Aging Options Blog

Seniors for Sale

Rajiv Nagaich — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 13:35:45 -0800

What a bizarre headline !!!

But this is true, this was the headline in the Seattle Times last Sunday exposing the reality of Seniors face today. Here were few more disturbing headlines in the newspaper.

"We didn't know, and i didn't complain early enough to save her."

"Fragile, pushed out and paying a price."

I would hazard a guess that most of us do not believe that stuff like this will happen to us. But then, I doubt if any of the individuals featured in the Times thought this would happen to them

Here is the link to the full article here: Seniors For Sale

OPEN LETTER TO OUR LEGISLATURE

Rajiv Nagaich — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 10:33:56 -0800

I write to you with grave concerns about DSHS's request to shirk its responsibility by having HB 3049/SB 6717 being considered by the legislature for adoption. HB 3049/SB 6717 effectively ask the legislature to pass retroactive laws to disallow DSHS clients, who were illegally denied benefits in the first place, the opportunity to collect those past benefits.

I have some such clients whom I serve as an elder law attorney. These clients are old and/or disabled and do not have much of a voice, other than yours. DSHS first denied these clients benefits and when caught is asking the legislature to retroactively limit the payout to no more than 90 days.

The only reason DSHS got caught is because I and other attorneys took their case pro bono and won at the Supreme Court level. (See Jenkins v. DSHS, 160 Wn.2d 466, May 3, 2007). I have no financial motive to advocate for this position other than seeing to it that the clients who won a victory in court should not be let down by the legislature because the client has still not been paid back the benefits owed.

I understand the budgetary constraints, but it is a shame that DSHS would resort to have their problems covered on the backs of those who are broken and beat down to begin with. Let them get rid of the significant management fluff they have and support amongst their ranks to manage costs instead of wasting time on such efforts.

I will also share with you my utter disgust by the presentation made by DSHS representatives to the House committee suggesting that the bill is only a technical correction and nothing more. Not only do I differ in that position, but think it is outright fraud on part of DSHS not to disclose that the real purpose behind the bill is to shirk on its duty to pay benefits that it wrongfully denied in the first place.

The old and disabled are counting on you to prevent this injustice.

Best regards,

Rajiv Nagaich

How Can I Get My Mom the Aid She Needs?

Rajiv Nagaich — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 13:30:57 -0800

My mother is 79, and she just recently moved up here, the problem is, she cannot walk, and she needs 24-hour care. Does she have to spend all her money before Medicaid will help her out?

The short answer is No. If you were to go down to DSHS and say, “I have my mom, she is unable to take care of her own needs, and she needs some assistance.” They will provide help, but only if she has no more than $2000 to her name. That is the general rule.

But just like estate taxes, there are ways to do planning around the whole thing. In order to get to that $2000 level, she does not necessarily have to spend the rest of her money on nursing homes, medication, etc. The first questions that need to be asked of yourself are: What are the issues she is dealing with? & What is the least restrictive setting in which her needs may be met?

You need to discuss these options with a Care Manager as well as possibly set up a planning opportunity that allows her to protect some of her wealth, 30%-50%, and become eligible for Medicaid.

Is the Advantage plan a Good Choice?

Rajiv Nagaich — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 13:30:40 -0800

Right now, I have Part A and Part B plus AARP Medigap, will the Advantage Plan supplement what I already have? Also, is it difficult to change over to the Advantage Plan and is it expensive?

The Advantage Plan is a different plan altogether, it has to do with hospital and doctor bills, Part A and Part B, the Advantage Plan replaces Part A and Part B and says that you have no reason to go ahead and buy these separate parts, Part A and Part B, you can just come to us and we will go ahead and cover both doctors and hospitals.

Talk to your doctor, and see which plan your doctor will accept. If you are happy with your doctor, and he will continue to stay with Part B throughout the next year, I would suggest you stay with Part B at this stage. But if your doctor is not so sure, then you may have a reason to look at the Advantage Plan.

