Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What kind of money are you talking about? You send $300 a month or $6000?

More than $300 and less than $6000. We were paying for a non-professional to stop by my mother's house for a couple hours a day several days a week.

Ok well I know from personal experience that isn't that much money. You're loaded according to you. Just send the $1000 a month and be done with it. These non professionals work for peanuts and you know it.

Except we no longer need the non professional because she won't be living at home. That's my point.

Who is covering the cost of the nursing home if your mother doesn’t have any money?

Anonymous wrote:Who is paying for the home?
Is this a financial burden for your family?
How much are we talking about and what’s the differential between what you think she needs (nursing home cost if included, gas to visit, time off work, stuff she buys for your mother, care for kids or pets when she’s with your mother, etc) and what she’s getting?
What do you think is fair compensation for your sibling’s services?

I would err on the side of generosity, but if the differential is too high, then feel free to reduce it a bit, while keeping a “fee for services”. You’re essentially paying her to be the boots on the ground, and that cost is added to the actual costs of care. This is what my father paid for his two sisters to care for their mother: actual costs plus extra for their services. They lived in east Asia and we could not visit often.

My sister has not been paying for any of my mother's care and won't be paying for the home either. What she has been offering is her time, and no we have not been compensating her for it. But, honestly, she's been doing much of it voluntarily so far as I'm concerned. She just didn't want her in a home, point blank, whereas I would have done it in a heartbeat.

No, this isn't a financial burden for my family.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes, just send the money and be glad you aren't dealing with this. This is the easiest decision ever.

Yeah, I know. But as I just texted a sibling, in the past I sent the money to reduce my sister's burden. Now it would be to reduce her guilt. So it's really not the same thing. But yeah, I know. Just suck it up and keep sending the money.

The money is to reduce your guilt for not lifting a finger other than offering up unwanted advice about how to do it better.

Yea, see, I knew this would get nasty quick. Always a risk on DCUM. None of what you say is true.

First, I feel no guilt whatsoever. Were I local, I simply would not have done things the way my sister did. I wouldn't have allowed our mother's care to consume my life as she has. In fact, we have another local sibling who also does "nothing" but send money -- only half what I send. My sister has made it brutally honestly clear to all of us for several years now that the main driver behind not putting our mother in a nursing home long ago is that she would find visiting her in a nursing home instead of her own home too depressing. Were I local, I wouldn't feel that way.

Second, as I carefully made clear, we rarely if ever offered advice of any kind, unwanted or not, because (1) our sister did all the work and (2) she's not one who appreciates advice. What we did offer was money and support.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What kind of money are you talking about? You send $300 a month or $6000?

More than $300 and less than $6000. We were paying for a non-professional to stop by my mother's house for a couple hours a day several days a week.

Ok well I know from personal experience that isn't that much money. You're loaded according to you. Just send the $1000 a month and be done with it. These non professionals work for peanuts and you know it.

Who is paying for the home?
Is this a financial burden for your family?
How much are we talking about and what’s the differential between what you think she needs (nursing home cost if included, gas to visit, time off work, stuff she buys for your mother, care for kids or pets when she’s with your mother, etc) and what she’s getting?
What do you think is fair compensation for your sibling’s services?

I would err on the side of generosity, but if the differential is too high, then feel free to reduce it a bit, while keeping a “fee for services”. You’re essentially paying her to be the boots on the ground, and that cost is added to the actual costs of care. This is what my father paid for his two sisters to care for their mother: actual costs plus extra for their services. They lived in east Asia and we could not visit often.

Anonymous wrote:What kind of money are you talking about? You send $300 a month or $6000?

More than $300 and less than $6000. We were paying for a non-professional to stop by my mother's house for a couple hours a day several days a week.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes, just send the money and be glad you aren't dealing with this. This is the easiest decision ever.

Yeah, I know. But as I just texted a sibling, in the past I sent the money to reduce my sister's burden. Now it would be to reduce her guilt. So it's really not the same thing. But yeah, I know. Just suck it up and keep sending the money.

At that age your mother is not going to live much longer. Just send the money.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes, just send the money and be glad you aren't dealing with this. This is the easiest decision ever.

Yeah, I know. But as I just texted a sibling, in the past I sent the money to reduce my sister's burden. Now it would be to reduce her guilt. So it's really not the same thing. But yeah, I know. Just suck it up and keep sending the money.

The money is to reduce your guilt for not lifting a finger other than offering up unwanted advice about how to do it better.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes, just send the money and be glad you aren't dealing with this. This is the easiest decision ever.

This.

+2

What kind of money are you talking about? You send $300 a month or $6000?

Anonymous wrote:Yes, just send the money and be glad you aren't dealing with this. This is the easiest decision ever.

Yeah, I know. But as I just texted a sibling, in the past I sent the money to reduce my sister's burden. Now it would be to reduce her guilt. So it's really not the same thing. But yeah, I know. Just suck it up and keep sending the money.

Anonymous wrote:Yes, just send the money and be glad you aren't dealing with this. This is the easiest decision ever.

This.

Yes, just send the money and be glad you aren't dealing with this. This is the easiest decision ever.

Our 90+ year old mother was fine until five years ago or so when she had a stroke or whatever. Since then she's needed help, increasingly so, while still living on her own and a sibling has been providing the vast bulk of it. The sibling is local and we are not. We defer to our sibling on every single decision she makes regarding our mother and her care because all of the real work is on her. Sometimes we think there are other ways she could do things that would make it easier on her, and on occasion we suggest them, but we step back immediately on the slightest push back and just offer our support. We feel like we have no right or privilege to insist on anything because we're not there and none of this really impacts us.

But here's the thing: I don't really like our mother and honestly neither does the sister providing all of the care. At least, she never did. Neither does another sibling. A couple others like her more than we do, I guess, but they're not local either.

Our mother has no money, so the non-care providers all send some. We send more than double what anyone else does because we have more money. It's an automatic payment that goes directly to my sister every month. She uses it primarily to hire other caregivers to step in when she can't. Our mother needs somebody dropping in every single day.

So here's the issue. Our mother has been in rehab the last few weeks, which is actually a break of sorts for our sister, and our sister has now decided (rightfully and thankfully) that our mother can no longer live by herself. So our sister is moving her to a nice nursing home that is extremely convenient to our sister's job, where she says she can drop in very easily whenever she's working and is honestly -- she says -- much more convenient for her. We think this is just great.

But after announcing the decision by text, she immediately added: "I hope you all agree to send the same amount of money so I can continue to use [Larla] to supplement my schedule and visits. Does that still work?" One of my siblings who kinda likes my mother promptly responded "of course."

I send three times as much money as he does, and I'm having trouble understanding why my sister needs the same amount of money to pay the secondary caregivers who visited her at home when she will now be in a nursing home getting cared for by professionals. I ran this by my spouse who basically said look it's your family and your call but I think you should send your sister whatever she wants because she does everything. "Just pay the money through the transition and reassess."

If you were in my position, would you say something, or would you say nothing? I'm leaning strongly towards the latter, although I don't like it.