My Mom is dealing with her dad getting older and is trying to figure out what to do. I’ve done a bit of googleing and can’t find the information so I figured I’d ask you guys.
When my grandmother died she created a trust with two out of three daughters (not my mom) and my grandfather as members so they could control his finances. We were out of the country at the time and there was doubt about my mom’s ability to do anything from overseas. Fifteen years later my aunts are getting tired of being responsible for my grandfather but since my mom isn’t in the trust she can’t handle any of the finances and since she is the only sister that lives more then three hours away she can’t help out in person.
Apparently my grandfather is becoming absent minded and is having trouble paying bills and remembering to go shopping. One of my aunts has decided to call protective services for the elderly in California (I don’t know the agency’s name) and get him a nurse the problem is that it is going to cost $1,000/week and my grandfather isn’t rich. The same aunt has also told my mom that once my grandfather’s money runs out the sisters will have to foot the bill for the rest of his life or California will arrest them. This doesn’t sound right to me.
I can understand that if you undertake caring for a parent you have to maintain a minimum standard of care but I don’t think that doing what you can (visiting and doing housework or buying groceries or having him stay at my mom’s) would count as undertaking care giving responsibilities.
I think my aunts are trying to bully my mom into giving them money to make up for the fact that she doesn’t live in the town she grew up in and that she doesn’t have to run my grandfathers life because she’s not in the trust. So my question, if it’s not asking for too much legal advise, is what are children required to do for their parents as they age and what are the consequences for not meeting the requirements?
I don’t think you’re going to get anything but speculation out of this one - we don’t know how much money is really there, what the terms of the trust really are, or many other factors.
However, the idea of a trust is that the trustees are managing resources for the benefit of the beneficiary. There would not be an obligation for the trustee to sacrifice their own personal resources for the beneficiary, but they do have a fiduciary obligation to make reasonable management and investment decisions. The idea of going to jail if they don’t foot the bill is just silly unless they’ve literally stolen his assets and are using their own money to keep from being caught.
I suppose no one had the foresight to get long-term care insurance for the grandfather? The whole purpose of LTC is to provide a benefit for this kind of care (typically, with a benefit of $150 or $200 per day).
Your relatives should look into Medicare benefits (actually, I think CA has their own version of Medicare). The government won’t usually pay for in-home care, but will pay for assisted living or nursing care. These can be God-sends to the family, who can stop running errands for their father and can instead focus on visiting with him doing things everyone enjoys.
There was no LTC, I guess they thought he was going to be healthy and then drop dead. It’s good to know that my mom isn’t required to pay out of pocket for anything. That just struck me as wrong. I’ll do a little bit of research on Medicare equivalent in California.
If he’s just having trouble paying bills and getting groceries, there are services that can drop in daily or three times a week to help with that. Some do housekeeping as well. This is much cheaper than a nurse.
You should check what I’m about to say about coverage, because it’s been awhile and the rules change, but I believe that to qualify either the nurse or the service for payment by MediCAL, his doctor would have to prescribe it as a medical necessity. MediCAL also has fiscal requirements. His income and assets would both have to be below a certain point. The last time I checked, the assets couldn’t be above $3,000, excluding the house he’s living in and the car that someone is driving to his benefit.
I don’t think Medicare will pay for in-home personal help. Nursing therapy might be covered, as well as bathing and meds. They will pay for in-facility care, but only if it can be listed as therapy (he’s recovering from something) or hospice care (the doctor signs saying that he will probably only live another six months).
But it didn’t sound from your post that he was declining physically. Heck, if he would turn the bills over to your aunts and sign up for meals on wheels, that might solve things cheaply for the time being. Unless “absent minded” is a euphemism for encroaching dementia, he doesn’t need a nurse.
Physically he’s fine in fact he still runs several miles a day but his mind is starting to go, so I’ve been told I don’t talk to my mom’s family. You’re right about MediCAL’s coverage requirement but if you’re above the $3,000 limit them just make you pay for part or all of the service.
There was a service I found working my way through the website that was for help short of nursing care and that is where I pointed my mom. It will help his money last longer so he doesn’t need to go on the Government’s dime but will help take the burden off of the family.