The Advantage Plan is not very expensive, but the enrollment period starts now, in January, but you can pre-enroll earlier. If you start in January, your benefits will start as early as July.

Safe Harbor Trusts vs Other Trusts

Rajiv Nagaich — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 13:48:42 -0800

What is the difference between a safe harbor trust and other trusts?

That is one of the basic fundamental things we discuss. A typical trust is a revocable living trust. One of the ways to plan your affairs is to use a revocable living trust. What this trust does is, it allows you to put away the assets you own from your name into the name of the trust, for the purposes of avoiding probate.

The second type of a trust is called a tax trust, or a credit shelter trust. This says that in any community property state, like Washington, between a married couple, the husband and wife will generally own 50% of the assets each. This type of trust basically says, that when the first spouse dies, instead of leaving the money down for the surviving spouse, their one half, or a portion of it, will go into the credit shelter trust, allowing avoidance of estate sales taxes. This is also a type of a safe harbor trust.

The safe harbor trust that I talk about is much like the credit shelter trust, but it has a different code, title 19. This basically follows the same husband and wife scheme. This money will no longer will be visible for programs such as Medicaid, VA, housing, and food.

Power of Attorney with Financial Institutions

Rajiv Nagaich — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 13:24:22 -0800

My sister-in-law has power of attorney over her mom, who has advanced Alzheimer’s disease. She wants to move some stocks out of a mutual fund into a different one because it is doing poorly, and the investment company does not recognize power of attorney. How can this be?

It cannot be. This is also not the first time I have heard about it. If the power of attorney was written over three or four years ago, they do not know if it has been changed or revised, and they consider it a big risk for them. But the fact of the matter is, even if a person creates a power of attorney in 1901, it would still be valid today. The way to overcome that is two things. First, whoever is trying to use the power of attorney, can prepare something called an affidavit in support of power of attorney, whereby, under penalty of perjury, you swear that this is the power of attorney that was created and no other power of attorney to your knowledge has been created since, and I am in good faith using my power of attorney to further the benefits of the person who gave me this power. If you can present that document to the financial company and they still refuse to honor it, you will have to go to court and get an order from a judge requiring the institution to accept the power of attorney, and the penalty is they may have to pay all the fees and costs associated with obtaining this order.

So generally, what we do is to write the letter to the institution telling them that this is the valid power of attorney, based on the specific rules and requirements, and attached they will find a copy of the affidavit in support of power of attorney. If they still choose not to honor it, we will take them to court.

Medicare Advantage vs. Medicare Traditional

Rajiv Nagaich — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 13:30:50 -0800

What is the difference between the Medicare Advantage Plan, which is open enrollment right now, and the Medicare Traditional Plan, in terms of the current Health Care Bill?

The traditional plan is Medicare Part A and Part B, which has been the original plan. It has been around since 1965.

Medicare Part C, which is an HMO-type plan, much like group health. It is all under a managed care program. So they extended that to foster some competition. It went directly to the providers and stated that if they accept this advantage plan, they will receive a higher amount of reimbursement than with the traditional plan. This caused some practitioners to only accept the advantage plans.

However, under the new bill, starting 2011, the payments will be made the same. I believe this will be a change for the better. It will allow people to honestly judge which is the better system for them.

Reverse Mortgage Maintenance

Rajiv Nagaich — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 13:30:32 -0800

How often can banks inspect your property to check the condition and could this be a problem for seniors? Especially considering the maintenance of the grounds?

Generally this is not a problem. The contract does state that you have to maintain your house. They will usually send somebody on an annual or bi-annual basis to do a drive-by or come by and take a look at your house. This frequency is established when you take the loan and depending on how the old house is. When the loan is taken, they will do an initial inspection where someone will come and inspect the house rather thoroughly. Many times I will see loans subject to conditions that the person who is making the loan made these improvements. At that point they may schedule someone to do follow up and a walk-in. The downside is that they are in the drivers seat as to how frequently to schedule inspections or what repairs must be made. But it has not been a problem. I have yet to come across a case of absurd requirements.

