<p>The story on this that I read last year indicated that it has to go before a judge so I’d guess that the judge would have some discretion. But you’re leaving it up to human judgement where the judge is paid by the state. I’ve heard of cases of child support where it was later discovered that the person paying child support wasn’t the father - but the child support judgement stood because someone has to pay.</p>
<p>I think I won’t move to Pennsylvania and either will my parents.</p>
<p>[Filial</a> Responsibility | Lawyers.com](<a href=“http://elder-law.lawyers.com/elder-care/You-May-Have-to-Pay-for-Your-Parents-Care.html]Filial”>http://elder-law.lawyers.com/elder-care/You-May-Have-to-Pay-for-Your-Parents-Care.html)</p>
<p>Could something like this also apply to siblings?</p>
<p>There are some assisted living facilities that are really nice, even ones that medicaid will pay for. If I become so disabled that I can’t take care of myself, nor be taken care of in my home, I will definitely do that, though I’d probably get no govt assistance. I will not have my children or their spouses changing my diaper, bathing me or sacrificing too much for me. These people seem very well taken care of and are having a great time. So many senior activities, physical therapy, great care, good food.</p>
<p>Now a nursing home is an entirely different story. And if I get to the point where I am bedridden, someone has to roll me over constantly, and I’ve lost my mind…yeah, time for a nursing home. But if I am that bad off, I hope I still have the mental acuity to down a bottle of painkillers first. Though I’m sure there are some people in nursing homes that aren’t that bad off.</p>
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I don’t see why not.</p>
<p>I checked the MA law, it is limited to parents.</p>
<p>The PA law is covers spouses, parents, and children.</p>
<p>Both have exceptions for children who were not supported or abandoned by their parent.</p>
<p>On the one hand, I can see that the taxpayers shouldn’t have to pay nursing home care for the parents of a wealthy person. But what if the wealth is from that person’s spouse? </p>
<p>On the other hand, if I were to be responsible for my parents nursing home costs, then I also would want to have some legal control over how their money is spent well before the money runs out and they go on state aid.</p>
<p>Regarding the LTC insurance. One takes creddit risk when buying any insurance (you pay for years and hope the company is around when the benefit is collectble). We chose a AAA provider with a long history. Like life insurance, it is cheaper if one starts younger. Of course we are paying in for a longer lead time before we see a return, if any. We ran the scenarios and the present value of the premium stream was similar. H and I decided to not take the risk that we would be denied coverage later (for some condition that might become apparent at age 60 for example) and bought policies. As long as we pay the premiums and the company stays solvent we are in. We did buy policies with relatively long exclusion periods (we effectively self insure for 180 days) to keep the premium reasonable. This decision was no doubt affected by my father’s health situation (long term assisted living client with a debilitative disease). That situation was heartbreaking enough without the added stress of devastating my mother’s financial future.
Back to the OP - yes, I think we middle-aged folks are at greater financial risk than our parents’ generation (longer lives, fewer pensions, SS in jeopardy, etc.). It will likely be worse for our kids though!</p>
<p>What this thread needs are more posters that have simple, easy, cheap solutions.</p>
<p>As for me, DocT’s dad is just the third “good” end-of-life story I’ve heard. Bad ones are unfortunately plentiful. A member of our church plunked down six figures at one of those “care for life” assisted living places … a very nice one. Five months later she was gone. She was sharp to the end, and her passing quick and painless. Still, I can’t help thinking about the good that money might have done if “spent” differently. YMMV.</p>
<p>cptofthehouse --</p>
<p>I admire you for taking in both your M and MIL in their time of need. It sounds like you’re getting help from other family members which makes a big difference I’m sure. My hat goes off to you!</p>
<p>My M lives over 6 hours away. She’s in her late 80’s and lives very comfortably in a luxury continuing care community. Most of the residents are what I like to call “the country club set.” She’s lived there for about 15 years and still lives independently in a condo. If the time comes, the natural progression would be to move into the assisted living facility or nursing home on the campus. That’s what she’s been paying for these past 15 years. However, after seeing many of her friends deteriorate and move to assisted living or nursing home, she’s decided that when she gets to that point, she wants to hire in-home care. A couple of her friends did this but they were very wealthy. Having round the clock in-home nursing care can get quite expensive and I’m not sure how long her money would last. </p>
<p>She refuses to let us take care of her. She very strongly believes that children have absolutely NO responsibility to care for their parents. She doesn’t understand why children take their parents in or provide financial assistance to them. I have no idea why she feels this way, but she does. She doesn’t want to be a burden to us. She seems to think that if her health deteriorates, she can take care of everything by herself without any involvement or help from us. I know when the time comes, this won’t be the case. I guess we will face that issue when the time comes.</p>
<p>Your mother sounds like a very strong, independent woman, aquamarinesea. That is very admirable, and I hope I will be like that. Hopefully when it comes to the point where she really needs help, I hope she realizes it and won’t be stubborn. My parents are like that too, and I’m afraid that their stubbornness will be a big problem.</p>
<p>Good explanation of the LTC insurance, momof2. Seems like you guys have really thought that through. It seems highly unfair to me, though, that people like you are planning and saving so far in the future for such an event, while my grandmother just spent away all of her money, didn’t make much effort to take care of herself, and now the taxpayers are paying for her to get what you are planning for.</p>
<p>Bus driver, same concept as those of us who pay and have insurance… Our rates go up in part to cover the costs at hospitals of people who go and have services and simply don’t pay for them.
