<p>By the same logic, why not come after parents if adult children declare bankruptcy? </p>
<p>I’d bet that lack of saving adequately is far more of an issue for Medicaid eligibility than transferring money to the next generation. For many people it’s not by choice. Market went south dragging down IRAs, interest rates plummeted dragging down savers, pension funds went pfft, jobs were lost, etc etc. My ant-like soul would love to take people like the OP’s grasshopper parents and scold them for the rest of their lives, but that’s not gonna happen or do anything useful. </p>
<p>We started out with a financial planner when kids were in preschool to : 1) Plan to pay their college education (3 more years for our youngest) 2) Then plan for retirement. Unless my retirement system (NY State) goes bankrupt, we should be in good shape.</p>
<p>Maintaining boundaries is hard. I have a sibling who has made it a habit of crying poor and spending every dollar. It’s a habit. First the sibling cried to our parents, who would send money. After our parents died, the sibling then started reaching out to others. One Christmas newsletter was about financial problems. “My daughter is musical, but I can’t afford the $20/week for piano lessons. My car needs new tires, but unless there’s a Christmas miracle it will have to wait for next year…” Some of our elderly relatives sent her checks. Now the elderly relatives are gone, and she’s turned to me. We don’t have a conversation in which she doesn’t complain about not having enough money for something important, or not being able to get medical care that she really needs since it’s too expensive, etc.</p>
<p>I realized that this sibling has made this a habit. She doesn’t see anything wrong with it, and periodically (like Pavlov’s dogs) she gets positive reinforcement when someone gives her money or services for nothing. She has worked her whole life, taken some vacations, and let slip that she owns a rental property in a college town. I don’t doubt that having more money or financial help would make her life easier, but I’m sure most people are in the same boat.</p>
<p>It’s hard to ignore, but I’m forcing myself to just say “that’s too bad” and change the subject. I’ve asked her what she’s going to do. I’ve said that I’m sorry, but I’m not in a position to help (which usually triggers questions about my financial situation!). She’s nothing if not persistent. I’ve tried talking about having tuition bills for 3 kids and a spouse in a nursing home, but nothing stops her. She’s a lot better at this game than I am, and I’m not comfortable talking about money with her anyway.</p>
<p>So my recommendation to OP is…move across the country! Or develop a really, really thick skin and a way to maintain the boundaries or this will drive you crazy. I avoid talking to my sibling since I can guarantee that she will bring up problems almost immediately. Same thing with calls or emails. It’s exhausting, and I always find myself in knots after talking to her since it’s so predictable. It’s bad enough with a relative who lives hours away. I can’t imagine how bad it would be if we were in the same town. </p>
<p>And no - you don’t owe your parents support (Unless perhaps you’re in Pennsylvania thanks to a recent Court decision relating to Medicaid recovery, but we can hope that will change. Hopefully there aren’t too many other states that may find children responsible for their parents’ support.).</p>
<p>In my parents’ culture, it is considered cruel to put your parents in a nursing house (and I would personally never do that).
It’s also okay to buy a new car/house for your parents, because it’s likely that they spent a good portion of their own money on raising you and giving you the best education 10-30 years ago.
Why don’t they have their own savings? Because different governments were toppled throughout the years, and their country of origin defaulted a couple of times…</p>
<p>A lot of the second-generation immigrant kids I know were kind of forced into pursuing careers with good, stable incomes because they wanted to make sure that their hard-working parents could live comfortably in old age.</p>
<p>This actually happened to a friend. She was named in a lawsuit where someone was injured at a school function–she was the parent association president at the time and the person injured sued the school and everyone associated with the event. Lawyer for the plaintiff did some research and found out that my friend was the recipient of a family trust that was protected from such claims–lawyer also knew that her family had deep pockets. He/she proceeded to call her father and suggest that he might want to help the plaintiff and avoid having his daughter involved in a lengthy lawsuit.</p>
<p>" Parents MAY have transferred their property to said kids just outside the “look back” window that is generally used to determine Medicaid eligibility. Still, it is a huge net and can also tip responsible adults into very bad situations based on poor decisions made by their parents.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, ultimately SOMEONE or MANY SOMEONES have to pay for bills that indigents have run up & can’t pay. Is it fairer for state/nation/society to share those costs or have people with at least SOME blood relationship pay a larger share of those costs?"</p>
<p>I totally agree. The truth is, many people feel they have no responsibility to take care of their elders. I know it is a cultural thing, in many countries it is expected that your parents and grandparents will move in with you and you will take care of them. Now, so many elderly people are completely dependent upon social security and medicare, and that’s all they have. It is quite a difference between supporting people who are living lavishly and blowing everything, and allowing your family to suffer. I have heard many cases of people transferring their assets to their kids so they can have little assets and get the govt to pay their nursing home costs in the future, and that isn’t what you are supposed to do. You are supposed to spend down your assets till you have little left, THEN you go to a Medicaid funded facility if required. People seem to think that they shouldn’t have to pay for this, and I have a hard time resisting saying, “Hello, this is called fraud!”</p>
<p>We have a situation that just happened recently with my Grandma. She has been living at this assisted living facility, that she really likes, for many years. It really was unnecessary for her to live there after my Grandpa died, but she liked it there, so she paid the extra money for it.</p>
<p>She has never asked us for much, though I provide adult diapers and cat supplies for her on a monthly basis. We had no idea of her finances, but assumed she was doing okay because after my Grandpa died, she had enough $$ to go on several cruises. She had mentioned they were expensive, because she only gets balcony cabins, and pays the single supplement.</p>