In terms of the grounds, it usually does need to be kept in good order, and many times this involves mowing the lawns and people frequently hire others to mow the lawn and do repairs of the grounds.

I do think reverse mortgages are generally a good idea. However, the caution I tend to give people is that they make sure they want and have the means to age in place. It is not something you should be doing if you are considering moving within the next 3-5 years.

Medigap or Advantage Plan

Rajiv Nagaich — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 13:31:19 -0800

Is there much of a difference between AARP Medigap and the new Advantage Plan?

Medigap through AARP is backing a traditional Medicare Part A and Part B. Both A and B have deductibles and co-payments, and what Medigap does is picks up the co-payments for you.

The Advantage Plan may have different requirements or enforcements based on your situation. I would not look at the costs in determining what policy to get, you should look at the benefits you receive from the policy.

Does your physician accept the plan that you have, and do you like your physician? If you do, then you may want to stick with Parts A and B with Medigap. AARP Medigap and the new Advantage plan are two very different things.

Inheritance Tax Rates-What's going on?

Rajiv Nagaich — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 12:30:37 -0800

I heard the inheritance tax rates are going to increase taxes by as much as 45%, is this true and when will this happen?

The rates are going down to 45%. Under the old regime, tax rates used to be up to 55% at the federal level. The state and estate taxes reach between 10% and 19% in addition to the federal taxes. For estate tax purposes, the exemption for 2009 is 3.5 million. In 2010, if congress does not take any action, estate taxes will be no more, but then in 2011, if congress again does not take any action, estate taxes will be back down to 1 million dollars. For the state of Washington, there is a 2 million dollar exemption regardless of what the federal exemption is. But I do think something will happen before Dec. 31^st, but I’m just not sure what.

Veterans Living at Home

Rajiv Nagaich — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 12:30:36 -0800

How extensive of aid can you get from the Veterans Administration to help someone living in their own home?

The VA system talks about helping people by way of money. For a qualified veteran or the spouse of a qualified veteran, there are two ways to gain assistance.

If any of your income is being spent on aid or attendance for the qualified spouse or veteran, that person will be entitled to $1000-$2000 of extra monetary help per month. If someone has an income of $2500/mo, but are accessing home health, which is costing $2000/mo. The VA will say your income is $500/mo, and we will make certain that if you are the spouse of a veteran, your income is no less than $1000/mo, so we will add an extra $500 to your paycheck.

The other way is that for qualified veterans, the communities may limit the cost to access the services of the VA. There may not be anything for home health, but for assisted living or nursing home, then their contribution is limited. Either the VA or the community will help. Because the qualifications of the VA will impact the Medicaid, so you must look at them as a package.

Care Managers & Social Workers: A Possible solution

Rajiv Nagaich — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 13:30:42 -0800

What can be done when both parents are in declining health, and do not want to leave their house?

If power of attorney has not been prepared, a guardianship is something to consider. A guardianship is where an attorney will go to court, and have the parents declared incompetent. However, this can be considered by the parents to be a slap on their face. And in this case, the court may not impose a guardianship due to the fact that the parents likely have enough mental capacity to understand the decisions they are making and the risks they are taking. And so, in my opinion, a guardianship is a poor solution.

Even with power of attorney, children may not be in a position to enforce their decision to move the parents to an assisted living facility, due to the fact that the power of attorney can be revoked.

Another solution would be to try to talk to the parents, and convince them to move. But this may end up alienating the relationship between the children and the parents. The children may need to try to understand that the parents may not consider their advice in the same manner that they would consider advice from someone in the professional field. This is one situation where the care and management aspect is so appropriate, such as a care manager or social worker, because the parents do not want to leave their home although the children do not consider it a safe situation.

Care managers or social workers help to create a plan that can work to provide things such as a personal emergency response system that allows them to continue to live safely at home. This may be a solution that both parties can agree with.

