<p>None of three sets of parents have ever asked for financial help. I am not sure what I would do if they did.</p>
<p>I have a disabled sister and one sibling is helping her and it drives that sibling crazy- once you ‘help’ a family member, once your finances are entangled, it gives you the ‘right’ to comment on all their spending since everything they spend affects you.</p>
<p>My sibling hates being in the 10 year long situation with no end. I felt guilty when I did not offer to help, but I knew I was not in a position to help my sister and take care of my kids and my retirement. Now my sibling hears from all sorts of friends that they would never take on the burden my sibling has chosen. And, of course, the disabled one made years of poor financial choices.</p>
<p>I cannot fathom helping a parent maintain the choices of a 2nd home lifestyle. I can see helping with medical bills or helping some one destitute.</p>
<p>On the lake house, is it something you and DH or your family and a siblings family would like to keep in the family? Maybe you could work out some sort of life estate- a purchase price discounted by the imputed cost of them living there for the rest of their lives or some other complex but FAIR deal. If you do any purchases I would get 2-3 appraisals to set a start value, minus them living there, and let them pay the utilities, but you pay the maintenance and such.</p>
<p>When you’ve done well everyone including relatives tend to think you’re richer than you are. I marvel when I hear many opine that the wealthy have not been touched in this downturn. I guess they think all the money was in their mattresses!</p>
<p>From what the OP writes, it appears the in laws believe they’re rolling. Buy their house, let them live in it, pay their taxes and help them out. They appear to believe the OP and DH can and will do it. Naive perhaps? Proud of a son that did well? It’s either that or greedy and entitled so I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt.</p>
<p>I know DH and I have never shared our financial realities with family and I’m sure they think we’re rolling! None of the sibs have 3 kids in private colleges or live in NYC as we do. They don’t understand our forced investments in our firms or that fact that 50 is old in our professions. </p>
<p>Sometimes you just need to explain your reality and I have a feeling this is one of those times.</p>
<p>I woiuld help my parents or in laws if they needed it but in this situation the FIL is an entitled brat.
He should keep the part time job, sell the vacation home and cut out the vacation.</p>
<p>Ellemenope gives very good advice: All of you “children” should chip in for a good dose of financial planning for the elders. Let an outsider tell them what’s reasonable and what’s not. Let an outsider look under the blankets to see what they really have. Let an outsider tell them that selling the boat, second home, and timeshare is the most approrpiate thing to do. That way, you have “helped out” by getting good advice for them – and you’ve also not been made the bad guys by telling them yourself to do all these things.</p>
<p>And, if it turns out that they do in fact need help (which I doubt), you’ll feel comforted that an outside independent advisor deemed it so.</p>
<p>If your in-laws reject this idea, then you can reject helping them. Make their cooperation contingent on their going along with getting the outside advice.</p>
<p>Thanks for all the responses. Your insight has been very helpful to me in sorting through some ideas and emotions. I am thinking we will encourage a family meeting where all financials are out in the open and discussed and also ask that their financial planner or an independent one be present. I think we need to discuss with them that we are in our 50’s, have college age kids who will probably want to go on to grad school and have nice weddings that we want to help with. We also want to be able to afford to retire and not be a burden on our family. I know we won’t get this done until after the Holidays and I will worry about this until then. Wow…Christmas dinner should be interesting!</p>
<p>I agree with ellemenope, that an independent financial planner would be the best approach to assessing your inlaws situation. However if it were me, I would not feel obligated to disclose my own family’s financial status with your inlaws or your husband’s siblings. The issue at hand is not about you, but about the inlaws’ ability to maintain a lifestyle.</p>
<p>I think it’s not necessary for all the siblings to have full financial disclosure but they can mention to the FIL that they still have mortgages to pay (if they do) and that nowadays college costs are xxx. Very likely, the FIL has not really paid attention to how much it costs (tuition used to be about $2000 40 years ago at colleges where it now is in the mid $30k). This can set the basis for discussing how FIL can retrench a bit without feeling like a pauper.
FIL is lucky he is in good health. I have a friend who is younger and has Alzheimer’s and had to retire from his job prematurely. He has a college-aged son. Another one, in his mi-70s, has Parkinson’s.</p>
<p>Agreed…the siblings are not asking for financial help. The parents are. They need to disclose why this is the case. </p>
<p>By the way…the OP said that the vacation home was waterfront property. Where I am…this type of home seems to be immune to the downturns in the economy. There is only so much waterfront property.</p>
<p>My sympathies, NorthMinnesota! As you know, I’m in a situation that is somewhat similar. You’ve gotten some very good advice. I agree with the suggestion to consult a financial planner to find a way for the parents to, preferably, support themselves with their own resources and, if this is really not possible, define a reasonable level of support from their children. But this should not include maintaining the lifestyle they have now! I am wondering what level of assets they have if they have already tapped the equity in their home. One possibility might be to sell the waterfront home and use the proceeds to buy an annuity. You are already paying to support this home - do you use it for your vacations, too? I agree with other posters that waterfront properties tend to maintain value no matter what.</p>
<p>I wish you good luck, especially with trying (and hopefully getting) financial disclosure. I knew my mom’s finances, more or less, but her final illness threw all her previous plans into a mess. I had to pay for an expensive funeral due to issues of flying her body to Ny to be buried, and a few other arcane issues of orthodox jewish funeral customs. I eventually was repaid by the estate (not by my siblings), but I had to wait a few months, so never underestimate the need to have extra money in cash available.</p>
<p>My own in laws would never tell us the financial details of their life. </p>
<p>I would not buy a large annuity under the current economic mess unless it was with an extremely highly rated insurance company in a state with a large guaranty fund. THese companies are not doing as well as they should be, and some state’s guarantee only $100,000.</p>
<p>Another thing to keep in mind is that the lifestyle of yor relatives will change soon. They WILL become frailer, less able to cope with even a townhome. If they are traveling, that won’t continue forever, either. I mean, we like to think of ourselves as able to take care of ourselves forever but I’ve seen decline within my own family. What should be top priority should be making sure they have good coverage for medicines, nursing home if needed, home help if needed, living space which can easily be adjusted for disability .</p>
<p>I think the thing that is interesting and hasn’t been mentioned much is that the MIL thinks everything is fine and the FIL is asking for help. Either the MIL is unaware of the realities of their financial situation (many men won’t discuss these matters even with their wife…which sometimes leaves widows in very bad situations) or the FIL is freaking out – perhaps unnecessarily. </p>
<p>My own grandmother, who was left very well off, believed that she was hovering on the edge of poverty to the point where she began to neglect herself (saying for instance that she couldn’t afford to heat in the winter, etc.) which turned out to be the first sign that she was slipping into dementia. </p>
<p>If you notice any other personality changes in your FIL, he may need to be checked out by a doctor.</p>
<p>Novelisto has a good point. My FIL kept charge of the financial affairs and my MIL didn’t want to know (or was used to not knowing). WHen he died, she learned that when he had retired, he had opted for the larger pension without survivor benefit. She was destitute.</p>
<p>Wow, zooser, that is cold, truly cold, especially given that women usually live so much longer than men</p>
<p>Some one earlier mentioned paying a ton of money for funeral arrangements requested by a mom, but there was no money in the estate to pay for that.</p>
<p>What do you all feel is the moral and ethical obligation to pay for final expenses for some one? If they leave the money to do it ‘their way’ (cater lunch for 200) is that fine? If they don’t leave the money are you somehow obligated to fulfill their wish? What if people disagree on what they want? FIL wants to donate his body science, MIL wants to be buried at cemetery XYZ- no one lives there any more in the family, no one will ever go visit her grave as she imagines, no one in our generations is into the whole funeral/gravestone thing- much more bodies to science & cremation. So, FIL, who should outlive MIL wants to tell her he will do all that, but then not do any of it :eek: Is that okay?</p>
<p>When my mother died, I made her final arrangements. Truthfully, they are for those who are LIVING not for the person who died. If my mother had made prepaid arrangements, I would have done anything she wanted…but she didn’t. So when the time came…the decisions (and expense) were all mine.</p>
<p>somemom, are you asking if it is okay for FIL to agree verbally to bury MIL where she wants to be buried, but if MIL dies first, is it okay for FIL to change the plan on his own?</p>
<p>If that is what you are asking we nearly had a situation similar to this with family, because there was originally not going to be a plot available for one party where he wanted to be buried. Then suddenly one plot was going to be available, but not 2. The issue was a major hassle because of prepurchased plots by other extended family members without proper record keeping. In the end it has all worked out, and both parties will have their wishes honored. We did not think it was right if one person did not have their wishes honored, but the circumstances were complicated.</p>
<p>My suggestion is that all of you siblings have a sit down meeting and discuss your feelings about all of this. It would be great to be able to have a united front. </p>
<p>We have a similar situation with our families. However, in our case, the members were in dire straits, even life threatening conditions. We chose to use some our resources to cover them as the priorities were definitely that way for us as much as we wanted top education and other choices for our children. Those events and the economy as it stands today has put us in a precarious position. At this point, any emergency that requires a lot of money will hurt us quite a bit. The only reason we were able to come up with the cash in other situations is because we had saved and do not have a second home, go on fancy vacations regularly, have two old cars, junky furniture, cheap wardrobes and spend little for entertainment. For our income level, we don’t have the extras most of our peers have, as we chose to invest in our kids’ education, our home and save. Well, the savings went to health and other crises. I regret any of the things happened but have to be grateful that we were able to avert catastrophes. </p>
<p>Which comes to the point that there may be emergencies coming for your family and if you are all straining to provide too many amenities, you may not have the resources to easily handle true crises.</p>
<p>I think the financial planner consultation is great advice, but I would not have such a person at your first family meeting. You’ve got to take it much slower in order for everyone to have time to think things through. The first meeting (or two!) should have the goal of having everyone AGREE to have a financial planner give advice. I would also suggest that the plan focus on something concrete like the next five years, during which your parents can reasonably expect to continue in good health.</p>
<p>Have some of the meeting center on disclosure on everyone’s part. The siblings may not realize that you are paying for taxes, etc., for the vacation home, and that your college obligations are very high. There are probably a few things about their lives that you are not aware of, such as situations with their spouses’ families. As painful as these meetings are, they are beneficial and can keep on being beneficial if you enlist everyone’s cooperation and stay out of the hurt feelings zone.</p>
<p>My advice would be a meeting with siblings and then with Dad to present a united front before agreeing to any help. It’s my view that if one is asking for monetary support privacy related to finances goes out the door and Dad should be forthcoming with information about his financial standing. </p>
<p>My dh and I provided financial support for my mil. My fil did the same thing that Zmom described–he opted for a greater monthly pension payment in lieu of survivor benefits. When he died that left my mil with an income that was 60% less than what she had been receiving. Her plan was to move to senior housing and sell her home (they had paid off their mortgage); however, the list for senior housing in her town was miles long. Dh and his two sisters got together and agreed to make up for 40% of the income that mil lost. Dh and I contributed the most since we were in a better position financially. This worked well and mil was happy, until her COPD progressed to the point where she couldn’t live in her home unless there was someone with her. Dh’s niece (the daughter of his youngest sister who had died of complications from diabetes at 32) volunteered to move in and live with her grandmother. This young woman (she’s now in her early 30s) is disabled and doesn’t work. She took care of my mil until mil passed away. Mil left her home to dh and his three sisters. Before she passed away, she asked dh to make sure that her niece could continue to live in the house. (She didn’t put that in her will.) Dh was the executor of mil’s estate and he agreed to honor mil’s wishes with respect to his niece. Needless to say, his two sisters were angry. They wanted dh to sell the home and divide the proceeds among the three siblings. Dh wouldn’t do it and this created a rift with one sister. The other sister wasn’t willing to challenge dh and certainly didn’t support legal action, which the angry sister proposed. This is certainly a situation where mil should have recorded her wishes.</p>