Sent from my DROID BIONIC using CC</p>
<p>busdriver11 –</p>
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<p>She is stubborn to the nth degree! I’m already at my wits end trying to deal with her stubborn streak. I try to use logic or common sense, but it does no good. She seems to be cutting herself off from me. She refuses to visit us or let us visit her. She doesn’t return my phone calls or e-mails. It’s breaking my heart. She hasn’t seen my D in over a year. I know that my brother is trying to sabotage our relationship (long story). I’ve had to take a huge step back from my involvement with her in order to preserve my mental health. She can literally drive me crazy if I’m with her for more than 24 hours.</p>
<p>Has she always been like that, aqua? Or is it something that is way worse now that she’s older? I wonder if that is some form of dementia or mental illness. I guess all you can do is make sure it doesn’t drive YOU crazy! How incredibly frustrating.</p>
<p>You’re right, fendergirl, that kind of thing is happening all over, isn’t it, in so many ways.</p>
<p>I am very lucky, and though all of you are very kind to say such wonderful thing to me, really it was not a noble thing I did. It just all happened that way. At this point, neither of them are any trouble, though I fear the future when medical problems may occur. My MIL ended up with us when she fell and broke her hip, and the truth of the matter is that my DH should have insisted she go into assisted living many years before this happened. She could not recover from her hip surgery and be mobile at all unless she got both knees replaced, a situation she had ignored for over 20 years. She did end up in a nursing home and faced with the prospect of being a paraplegic in essence, she finally agreed to the double knee surgery. She recovered from all three surgeries well, but was already highly eccentric and doctors and rehab specialists and nursing home personnel already could see the dementia that DH and I could not since she was always a bit off. By the time she recovered, it was pretty clear that it was an issue. We did try to return her to her home with help, but it did not work out. Can’t supervise at a distance and it was too little too late. But she’s no trouble here since she can take care of her personal self and with an aide a few times a week, it’s no big deal. </p>
<p>We did look into long term care insurance and probably should have gotten some, but the best facilities here run $10-12K a year and the plans I saw only cover a fraction of that. The whole situation with elderly folks with means is often whether or not to divest them of all of their assets which would otherwise go to the payment of their care. There is a 5-6 year rule on this. The fact of the matter is that with her means and assets, she should go into one of the better facilities which is where she did spend time for her rehab. She is likely to live another 10 years, maybe even 20 has her family goes into the three digit range in terms of age often. Most of the better assisted living or nursing homes require a big down payment, by the way, a commitment of about a half million dollars. I figure she’ll stay here until we cannot care for her properly, and then we’lll have to put her in a home. And most all of the family property which she had always wanted preserved will likely have to be sold to pay for her care.</p>
<p>It’s not like you can pick and choose where you want to go unless you have the money. The better places have long waiting lists. </p>
<p>My mother is more the problem as I think she will be needing care with COPD which is advanced already. I just hope that she does not outlive me, because I don’t know who would be able to care for her though my brothers say they are willing. She is a very picky eater, and that I am home most of the time makes things work with her. I don’t know how my SILs would be able to deal with her and they all work anyways and finding an aide would be an expensive proposition. Plus they are very much space challenged in their living situations. She’s nearly died a few times because she will quit eating if she doesn;t get food she likes and no institutional food will fit the bill. </p>
<p>But right now she is happy here, in her room most of the time with her tv shows and puttering around. This white elephant of a house has come in handy. I also now enjoy the luxury of having someone that comes in three times a week and because she is not a medical aid but a housekeeper, all around aid that I have hired privately, she helps me with the housekeeping and wash as well as cleaning both mothers’ rooms and spending a few hours with my MIL who gets her “spa days” when she comes. Right now it’s all good and I truly feel lucky about the way things have worked out. My boys love having their much beloved grandmoms around and can’t do enough for them when they are here, and my DH has finally gotten some peace about his mother’s situation which was frankly a problem for some years before she came here. She was really not handling things well living alone and neighbors and others in the community were quite uneasy with the way she was. It’s one thing when you are 50-60 years old and live in a mess and ignore your bills and act erratically, but a whole other once you hit your 70s which is what happened with her. </p>