Debunking A Myth About Gift Taxes

Rajiv Nagaich — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 13:30:33 -0800

We would like to help pay off our children’s houses. Both owe approximately $100,000 each. Is there any way to do this considering the gift taxes and other obstacles?

You can do it. The limit, which is $13,000 per year, per person, has nothing to do with estate gift taxes. According to the law, any American can gift up to $1,000,000 in their lifetimes without worrying about any gift taxes. The IRS holds a ledger with the amount of $1,000,000. Only when the amount exceeds $13,000 does a person needs to contact the IRS.

So a gift of $100,000 can be done without worrying about gift taxes or income taxes. The only thing that would need to be done is to file a gift tax return(pdf), in which case the IRS will reduce your $1,000,000 lifetime exemption accordingly. In this specific case the IRS will reduce the $1,000,000 by $87,000 each.

The other impacts that this gift may have is that if either parents requires medicaid within the next five years it may become complicated. However, if done properly, this would not be a problem either. Since this will be done without medicaid in mind, medicaid cannot count this as a penalizing transfer.

But the problem is that medicaid presumes that no one ever makes a gift for reasons other than qualifying for medicaid. Therefore, some documentation will need to be secured before making the gift in order to stop this from coming back to haunt you.

Reverse Mortgages and Decreasing Property Value

Rajiv Nagaich — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 13:00:20 -0800

An original appraisal was given, and the appraised value decreases monthly. Every month, the banks withdraw from that. If after 20 years, there is nothing left to withdraw, can I be kicked out of my house?

No. They cannot kick you out. The worst thing that can happen is that they can say you have no more equity that you can access from this house anymore. As you grow older, the amount of equity, and the percentage you can access grows. But they can never kick you out of the house so long as you are living there. This government program was initiated in order to allow seniors to access their home equity without jeopardizing their right to be able to live there.

The other end of the spectrum is that if you pass away and the value of your house is down. If the amount you have taken out over your lifetime exceeds the value of the house, you will still be covered by PMI insurance. This protects your children and your family from having to step in and take care of it.

Payments for the Executor

Rajiv Nagaich — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 08:53:58 -0800

My father passed away in PA, my brother is currently the executor. He is claiming the executor fee is 10% and wants to take 10% from the inheritance. There is no documentation. Is this legitimate and what can the rest of us do?

Unless the will spells out that he will be paid, he does not get the fee. If he wants to be paid or resign, someone else can step into his position as the executor and do the same job for no cost. When we prepare wills, we do cover this issue because sometimes it does take a considerable amount of time to do it. There is no percentage that an executor is entitled to, and in the state of WA, it is limited to what is reasonable. This tends to be between $2500-$5000 at most. You may have to go court and file a petition stating that it is an unreasonable amount, and that you do not wish to see paid as someone else can fulfill that position.

Caretaking Causing Family Problems

Rajiv Nagaich — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 13:59:39 -0800

My mother recently passed away. My father is 94 years old. The trust contains a house, with my eldest sibling as the executor of the estate. My father does not have power of attorney set yet. I have moved in with my father to take care of him, although I am still paying for my apartment until the end of the year. I would like to live in the house for less than one year after he passes away to allow time to get the house ready to sell and find my own place. Am I being unreasonable?

My father is worried about making anyone upset and is unwilling to sign anything stating I can stay here although he has told me he does not have a problem with it, though others might. What should I do?

It is not unusual for caring family members and children to set up to the plate to make someones life better. The alternative to this is that it is likely that if she does not step up to the plate the father will have to go to an institutional care setting. If in a family of several children, one child steps up, it is my experience that the other children will be thankful that they do not have to give up their lives. But at the end of the day, when the father passes, everyone seems to forget. Everyone gets fixated on the issue of inheritance.

Your siblings need to come together with your dad and discuss what needs to happen for his needs. He can have it stated in his will that my daughter has the right to live here for one year, and no one will have the right to do anything. If they cannot solve the issues, it may go to court, in which case it would be up to the attorneys, who may decimate the estate and fuel the fires to the interests of the attorneys and not the family.

