Too many people care more about their inheritance than the wellness of their elderly parents

Also we have to accept that care homes will be a necessity as not everybody has family to fall back on. I have no kids so will definitely be in a care home if I need care in my dotage. Better option is to hope to stay healthy. My grandmother was in a retirement village and loved it. But she was healthy(ish) till she died.

Much as I agree that I cannot stand the whining and sniping about care home fees and also people feeling entitled to an inheritance - multi-generational living can also be quite challenging given most people have to work and many have kids of their own to mind. And the bulk of this labour overwhelmingly falls on women.

My grandfather was cared for by my aunts till he died but they were both spinsters and one had taken years out of work to look after him. Not everybody has the financial cushion to do that.

I agree. I never knew my parents. Once my fil died, we brought my mil to live with us.
Despite having mixed dementia and being bed bound for the last couple of years of her life, we managed. My husband went part time at work and had to eventually take early retirement. His sister didn't even bother visiting the last 2 years.
It was extremely difficult at times but I'm glad we did it.
We didn't get any inheritance though. She'd been as poor as a church mouse all her life

Not always. My brother was the main carer for my mum even though we lived the same distance apart and still deals with all care home issues.

It is a small care home and around half of the other visitors I see regularly are men.

It is not perfect but it is definitely better.

I run into both unpaid family carers and relatives hell bent on preserving inheritance on a regular basis. The unpaid family carers (who are killing themselves to give their loved ones the best life possible) vastly outnumber the greedy selfish people by maybe 30/1. And that's across all the cultures I encounter so far.

My takeaway is that most people are good. But arseholes will continue being arseholes in any situation.

I think in lots of these "kind" cultures, the intergenerational caring isn't a choice. DH is from one of these places, we pay for most help MIL needs even though she lives with extended family. Women often end up trapped by caring responsibilities, miss opportunities and put their own lives on pause. Inheritance also comes with obligation - maintaining land, buildings and businesses one might rather not.
The grass is not always greener.
In my case, I wont be doing any caring for my parents, as they have opted out of mine and my DCs lives. If that means forgoing an inheritance, so be it. I don't really care what they expect or want. Intergenerational "kindness" needs to start long before parents and need looking after, it's a bit late by then.

It’s one reason I think we do need to bring in the £80k limit on ‘self funding’ even if it’s funded by us all paying 2% into a ‘care scheme’ - this could also include care at home or family being paid effectively to ‘care at home’ - There is a great deal of resentment from both ‘some’ families but also those who are in need of care towards losing all they have ever built up purely on care needs- whereas others can effectively get it for just the cost of their pension as they effectively have little/no assets to touch. Admittedly not the choice there if non self funded or the best —but they will still get care. Plenty of elderly people are stubborn about this too, it’s not just ‘greedy relatives’ by any chalk. The number of old people who constantly bring up inheritance both as a matter of pride or in some cases ‘manipulative control’ is not small

I also think we need state legislation to ‘fix’ costs in care homes - so it becomes a pure choice, this should bring up the standards in some poorer places OR they can sell back to the state and the state controls certain ones , just as this was common in councils till recently .

I do think many elderly people hear the word care home or sheltered housing even and their mind switches off to anything positive , as they remember particularly awful dull ones that their parents/grandparents were in - we need to raise standards because whilst it’s always difficult in some situations they can be the best place for some to keep people safe, fed, sociable, medicated and actually have a good few years- particularly when it’s residential care rather than really hard 24/7 nursing care.

as I stated earlier I think this will not be as common practice going forward in inter generational families to care for elderly either , as an Asian mumsnetter pointed out- they are pushed to get great careers and lifestyles and ‘make money’ these days by their families which will mean far less women sat around doing stuff for family or prepared to do it even if older- and it’s usually down to the women, I really can’t see the guys doing this, just as is the situation with white British men .

Kind-hearted cultures are doing it for the inheritance - enforced inheritance in most countries.

But white British culture is that women work, 24/7 same as men. and in most cases are the breadwinners.

We don’t have the luxury of caring for our elderly even if we wanted to, we don’t even have the luxury of caring for our own bloody children. So comparing cultures is pretty low.

as an aside working in the care industry hate to let you know about the cultures who sell their parents homes, pop the elderly in sheds at the bottom of the gardens and sneak in carers. While their parents live in revolving conditions. Let’s just brush over that shall we.

The “kind hearted cultures” living side by side likely do this to keep the inheritance?

Anecdotal, but my husband and I moved to be closer to his mum, we saw her once a week and my husband fixed up her house when she needed it or sorted out tradesmen and did her gardening. When she started having short term memory problems, we paid for a housekeeper, and then 5x daily carers to check on her. We took her to the doctor’s, and had power of attorney to help her sort out her bills. We recovered money for her she had been scammed out of, and this took a lot of time and was not pleasant. We hosted her for Easter, birthdays, Christmas for years and years, and took her on outings. We wanted to keep her out of a care home as long as possible, not because of greed, but because they aren’t generally the best places to land when you are old and vulnerable and getting dementia, and she was happiest living in her own home. When she passed away at 91, we did inherit a lot of money, yes, but I don’t think we were selfish about it. We did what we did out of love to give her the best life possible in the circumstances.

