Living Arrangements for Grandparents, Disabled, or Otherwise Included Family Members

W

Wrathcaster

The thread is mainly assuming US laws apply to your particular situation, but suggestions from posters in other countries are more than welcome.

What are your plans? Have you made express agreements as yet? Do you have insurance plans specifically dealing with such? Are you sure such provisions adequately represent your wishes?

I know that with people near my age (early 30's +) are being faced with this issue increasingly more often. I also know that with many this is also something involving parents or potentially siblings or even children.

What are your thoughts about elderly relatives and their wishes before or after their (if applicable) incapacity rendered their judgment legally immaterial?
 
Nester

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Says only Americans for legal reasons, asks no legal questions only "thoughts"
 
Eomer

Eomer

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Wrathcaster in a PM_sl said:
I posted a thread that primarily focused on the issue of healthcare, but more importantly aftercare for the more dusty among our populace. Unfortunately that thread gave no consideration to Canadians.

I sincerely hope you can forgive me for such an egregious example of disinclusion of our glorious northern neighbors.
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Dude, are you getting all stalky again?
 
Joeboo

Joeboo

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My dads getting older(approaching 70) but got remarried to a woman 20 years younger than himself. She can take care of him in his old age, since most/all of what would have been my inheritence will probably just be going to her instead. That's my plan.
 
Chris

Chris

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Most should be able to look after themselves nowadays. Otherwise sell their stuff and send to a good old people's home while visitng often?
 
Erronius

Erronius

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Wrathcaster_sl said:
What are your thoughts about elderly relatives and their wishes before or after their (if applicable) incapacity rendered their judgment legally immaterial?
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iannis

iannis

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My father told me to feed him to the cats. I plan on it.

I'm planning for my mother to outlive me.
 
OneofOne

OneofOne

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Sounds good to me. I told my wife don't even claim my body at the morgue - I'm such a freakin' cheapskate I refuse to pay for a coffin/lot space or getting cremated. Take the money she'd otherwise spend and go on a cruise with a friend or something.
 
BrutulTM

BrutulTM

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If you have a relative that has any property that they want to pass down then they need to have nursing home insurance. Nursing homes are like $5000 a month and Medicare will not cover it until every bit of their money and property is gone. This includes property that they have "gifted" to their heirs in the last 5 years. We went through this with my grandfather who had signed over a couple houses and some land to his kids. Because it had been less than 5 years, they were still responsible to pay for his nursing home care until the value of those houses was gone. At $60K a year that is hard to come up with.

Also, the nursing home should be a last resort. You can pay for a shit load of in-home care or assisted living and it seems expensive until you start getting a nursing home bill and then it seems super cheap. In retrospect, my granddad could have gotten by with just having someone come by once or twice a day to help him take his meds and maybe do some straightening up and we have since learned that you can get people to do this for like $17 an hour.

If you own a family business and the elderly family member is still partial owner, consider getting that transferred early as well or it could be jeopardized if they wind up needing long term nursing home care. My Mom is 61 and we have nursing home insurance for her because she is still part owner in the ranch. My grandmother is 88 and she had nursing home insurance until my Dad died and during the transition a payment was missed and the scumbag insurance company canceled her policy and refused to renew it.
 
Joeboo

Joeboo

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By "nursing home insurance" do you mean long-term care insurance? The stuff is pretty expensive, and more expensive the older you are when you take it out. That being said, it's still not as expensive as actually having to pay for a nice nursing home if your loved one needs it. My 65 year old mother looked into long-term care insurance this year when she retired, and it was going to cost her about $900 a month, not real affordable for someone who is retired, and most people don't plan far enough ahead to take it out when they are still in their 30s or 40s and it's cheap.
 
BrutulTM

BrutulTM

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Yeah, you need to start it early. My mom was 59 when we started it and I think it costs like $6K a year. That sounds painful until you consider that it's less than 2 months worth of nursing home care. Also it pays a set amount, not just what the care costs, so you have to keep increasing it as the price of nursing homes goes up. It's pretty shitty, but if you have something you don't want to lose (house, business, etc.) it's kind of your only option unless they want to just sign everything over years before they are likely to need care. As I recall it was kind of a big deal to do it pre-60 which is why we did it when she was 59. When we tried to start it back up for my grandma they were like "yeah, no thanks".
 
BrutulTM

BrutulTM

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No insurance makes sense if you know that you're not going to need it for 30 years. You can't always assume that you won't need long term care before age 80 though. If you wanted to start an account at age 35 that was specifically to cover long-term care and pay into it for most of your life that would also be an effective precaution. I doubt that anyone does this though.

Also, if you don't mind dying penniless and leaving nothing to your kids then this insurance is a waste, but if you have a house or a business or something you want to pass on to your kids rather than to a nursing home, then the insurance makes sense. My grandfather had like $200K in savings, cashed in a couple of small life insurance policies, sold his cars, camper, boat, etc. and signed over his house and a couple pieces of land that he intended for his kids to have a year or two before he wound up in the nursing home. The nursing home ate through all his money and the kids had to come up with like $50K out of pocket (not a trivial sum for them) before the 5 year window closed but they were able to save the house and the land. Of course then he got on Medicare and died 3 months later.

My main point is that long term care is a financial nightmare and should be planned for and also avoided if at all possible.
 
Joeboo

Joeboo

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And not all people will need assisted living later in life, but there's really no way to predict that. My grandmonther died at the age of 94 in her own home, she was still cooking herself 3 meals a day, cleaning house, and going on walks around her land until the day she died, didn't have a single medical issue. That's probably more the exception than the rule anymore, that's easily the best-case scenario. My step-grandparents are both 90/91 years old and live in a retirement community, but it's not really a nursing home or assisted living. They have their own condo, but meals are provided and medical staff is on-site in the case of emergency(there's emergency call buttons in every room of every home), but they don't have or need a nurse checking up on them regularly or anything. That kind of service runs about $3000 a month around here(the midwest is notoriously cheap compared to the coasts)
 
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