The family dynamics involved in caring for elderly parents can have legal ramifications. Do you and your family have a caregiving plan or strategy in place?
In this episode of “Simply Money,” Mark Reckman discusses a few great strategies for bringing your whole family on board for the care of a parent. While it may be counterintuitive, Mark explains why hiring a caregiver might benefit all parties involved.
Episode Transcription
Amy Wagner:
You’re listening to Simply Money, brought to you by Allworth Financial, I’m Amy Wagner, along with Steve Ruby and Steve Sprovach. This topic is one that I think if you’ve never been through this, you could go through it. And this one can be a doozy. I’ve seen it in my own family. More caregiving help from your siblings, right? Everything is well and good, and everyone’s willing to be there at Thanksgiving and Christmas until mom and dad need help. And then all of a sudden, some people just aren’t available to you. So how do you negotiate these waters? Joining us, thank goodness, is our expert. Our estate planning expert from the law firm of Wood and Lamping, Mark Reckman. Mark, you’ve seen this play out many times before.
Mark Reckman:
Well, that’s right. And this is not really a legal issue, admittedly Amy, but I have seen this so many times in the last 40 years that it feels like a critical piece of information. And what I have learned is that there are some techniques that will help get more help from your siblings if you feel like you’re in this all by yourself.
Amy Wagner:
Personally, I’m thinking of, so my mom’s family, she was one of eight, and when my grandparents got elderly and everyone seemed to be on a different page about what should be done, and how often they should be there, and who should take them to appointments. And it can just be a lot and it can be incredibly divisive, so for a family who is just starting to navigate this kind of uncharted territory, where do you say they begin?
Mark Reckman:
Well, I think that the important part is for the person who feels like he or she is the main person involved in this, be careful about making any assumptions. Don’t assume that your brothers and sisters don’t want to help. Don’t assume that they can or cannot offer good support. Maybe there are certain people in the family who are in a better position to get away from work, or it’s easier for them to afford taking time off.
The reality is that women supply the vast, vast majority of care in this country. That’s a gender assumption we have to be careful not to make, but whatever the reason is, caregiving is exhausting and it can create stress in the family of the caregiver, and it can ruin sibling relationships. So what I have learned is that it’s really important for siblings to ask for help and to get help and to help divide up the job. And I think the starting point is to hold a family meeting.
Steve Sprovach:
Don’t try to go at it alone, get others involved within the family. What about those that live out of town? How do you get somebody involved that’s not nearby?
And I ask this selfishly because this is going on in my family right now.
Mark Reckman:
Well, sure it is. It goes on in most families, and we see this, Steve, all the time. And what I tell people is that I think it’s helpful to get everybody in the same room for the initial meeting. Now, it doesn’t have to be every meeting, but at least during the setup. And the initial meeting has to be an open-ended, open-minded approach where you get everybody in the room and start talking about what the needs are. And you can do a little prep work. Perhaps the primary person can make a list of things that they see that need to be done. But the meeting needs to start with an open attitude that, hey, I don’t know everything. I need your help to sit and figure out what mom needs or what benefits dad needs. Get everybody in the same room and get everybody on the same page, and then prepare a list of caregiving tasks.
I think preparing a list ahead of time is a good way to start it off, but I think that that list has to be considered incomplete until everybody’s had a chance to put something on the list. Now, Steve, this is partly as much about educating people as it is about building a list because people don’t really know what’s going on if they’re out of town. They got to know.
Steve Sprovach:
Well, Mark, you say it’s not necessarily a legal issue, but I’ll disagree with you. When my dad, his health started failing prior to his death, he did something that I really didn’t think he would do because he would never talk about his finances. And he sat down and he had drawn up powers of attorney, both medical and financial, that appointed, in my case, in my dad’s case, myself as a power of attorney over some duties. And my sister, who also is an attorney, power of attorney over other issues. That solved a lot of problems when communication started to break down with other siblings.
Mark Reckman:
Excellent, Steve. And I think that that’s exactly the kind of outcome you would want from a family meeting. What can each person do? And don’t assume that everyone has the same set of skills. One of the things that I have learned in family meetings is that often there are individuals who don’t have the emotional capacity to be an in-person hour to hour caregiver. I’m not being critical there. We each bring our own set of skills to the table.
There are some members who are better at managing money, or paying bills, or managing medications and who aren’t so good at the day-to-day in person caregiving. That that’s harder for them emotionally. Maybe they’re so close to their parents that they can’t be objective. And I will tell you this, Steve, I have learned over the years that family members generally make the worst caregivers.
And I know that sounds crazy, and everybody listening is going to say that can’t be because they love them the most. The problem is with that love and that family history comes a great deal of baggage that affects how you interact on a face-to-face basis on a daily basis. And what you’ll find is that good caregivers accept the person that they’re caring for for who they are right now, without history and without baggage. And that’s hard for a family member to do for all the right reasons. It’s really hard for a family member to do that.
Amy Wagner:
Mark, you mentioned baggage, and I want to touch on that because I think you can have the best laid plans. Everyone’s on the same page going into this, but then it starts to happen and mom and dad start to get sicker, or you’re a couple years into this and everyone’s tired, and it’s becoming more and more of a drain on everyone. And what I see is, speaking of the old baggage, people going back into this old, well, you always do this to me. You’ve been doing this to me since second grade, or you’re always the one who knows it all. And so how do you, in these very familiar family dynamics, rise above them to a place where you can continue to do what you need to do?
Mark Reckman:
It’s tough. And Amy, you’re right, people fall back into old sibling dynamics that aren’t helpful at all. And one of the things that I’ve seen work well is to have somebody at the meeting who can narrate, who can manage the meeting. And it doesn’t necessarily have to be a professional, but the professional care managers that I know do excellent jobs at this. And it isn’t because they’re there to tell people what to do. They’re there because frequently those sibling dynamics tend to melt away in the presence of a third party, and you can keep the people on topic.
And so one of the things I recommend is you find somebody who’s a caregiver, who manages caregivers, and you ask them to come to the meeting. Not to control people, that’s not their purpose, but to be sure that all the topics are covered. But really they’re there to control the dynamics
Amy Wagner:
Yeah. To mediate. And I think it’s so easy to listen and say, this would never happen to my family until you’re there, you just don’t know. But this is great advice, of course, as always, from our estate planning expert from the law firm of Wood and Lamping, Mark Reckman. You’re listening to Simply Money here on 55 KRC, the Talk Station.