It is very tough seeing someone you care about deteriorate, heartbreaking really. I feel for all those out there caring for parents. It is a very difficult job.

OP hasn't engaged with anyone other than one person who said they plan to keep their parents out of care homes at all costs if they need care in future.

There are other options, take a leaf out of the books of more kind-hearted cultures where intergeneratinal families live side by side and where the elderly are welcomed into their homes and cared for by relatives. This is free but not easy and somehow incomprehensible to most British people that this would be the thing to do.

We as a family cared for our elderly papa for 4 months whilst he battled and was taken by an aggressive cancer and it was hell.

To see someone diminish in front of your very eyes whilst trying to maintain the most basic care 24/7 was quite frankly the most exhausting thing we as a family have ever had to do, we were trying to fling money at any care available ( which was almost zero) and it truly was the most devastating thing ive personally had to go through.

Eventually a hospice agreed to take him but it was too late and he died just as the transport arrived.

Caring for someone in their or your home is not easy, a normal home is not set up properly to allow you to do this and it takes months for this to happen.

But in the same respect care homes will charge absolutely extortionate fees and more so to the people that can "afford" it.

Care for the elderly should be covered within the national insurance for which most of these people have paid into all their lives, especially the higher earners.

The cultures that you talk about have working men and women at home doing the caring.
My friend from India had an arranged marrage and her Mother in Law is coming over to the UK to be looked after by her as she has dementia and she is very upset by it but there is no welfare state in India.

In the Middle Ages in the UK, married couples typically started setting up their own households once they were financially stable enough to care for one, often after working as servants, farmhands, or apprentices, with marriages typically occurring in the late teens or early twenties. We have a long tradition of family separation and individualism which is why women in the west achieved parity with men.

Interesting

If I get to the stage where I can’t look after myself, I’d prefer to be able to take a pill and end my life rather than use my hard earned cash to vegetate in a care home.

Jaw-dropping the racism allowed towards native Brits. Imagine if the same thread was posted about 'brown immigrant people'.

Get back to me when the caring duties fall equally on men and women, then we can start talking about families providing care for elderly relations.

Great post.

Increasingly with the increases in COL and stagnant wages people see inheritance as the only way to push themselves up the property ladder.

High house prices come at a cost. If house prices are high people that have them (relatively older) are significantly better off in total wealth terms than people who don't (relatively younger).

An increasing amount of families need to be able to transfer that housing wealth via inheritance in order to be able to afford a consistent standard of living.

If housing was not so expensive then younger people would be able to afford good housing from their own earnings rather than have to rely on inheritance (which would naturally be lower in value as house prices would be lower).

The idea that we have created a society where the majority of housing wealth is owned by the old (who really don't actually need to live in large houses) while the young struggle with kids in cramped housing is really screwed up.

When people see inheritance as their only realistic way out of poverty then of course they are going to fight tooth and nail for it.

Have you actually cared for a dementia patient OP? Or even just a frail older relative that like to insist they are fine, but in reality needs assistance with absolutely everything? It’s not for the faint hearted, plus add in dependant children, full time jobs and maybe 5min a week to live your own life and come back and see if you still feel that care homes are the pits…

The nub is, yes, people (read women, daughters or dil’s) used to look after granny at home. But years ago you got old, ill and died. Now you get old, ill and live on for possibly decades and that comes at the price of either someone else sacrificing their freedom to be a 24/7 carer or cold hard cash to pay someone else to do it. Don’t be to quick to judge before you’ve been in this position.

Spiteful.

These threads are always started by people safe and secure in social housing with public sector pensions.

I read an interesting book a few years ago called Being Mortal, about how we approach our own and our families’ end of life.

On the inter-generational care point, the author said pretty much every culture starts outsourcing elderly care as soon as they have the means to do so. So it may not be ‘kindness’ facilitating these kinds of arrangements where they occur.

The OP needs to pay a visit to the Cockroach café or the Older parents topic and see what some of us put up with.

It’s not always as simple as
’take a leaf out of the books of more kind-hearted cultures where intergeneratinal families live side by side and where the elderly are welcomed into their homes and cared for by relatives. This is free but not easy and somehow incomprehensible to most British people that this would be the thing to do.’

I don’t want a penny from my mother. I want her to be safe and happy. I love her BUT I also value my own mental health and well being and more than that, the mental health and well being of my own children and partner.

Agree completely. It’s disgusting to be honest. Inheriting is a gift not a birth right.