I feel like it is a personal aspect in terms of being reasonable. If she chooses not to step up to the plate, than someone else will need to be paid to do so. In this case, she would be paid for caring for her father through private resources and government programs. This way everyone comes out better.

Medicaid Benefits Qualification Rule

Rajiv Nagaich — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 18:08:37 -0800

Is property conveyed by a single person to a safe harbor trust subject to the five year transfer penalty for purposes of qualifying for Medicaid coverage? If so, what are the advantages of a safe harbor trust as compared to simply gifting the estate property?

For a single person the act of transferring property is what starts the five year penalty. Which makes the owner of the property the wrong individual to create the trust unless the trust will name someone other than the transferor as the beneficiary. For those who want to remove assets out of their own estates for asset protection purposes would need to first gift the assets out of the estate to someone they trust; it is that transferee who will then create the safe harbor trust and place the gifted assets in the trust (subject to planning around a concept in law referred to as the step-transaction theory). The purpose would be for the transferee to want to protect the assets from his/her own creditors for the benefit of the named beneficiary (hopefully the transferor) and from title XIX benefits (Medicaid benefits).

For example, a parent might gift a home to a child. The child could consider that unless he put the home in a trust it would be vulnerable to his creditors (accident claim creditors, divorcing spouse etc.) By creating a trust he would remove the asset out of his own estate and thereby be able to afford a level of protection in the home for the parent who gifted the home in the first place.

Alternatively, the parent could place the home in the safe harbor trust naming the child as the exclusive beneficiary. Clearly nothing would stop the child from allowing the parent to use the home even though it is not owned by the parent. Either way, the gift out of the parent’s name subjects the transfer to the five year rule.

Reverse Mortgage Fraud Schemes on the Rise

Rajiv Nagaich — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 23:00:27 -0800

Available to people 62 and older, reverse mortgages allow homeowners to convert their home equity into cash. Instead of writing a check to the bank each month, the bank pays the homeowner, who can elect to receive a lump sum, a line of credit or monthly payments. The loan is repaid, with interest, when the borrower dies, moves, sells the house, or fails to pay property taxes or homeowner's insurance.

Reverse-mortgage fraud, typically committed by homeowners' relatives, caretakers or financial advisers, has also been cropping up recently in schemes to unload distressed real estate. Regulators cite cases in which real-estate speculators bought properties on the cheap and then sold them, using inflated appraisals, to senior citizens willing to take out reverse mortgages.

Lenders and administrators of theHUD program say reverse mortgages, for the most part, are still working well. "There are little scams around the edges," says Meg Burns, director of Single Family Program Development for the Federal Housing Administration, the HUD division that administers the reverse-mortgage program. Recent data—and HUD's own inspectors—indicate reverse-mortgage scams are on the rise. So far this fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30, HUD has referred 29 cases of suspected fraud to its Office of Inspector General for investigation, up from two the year before. Jacqueline Felton, who heads the FBI's mortgage-fraud team, says her agency is also seeing an increase. Indeed, HUD's data on suspected fraud likely understates the extent of the problem. Anthony Medici, who in June testified before Congress as a special agent in the OIG's Criminal Investigation division, said current cases "involve hundreds of properties."

Source: Wall St. Journal (27 August 2009)

Multigeneration Living

Rajiv Nagaich — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 05:45:09 -0800

The current economic downturn brings to light the obvious - the vulnerability of anyone who has not prepared to weather the financial storm. According to a recent report, Living Longer on Less: The New (In)security of Seniors, produced by The Institute on Assets and Social Policy (IASP), a research institute at the Heller School for Social Policy and Management at Brandeis University, 78 percent of all senior households are financially vulnerable. The vulnerability comes from inability to meet housing costs and healthcare costs, negative budgets, lack of available home equity and lack of adequate assets.

