Reply to How to navigate care for aging parent(s) when siblings live elsewhere?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Dear OP and everyone else,
Thank you for your experiences and opinions. My mother is about to go thru this and I'd been thinking about her setup and the siblings dynamics for a few years now. She's still spry but I'm getting ready to move near her once my youngest finishes high school next year. Spouse is not a issue as I ended my marriage over the prioritization of his family over mine (as in, my family didn't exist during my marriage).

We all have a different standard of care and no sibling will ever please another, nor the elderly parent. I DO think, however, that the sibling who invested most in elder care should get a larger portion of the estate (assuming there is a decent one). If the parent's interest are satisfied by this caregiver-child, shouldn't that child be given reciprocated care upon passing? Yes, OP, this means you.

Now, before anyone crows that I'm moving near my mom for her estate - she doesn't have much of an estate. I'm doing this mostly because I don't want to end up in a therapist's couch for the next 20 years of my life feeling guilty. I am in a position to be present for her so I don't see why I shouldn't. 
There's a big part of me that empathizes with the OP, but there is another part of me that clearly sees the manipulation and selfishness of the parents driven by their fear, neediness and frailty. Nobody wins when it comes to elder care but we don't want to lose our humanity.[/quote]

I don't quite know what I think here. Am in total agreement that a sibling assuming a lot of responsibility [b]at a certain point[/b][i] should receive compensation, preferably in real time. Not certain, however, that a sibling who has been around for just a bit should receive the lion's share of the inheritance. Or should do so if the parent really was fairly ambulatory and cognitively able up until the near end.

I've spent a chunk of my professional life advocating on compensating unpaid domestic labor, so I'm not arguing for endless volunteerism. But a child choosing to move near or in with their parent on retirement/when their youngest goes off to college wouldn't necessarily mean that the clock should start ticking on how the estate is allocated.

OTOH, I do know some women who end up moving in with their parents and handling their FT care, often when the parents have limited funds and the adult child is out of work. It really rankles me that this adult child can end up homeless as the state will compel the parents to sell their house once the "surviving" or "community" spouse applies for Medicaid.

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