<p>My mom asked her for a picture of her finances, and got a bank statement from her. She gets enough in SS and a small pension to barely cover her rent and phone bill. Besides that, she only has about 1K in assets. The facility pays for her food, she hasn’t gone to the doctor in 15 years, so she has little in expenses. But…how does someone get to this? How does the spouse die with no/little life insurance, and what savings there was is all spent on cruises? How does this happen? People who seemed to live relatively frugally and worked all their lives, with little in medical expenses or college costs for their children, end up with nothing? I can’t imagine getting in this situation. It appears that one would have no sense to blow all their savings, or have very little saved for retirement.</p>
<p>But no fear, we’re taking care of Grandma. I wish she would have told us earlier. I just don’t understand how someone would let this happen.</p>
<p>I’ve faced this situation with an older cousin of mine who’s a ne’er do well. Fortunately, since most of my family members believes in self-reliance and only helping if someone is in a crisis situation that’s not self-inflicted and my own past conflicts with him, it made it very easy to say no and to turn the attempted guilt-trips back on him considering his past history. </p>
<p>While I am known for being generous with my time and expertise with friends/relatives…I am also known for having little tolerance for those who feel entitled to take me for granted or to incessantly ask me for help without considering my time or using me as a crutch to avoid doing the work of trying to see if they could solve what would be extremely minor problems themselves. </p>
<p>Such behaviors are almost alien to me as that behavior wasn’t tolerated by most older relatives in my extended family and was even less tolerated at my highly competitive public magnet high school. Heck, several HS teachers harshly condemned this attitude as “feeling entitled to be spoonfed by others”. </p>
<p>IME, such folks can be like emotional vampires using their appeals to emotion, incessant calls for help, etc to suck all the joy/happiness out of your life. As a result of learning about this in high school/undergrad…there’s a reason why such folks learn to steer clear of me once they try to lay into me with such appeals for help. </p>
<p>I’ve had to counsel some extremely good-hearted friends that they do have the right to say no and that no one is entitled to their help at the drop of the hat.</p>
<p>Totally agree with busdriver in post #87. My children, whose private education we funded,understand that our funds are totally for our use. We are responsible and won’t let them or any taxpayers pick up our tab. However, I will make sure I live in a style compatible with my means and if there’s no inheritance left, so be it.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>What if the blood relation/child severed all ties with the elder because of abuse/neglect of their care when they were kids? Is it right for the state to insist they subsidize the care for those that not only had little/no part in raising them…but also abused/neglected them as well? Could one not argue that this could constitute a form of “Cruel and unusual punishment” in that context?</p></li>
<li><p>What about adopted children? Which sets of parents should they be supporting? Their adoptive parents? Birth parents? Both?</p></li>
</ol>
<p>And by the way, I’m one of those people who has actually been through the whole Medicaid thing since my spouse is in a nursing home - age in 60’s, not ‘geriatric’ 70s or 80s. Our family savings went to the nursing home. Our oldest is taking the bar next week, and looking for a job. The younger ones are still in school. </p>
<p>I’m extremely grateful for Medicaid and for all the taxpayers who are helping our family. Not everyone is trying to scam the system.</p>
<p>Is it just me or if you replace the OP with “Millennials” and his parents with “Baby boomers” and you get a close analogy to the current financial mess (over spending, poor saving, lower income, huge and unsustainable debts) that the retiring generation is leaving to the next one?</p>
<p>OP, haha. My mom always said she was spending my inheritance. I said, “No, It’s yours, you earnd it”. She Didn 't leave much. But walked the Great Wall of China, cruised through the Panama Canal and persued many historic</p>
<p>I’m so tired of all these “Selfish Baby Boomer” articles. Most of my high school class went to state schools or CC and then local colleges, struggled to find jobs in the recession that was Washington in the late 70s, and has been working hard ever since. None of my friends expect their children to provide anything but company, fun and perhaps grandchildren in the future.<br>
I don’t see the rash of overspending and irresponsibility that so many are quick to pin on boomers. I see hard working people being laid off in thier late 50s struggling to find jobs, and several of my friends raising their grandchildren, and mostly nobody with a company retirement like they planned on 15 years ago.
Don’t want to go into the study and really run the numbers, but we are into the “Holy Cow” totals for college…they don’t owe us a dollar. But…we never borrowed or spent enough to endanger our future. We can’t retire early, but we do have savings.
Never had a boat, never been to Paris, never ran a balance on credit cards. Boring old us.</p>
<p>Just FYI at least in CA, the laws do not require support if the child was abandoned by the parent. I did not read it in detail, but there is some provision for adult children who had been abandoned for by the parent (singular) for at least two years.</p>
<p>Post #96, my kid’s friends at school must be reading CC because they were also complaining about the baby boomers. My daughter must have told them her parents are baby boomers too and so are a lot of her relatives, but they are not as depicted in that article.</p>
<p>This guy is clever, if not inconsistent, with his stats:</p>
<p>“The median net worth of households headed by someone 65 or older is $170,494, 42 percent higher than in 1984, while the median net worth for younger-age households is $3,662, down 68 percent from a quarter century ago, according to an analysis by the Pew Research Center.”</p>
<p>“One key reason: their indebted parents are not leaving their jobs, forcing younger people to put careers on hold.”</p>
<p>Hmmm, their rich and indebted parents…</p>
<p>One problem is that he states an average. Well, that average may be skewed by a small number of very wealthy people.</p>
<p>Regarding children: I do not expect them to support me in any way, shape or form. I expect to leave something to them unless nursing homes eat it up. </p>
<p>Regarding parents and other family: if they are seriously in need, they are welcome to come live at my house and I will provide them with food and shelter. I will not/cannot fully support them living independently. We do financially prop up parents who did not plan adequately (including one that left a teenaged child) but it’s in the ‘spending money’ range, not ‘food and shelter’ range.</p>