Many seniors will succumb to these vulnerabilities and be rendered dependent on state aid. A significant number of those who succumb to state aid do so because of prohibitively high healthcare costs, particularly long-term care costs, which are generally not covered by Medicare or any health insurance plans (other than long-term care insurance policies, which few seniors have).

Other societies have found answers in multigenerational living arrangements. Such a system did indeed flourish in this nation as well and continues to exist to some extent even today. However, it is all but lost to the majority of seniors, who throughout their lives expected to remain independent all the way to the end and not become a burden on their children. As a society we have succeeded in creating an expectation of self-reliance. The issues such an expectation creates are nothing short of heartbreaking in most cases.

Take, for example, a recent conversation I had with a dear friend of mine who has been caring for his wife for over 14 years. In his early 60's, my friend’s wife was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s disease. He took care of her, encouraging his children to live their lives while he took early retirement to care for his wife.

As time passed, the care needs became more significant and he tried home healthcare and day health services, which met the needs for a while. However, in the end, with no dependable assistance from family members, my friend found no other solution than to place his wife in an institutional setting, which cost him over $90,000 each year. He searched for a legal solution to try and preserve his estate of about $700,000. At the present rate this nest egg would have allowed him to care for his wife for at least seven years, but for the current economic downturn.

Worried stiff about the dwindling resources, my friend opted to divorce his wife in order to obtain Medicaid benefits to cover her significant care costs and to protect his savings for his own future care needs. And this is not the sad part.

In our conversation my friend was lamenting the fact that his decision had alienated him from his children, not that they ever made time to help him with his wife’s care needs before he decided to divorce her. In fact, they had visited her no more than a handful of times throughout the past year, just as they did with him.

The previous Christmas none of his children invited him to their house, even though he had arranged for a gathering on December 27th with all of them. By coincidence, a few days before Christmas he happened to run into his son, daughter-in-law and family at a restaurant. In this chance meeting his daughter-in-law told him she was busy getting ready for a large crowd coming to their house on Christmas (her side of the family); as an afterthought she added that if my friend was bored at home he could drop in. Devastated, my friend chose not to say anything about it. But the episode looms large and gnaws at him each day. Are these the children he raised? Is this what life amounts to in the end?

Multigenerational living is not a solution for all families, not because we lack the capacity to live it but because the lifestyle is alien to us. Our drive to live independently and not be a burden on our children has become all too common. We are the sad victims of our own success. And unless attitudes change, silent devastation will continue to victimize most of us in a time when we are most vulnerable.

In my own family, my mother-in-law lived with us for 11 years. It was more of a culture shock for my wife than it was for me, chiefly because I was born in India, where multigenerational families are the norm.

My wife, a native of Spokane, Washington, was raised to focus on her own nuclear family. My wife and I often discuss this issue and come away with different observations. Her observation is that because she saw my willingness to coexist under the same roof, she was able to accept that arrangement and it worked out fine. In my opinion, the reason we were able to live 11 years, the last two years of which my mother-in-law battled cancer, was because she joined our home when she was able to contribute to our lives as well. She was able to form a bond with our three young children. She was able to assist with shopping, laundry and other household chores. The house was a home and she was a permanent part of it. When she grew weak, all our family members pitched in just as we would have if one of the children needed our time and attention. And in the end, we were all the better for it, though during the process we all made sacrifices. My mother-in-law gave up privacy and the freedom to go to casinos, movies, or just remain free from interfering toddlers; we were forced to include our mother-in-law on our vacations, we lost our privacy, and saw our children miss out on summer vacations with their grandmother in a distant town. But what we gained was immeasurable.

Our children learned values from an era that is bygone. They heard stories about grandma's life as a little girl, becoming the first female student from her town to go to nursing school, and countless other moments that they will no doubt recount for the rest of their lives. They also got piano lessons from grandma, patient cooking lessons in the kitchen and lots of hugs and kisses for the asking anytime they so desired. We were richer from sharing in these stories and showing our children that multigenerational living is the norm, not the exception, in this family. Together we said goodbye to Vivian in her own bedroom when she said goodbye to this world. Our children learned the most valuable lesson we tend to hide from our children: that death is part of life. And though grandma is not here, she lives on in our hearts. There are still tears for grandma (and mother), but we have more happy memories than would ever have been possible if grandma had been a part-time family member, someone we visited every now and then.

