<ul>
<li>Father has been ill and in and out of the hospital over the past few years. Takes opiates for pain and is confused on occasion. Gets angry easily. Needs someone to stay with him.</li>
<li>Mother has had mental instability, won’t go to counseling or therapy, and now has decided it is appropriate to leave him alone whenever she wants to. She has 100% control over both their finances, unsure if she has POA for him. Probably no need to as they have joint everything. Fights with him as if he is completely well.</li>
<li>Sister and her spouse keep father from other sister, including not letting him use his cell phone.</li>
</ul>
<p>As far as I can see, I’ve told my friend (the other sister) that some options are:
Convince her mom to get a divorce as soon as possible - but her mom won’t go for it because she will lose the purse strings
Convince her dad to sign over power of attorney to her, both the medical and financial POAs, and then start taking control of his care and where he will live.</p>
<p>What other options are there? If the world was just, the mother would be sent away to a mental health facility, and he would be able to live at home with a live-in companion. You can’t just get a live-in companion instantaneously though, and my friend is 2 hours away so handling any of these issues at all is very hard (she is a single parent of several children too…)</p>
<p>The money seems to be a huge issue for the mother, to an extent that I wonder if it is domestic abuse (for example, the mother had the father illegally committed to a locked-down nursing home, lying that he had Alzheimer’s and he did not have that diagnosis).</p>
<p>Rhandco…I’m confused. Are you posting about your family (that is how the beginning of this post reads…and the title), but then you mention other people who don’t sound like relatives?</p>
<p>It’s a tough situation regardless. If it’s you, I would suggest reading the parents support thread. If it’s a friend, support your friend. There really isn’t anything you can do about this situation…but your friend surely needs someone who will listen.</p>
<p>No, not my family. My friend, she is pretty much shattered. I try to give her advice and she gives me advice.</p>
<p>Maybe I should have said “the father” and “the mother” or clarified it was my friend. I read the parents support thread somewhat, but I really can’t weed out what might be important to her. So much of it seems to be narratives of day-to-day, but I want to try to help my friend with planning.</p>
<p>I “can’t do anything about it” but if you knew of a kid being abused, would you sit there and ignore it? I’m just wondering if anyone had been in her situation, dealing with possible divorce of elderly parents and how to support them. </p>
<p>Many cities and counties have an office within Social Services called “Adult Protective Services.” They can investigate anonymous abuse tips the same way CPS investigates child abuse. Your friend should start there if she knows of specific abuse. If they don’t find any evidence maybe they can point her to other services.</p>
<p>She can also contact an elder affairs lawyer and see if she can gain guardianship of her parents, either their person or their estate or both (if it’s only the estate (their finances), it’s often called a “conservatorship”).</p>
<p>In addition to the good advice given about contacting Adult Protective Services and an elder affairs lawyer, your friend should also contact her parents’ doctor. While he can’t comment on their private information without their consent, nothing prevents him from listening and acting on her observations. I did that in my parents’ situation and it hastened the process considerably. I hope your friend can help her father soon.</p>
<p>She talked to her father’s doctor. The doctor has been convinced by her mother that her father has dementia and is violent to her. And the mother has not told the doctor that she has abandoned her husband for hours at a time. </p>
<p>Thank you for your advice. I am trying to convince her to get POA for her father, and at least get all his paperwork. Her parents had a folder with “important papers” that always contained copies of things like drivers licenses, insurance info, and so on, and the folder is now empty. I am hoping my friend could offer to stay with her father while her mother spends the day away and try to find some papers.</p>
<p>Her mother goes from wanting to completely abandon her husband (but no divorce because she wants access to 100% of the money) to wanting to stay with him no matter what and take care of him. Note that her husband, and kids, used to do 100% for her. To the point that my friend remembers having to go to the basement to reset the breaker as young as 10 years old because her mother was afraid to.</p>
<p>Any advice on how to handle the situation being 90 minutes away and working full-time and a single mother? The distance between their houses, and the fact that my friend works an hour away in the opposite direction from her parents house, makes it really difficult.</p>
<p>I moved my family, with a great amount of negative effects, to be within 15 minutes of my parents, from being an hour away, although we basically stayed an hour away from my in-laws. It was heartbreaking and disruptive, and took three years to get my kids adjusted to the move. I can’t see my friend doing that because her kids are stable in their current school, and that has not been true in the past. My advice would not be to move, but it’s so hard for her to be far away.</p>
<p>There should be senior services (rather than Adult Protective Services) around for your friend, who could advise her on the distance and other similar issues that you raise, @rhandco. A Google search should find them for her.</p>
<p>She’s a single mother, I’ve tried to help as much as I can as she can’t do too much on her own. But could she go to senior services in her own town to get advice, instead of where her parents live?</p>
<p>Hmm. If this were a situation where a needy, young child was living with an unstable parent who was failing to give adequate care and was abandoning the child, it would definitely qualify for a call to Child Protective Services reporting suspected child neglect by the parent. I would think that same logic could be applied to an elderly, disabled spouse being neglected (or even abused) by the other unstable spouse. Some places have an elder abuse hotline to call. </p>
<p>I looked online for a support group in my hometown when I was overwhelmed with my mother’s aging issues. It helped to go to a meeting and meet other children who were caring for a parent/parents. Each story was unique, each adult had their own struggle or two they were dealing with. There were two leaders of the group, both of them worked in the senior care industry, and this was a free service.</p>
<p>Am I right in sensing the single mother is feeling estranged from both her parents, AND from her sister? That maybe the situation is that the other sister is wanting to call all the shots and shut off all communication?</p>
<p>So, trying to figure out when the mom goes out and abandons the dad would give your friend an open window to go and visit her dad. Is there any way to investigate that angle?</p>
<p>Bingo - her sister is physically closer to her parents, her sister’s husband has been providing respite care for her father when he was unemployed (but he is employed now), her sister shows up with her mom’s rings fitted for her…</p>
<p>It’s hard to figure out when the mom abandons the dad, because the last thing she said to her sister was “I’m probably going out in the next few days, but don’t you feed daddy while I am gone”. </p>
<p>And my friend is taping phone calls (legal in our state with one party’s permission) and keeping track of emails. In particular, she is recording her father being completely lucid and noting how he is treated and her sister talking about how her mother has issues with anger, and has taken his wallet and paperwork away from him.</p>
<p>The issue of her parents not treating her that well as a child, young adult, and even now makes it more difficult too. I would be hard-pressed to not leave them to their own devices, based on some of the hateful emails my friend has gotten in the past from her mom.</p>