<p>I don’t know what we should do about our old age. With our old age baby still in school and college still several years away for him, we still are far from retiring. We’ll have to take it as it comes as right now there are too many elements in the mix to plan for anything. Right now things are stable, and that is good.</p>
<p>But I do wonder what happens with elderly like my mother who have no family.</p>
<p>Just this month we had to move my FIL into an assisted living facility - we’d limped along for a year and a half with caretakers coming in 4-5 times a week. But when he was found in a casino a 2 hour drive from his home with a bizarre story about why he went there we knew it was time. (Our struggle to get his driver’s license revoked was unsuccessful until then.) The latest event was, in hindsight, a blessing. It made it clear that it was time to act. We brought him home to our house for a week while figuring out what to do and his decline was unambiguous. The frustrating thing about dementia is that its progression isn’t steady or consistent. Over the past couple of years my FIL would have “episodes” where he was clearly delusional, and then recover and be very much like his old self within a few weeks. We’re thinking those days are past now.</p>
<p>The assisted living facility is nice. I felt that a big part of the mental problems he experienced were exacerbated by his being alone for long periods of time. (We live 2 hours away and only one of his children who live nearby visited him regularly.) There’s lots of people and activities at the facility that he could engage with. But he’s resistant to the change. He calls his kids about getting out of “this hotel.” (He means that literally.)</p>
<p>It’s sad. It’s expensive - about $20K/year above his SS and pension income, a figure which will go up as his abilities decline. Fortunately it’s not a financial problem for the family now and I don’t anticipate it will become one. But most of all - it’s inevitable. </p>
<p>My father was insistent that he never go into a nursing home. He died in one, like his mother. My FIL and my wife have stated the same thing. But that’s not realistic. We’d all like to have a stroke in our 80’s and die at home but for most people these days the likelihood of a lengthy pre-death convalescence in one of “those places” is high.</p>
<p>We’d better make our peace with this reality, folks. Financially and psychologically. Unlike the numerous adults I know who make silly, “whistling past the graveyard” comments about how they’ll somehow end their lives before entering a facility of any sort, I’ve told my kids to pack me off as soon as they think it’s time for me to go. Chances are that day will come. The least I can do is try not to make them feel guilty about it.</p>
<p>My folks love their independent assisted living home. I told my wife that I can see myself living there… Someday. I guess your fil lives on the other side of the bay .</p>
<p>There is a big difference between a quality assisted living facility and a nursing home where everyone is just waiting around to die. I always mixed the two up before I started actually dealing with it. I can definitely see myself at an assisted living facility, partying it up and traveling around with the more active people.</p>
<p>NewHope, your friend from church who paid a 6 figure deposit to move to a continuing care facility may not have wasted much of the money. At many of these places, much of the deposit is refundable. At my mom’s place, you can put down a larger deposit, and 90% of it gets refunded to your estate, or you can put down a slightly less large deposit, and the amount that goes back to your estate decreases by a few percent per month over the first couple of years. </p>
<p>Actually, that’s my idea of LTC insurance. Save enough for the deposit, with enough income left to pay the monthly fee. That way we don’t have to pick an insurance company we trust today, we can pick a CCRC place when the time comes.</p>
<p>I think a lot of people’s adaptability to group living environments in old age has to do with their personality. My FIL was always pretty cantankerous. You, dstark, are obviously an easy-going guy. ;)</p>
<p>Yeah, the difference between assisted living and a SNF is significant, but a lot of people can’t see it. And I understand that - it’s a loss of independence, and an acknowledgment that in fact, we are going to die, and the move to this place is a concrete step in that direction.</p>
<p>^^Well, we’re going to die no matter where we live, so we may as well stay healthy and enjoy life as much as we can. It could be pleasant hanging out with the other old folk, having people to talk to and getting someone else to clean your living space! And do the cooking, too.</p>