In the end, it is a simple proposition. In today's America multigenerational living is not a lifestyle that is the norm and it is misunderstood. We as a society have created an expectation for ourselves that we should be able to live independently and not be a burden on our children. We have also created an expectation that our children should be focused on their nuclear families to the exclusion of parents and other family members. Therefore, making sacrifices due to loss of freedom and independence when there are others living under the same roof is not easily accepted. Furthermore, the desire to live independent lives fails to create common bonds between the multigenerations that are coming together. So when incapacity strikes, it truly becomes a burden on the family because their bonds cannot sustain them during tough times.

If this is to change, it must begin with parents who change their attitudes about being a burden on their kids and instead focus on becoming more relevant in the lives of their children while they are mentally and physically able. Parents must shift their focus away from golfing and stop spending their golden years excluding family members. It must be understood that making occasional holiday visits and sending gifts on birthdays and anniversaries is not enough to sustain the bonds that will be needed to see a family through the tough times. We must redefine a family to include not only a husband, wife, partner and children but also parents, uncles and aunts. And that means living under the same roof. Today's larger homes can usually accommodate such living.

We must learn to make sacrifices that will be necessary to make the transition. Classes need to be offered to make this happen. Children must see parents not as outsiders but as family members.
Multigenerational living will make old age more pleasant and meaningful, and financially more viable; it will lead to a society that can find meaning in relationships that matter most. Quality of life and financial expectations can both be met through this mode of living arrangement.

Moving Elderly Parents closer to us !

Rajiv Nagaich — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 17:46:13 -0800

One of my client Vicky calls to ask for advice regarding her aging father living in North Dakota in a nursing home. Stepmother rarely visits Dad in the nursing home and daughter would like to bring Dad to Washington so she can help care for him. Vicki relates that in a previous conversation when she had suggested the move, her dad had raised concerns over not being able to see his wife and thus refused the move. Stepmom has the power of attorney over Dad and may not be cooperative. Dad has been married to stepmom for several years.

Here is my advice to Vicky, you are dealing with a sticky wicket. I admire your dedication to your father. But the fact is that so long as your dad has any capacity to understand the issue and form an opinion about it, you will have no say-so. This is about your dad, not you. Your dad made the decision to marry your stepmom and give her the authority to make decisions on his behalf if he became incapacitated. People do strange things. As hard as it is for you to see your dad alone in the nursing home without visits from your stepmom, that is the choice your dad has made. Legally, you can seek guardianship over your dad, but guardianship will be granted only if you are able to show that your stepmom is negligent in her duties as agent under the power of attorney to your dad. Not visiting your dad regularly may not be enough for you to be successful.

My advice would be to discuss this issue with your dad and stepmom and propose that you are willing to relieve your stepmom of the overwhelming responsibility of caring for your dad. I am sure that somewhere deep down, your stepmom knows that she is not being a good support person and may be willing to give up her role as agent under power of attorney. If that does not work, I would have you think hard about your legal right to seek guardianship. Unless your dad approves and will not suffer from losing his ability to see your stepmom, I would advise against it. What is the point of moving your dad if he is going to be miserable? He will likely resent your involvement and die a broken-hearted man. Resolve yourself to visiting your dad as often as you can and letting him know how special he is. And keep working on a solution that is acceptable to your stepmom as well.

Next, should you decide to move your dad, involve a care manager from the start to help you understand your options about his care. If you are willing to bring him to your home, the care manager will assist in developing a care plan that will allow this to happen without becoming overly burdensome to you alone. If living at home is not an option, the care manager will guide you through the process of selecting an appropriate housing alternative that will address your dad’s needs and resolve your concerns.