POA type things, and took her to the UPS store to notarize. I went through mail, bills, etc and got onto as many accounts as I could (this is also when I discovered that she was being financially exploited to the tune of almost 200k, that's another post)..the point here is that I had to go there, through her bills (which were a mess! and that was a huge clue) to get this done. SHe was willing to cede control, but she was incapable of doing anything about it.  THis was a few years ago, she is now in assisted living and has alzheimers. I haven't done everythhing, but I have a fairly good handle on things now. We have rented her home to provide cash flow, I manage all her affairs (with my brother's permission and oversight, though he never bothers to check in), and whie its a lot of work, at least I have a handle on things now. but if I hadn't gone out and really probed, she'd still be at home, with a part time caregiver, and seeming okay while in reality failing to pay bills (like, she dropped her long term care insurance after 25 years of paying into it), failing to cash checks, failing to follow up with doctors, getting into car accidents and getting scammed.   in fact, before I went out there to really assess things, she had mentioned maybe getting a 'roomate'--the person who was scamming her was also trying to install a relative to live there. In california, tenant laws are so strong that she would have never been abe to get this person to leave. [/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics