Boy, I have thought about this topic a lot. I know of several people who are taking some level of responsibility for a sibling & it is rough.
One person I know has a brother who has never been responsible, in his 40s he moved in with Mom (widow) & now it has been 10 years since Mom died, he still lives in that house & has all sorts of health issues. All the other siblings do so much physically and emotionally to care for him. He is ungrateful and hostile and fights them. That is difficult. It’s one thing to have some level of responsibility for another adult, but when they fight you, how much right do they have to do it their way? If they seem incapable of responsible behavior, then what?
Another person, after having their sibling live with them for a couple of years, actually bought a place for the sibling to live, but it has been a huge sacrifice & the sibling just does not realize that.
How responsible for another adult are we? And when the person is uncooperative, then what?
My aunt never married and has no children and I ABSOLUTELY and without question consider her my (and my siblings) responsibility. She is self-sufficient now but, like my parents, aging. We fully intend to care for her as we would my parents. No one every told us it was our responsibility, we just assumed it. We have talked to her about future planning and she knows we are there for her. I expect your children will feel much the same.
I feel my kids just assume it as well as far as their aunt is concerned. In the brief discussions we have had, I sensed no hesitancy that they did not understand that they might have some responsibility down the line. And thank you, @LeftofPisa, I heard from my sister’s good friends, who took her for the procedure this morning ,that her surgery went well. Radiation down the line but should be okay.
Um, people do die without becoming ill on occasion.
The question is, what is the moral responsibility, and I would say that depends on the relationship. There would be no monetary or government-mandated responsibility for nephews to pay for the medical or personal care of their aunt.
Long distance will always be an issue with caregiving. Give what you can give, lead your children by example, and don’t knock yourself out. Maybe the “Parents caring for the parent” thread would be useful; many people have caregiving issues for their parents, but don’t live close by.
The best thing I read about caregiving is not to think of yourself as a caregiver, even if you are local and helping out a lot. It is better to think of yourself as a care manager. For example, would you have your sister’s POA for medical and financial reasons? Or would she give that to her best friend (which happened with my aunt and her best friend)? Should these questions be asked now, or ignored?
If there is “bad blood”, that’s different, and even for a parent, no care at all may be expected by anyone morally.
Let your children decide. If they are adults, talk about the issue with your sister, and find out what she might want or need. Long distance caregiving is difficult, and if you would not be the sole caregiver locally, you can’t expect your children to do more than moral support.
I guess I am the only one who thinks this. I don’t mean to be harsh but I would not have said anything to them. If and when the situation occurs then they should have been able to decide whether they want to to help or not. I’m not saying they wouldn’t however by you telling them they may have responsibility you have basically made that decision for them. What I mean is that - how many kids are going to NOT take responsibility for their Aunt if their mom asked them to?
I guess I would wonder to what extent you expect them to act…at the extreme, would you expect them to open their house, quit their job to care for her?
Sevmom already said the sister has financial means and a great relationship with the boys. Families do need to talk in advance, cover some ground, not expect college kids or young adults will magically know what the future may hold or how to then make decisions and balance. On other threads, we talk about being open with our kids, letting them know our own plans and hopes for later.
And I like to think the first step in crisis management is crisis prevention.
In the OP’s case, I don’t think it wrong to ask her son’s to help their aunt. However, as adults they do have the right to decide for themselves.
Where it becomes a problem, IMO, is where the person to be cared for lives at a distance and needs considerable attention and does not want to be physically closer to those who want to help. I think this may place too much burden on younger adults who may be beginning careers, families etc. When my own mom got sick, she refused to move closer to us. It was years ago, and I really couldn’t leave my D to go to help mom. H couldn’t take too much time off to watch D due to his work. It was not what I wanted, but I couldn’t do better. My brother who has no kids did help her but he had to travel as well.
As to hostile siblings who don’t appreciate what is done for them, this would stretch my patience thin. I don’t think I would be up to that task even though I now have more time. I have a hard time dealing with people who don’t appreciate what is done for them or are hostile and uncooperative, especially if they expect me to support them financially. I would never ask my D to step into such a situation. In fact, I kind of worry that if something were to happen to both H and myself that some of our siblings would try to take advantage of our D. They have never taken an interest in her for her entire life, but if they thought they could get money from her, they might try.
I would not expect my kids to quit a job or take even their parents in, let alone an aunt. We have just started to think ahead as lookingforward suggests. My sister is 65, still young. But “crisis prevention”, looking forward, is not a bad idea.
I agree that it is difficult if caregiving is distant and somebody won’t move. Flexibility will be key as we age I think. Kids, particularly college educated ones, seem to be moving away from family more and more.
Mr R’s mom is 1 of 7 (living) and only 2 of them had children. Most of them never married. The topic has never come up, but he’s not close to any of them. Heck, I don’t think I’ve ever actually met half of them.
I have an uncle who has a kid but the kid and him are not on speaking terms. Uncle and I are close and I’d have no problem taking care of him in his old age.
In general though, I don’t think nieces and nephews should be assumed to take care of aunts/uncles. If they want to and can, great, but it’s not their parent.
I have a feeling my sister will never marry nor have kids so it’s something that might come up in my own future- but not for several decades. Still something to keep on the back burner.
My H’s parents both had their illnesses over a few years prior to their deaths. We helped when we could with driving to doctors - the mom didn’t drive anymore and sometimes it was the dad who needed treatment. However, they got home health aides who did much of the routine work and driving to routine appointments. It is hard for people to accept help of that type sometimes. My FIL did not want to get enough help when MIL was really ill. He was adamant that he pay only a certain amount. This was not the going rate for workers. We ended up finding someone who took X from him and Y from us, but we didn’t tell him. As you can guess, at some point that came out and he let the worker go. It wasn’t even that he couldn’t pay, or that it was a hardship,he just refused to pay out of stubbornness. When I think about how this went down, it was really sad. I miss them both, but they were almost impossible to deal with. It was important to my H that we do what we did, so I was involved, but it was very trying for both H and me.
Hopefully your sis does well and recovers from this, and you won’t be worry about all of this for a long long time.
I do worry that, as the only sibling not married with no kids, I have nothing to look forward to but poverty in old age. My parents will no doubt become ill through age at some point. I will then have to give up my job and move thousands of miles away (where I know no-one) to look after. I don’t begrudge this because they looked after me. But I am 100% certain I won’t have any help from my siblings.
My grandmother spent years needing very expensive nursing care. If this happens to my parents, which is likely for at least one of them, I will end up possibly homeless (assuming I would need to sell my home to help pay for care. But note I never paid for the house in the first place because I inherited it from the aunt I mentioned earlier. I only had to buy my siblings’ shares. o really I am very lucky). Welfare or the gutter beckon at this stage. I try to save every penny I have to guard against this possibility, but that doesn’t really solve the problem.
I know I am lucky and have no reason to complain about life, but I share this just to illustrate the fact that your kids have already thought of (and worried about) these scenarios.
Ideally yes, but there are some big issues relating to residency, visas and the like. We do not live in the same country unfortunately. Of course, it’s possible these issues may resolve themselves many years before my parent need care, so I try not to worry too much about it.
Parents are at a different level for most people? We had aunts and uncles but were not all that close to any of them, they had their own families who took care of their end of life stuff. That is why I started the thread- what to do with dealing with issues with siblings, loved ones that are not your parents . My mother and FIL were only children, MIL had only one sister who died before her with no children, father had older sisters but he was not raised with them. My kids are very close to my sister. I did not have that kind of relationship with any aunts . I also don’t unfortunately feel all that close to my niece and nephews ( from my husband’s side of the family) and have zero thought they would ever feel any responsibility for us as we age… We don’t live near them and only see them now and again. I think discussion about dealing with parents as they age was/is a different discussion than dealing with sibling issues.
24 Yes, really. When I look back at all the things I worried about, planning for all kinds of 'worst case' scenarios or potential difficult events in my life, most of it was a waste of time. It's good to think about it a bit, have some sort of plan or decision, and then move on. Most of the things I wasted time worrying about what I'd do 'if' this or 'if' that never materialized.
Cupcake, my only sister is unmarried and lives well over a thousand miles from my widowed mother. Sis has commented that if my mother becomes ill, Sis “will have to give up her house and move to Mom’s location.”
I’m not sure where that thought came from. My mother has been independent all her life and never wanted to be a burden to anyone, least of all suggesting that one of her daughters needs to give up her life to move and provide care. I would probably be read by Sis as being the “selfish daughter”, but I would not be willingly to bankrupt myself or my family or totally disrupt my life (and Hubby’s) by becoming a permanent live-in care giver. I know my mom would support that position. Are you certain that your parents have the expectations you are placing on yourself? Perhaps a good conversation to have now is the level of their resources. My mother has shared her insurance and financial situation with us to facilitate any what-if’s down the road.
The scenario that is probably more frequent is that the elder moves to where a willing and able kid is , if there is no family or friend support where the elder is.