Would you help these people?

[SideeyeSuki1]

Had to namechange because last time I posted I was bawled at by people hinting the DS was me, which he isn't. :)

My mate is DS. He has...

Elderly parents, one with alcoholic dementia, the other with mild Alzheimer's. They are resistant to any change that would make their lives easier. They regularly pull crises they can't cope with, such as sinus infections and the roof leaking.

DP live in a large 5-bed house in inner London. Naturally they've refused to move.

The crises are increasing: 2 last week, meaning 58 phone calls made for them by their exhausted DS. Not to mention the angry, demanding calls from the DP themselves.

DS1 lives in a rented bedsit some miles away – he can't afford to buy a flat, not least because DF, in one of his alcoholic moments, pinched the deposit he'd been left by another relation. DS1 is pretty ill with some awful chronic condition and can't work much. He's about 48. DS2, younger, lives outside New York with his 4 kids.

My concern is for DS1, who is my mate. I'm sick of watching him struggle to survive financially while spending hours of time, effort and cash sorting out the old couple. I don't think he has an obligation to do it, although he's only human and he feels guilty.

The only upside is that DS1 is too ill to visit the family home, which if you ask me has saved him moving in to become a fulltime unpaid carer.

The DP have made no plans to house DS ie leave him anything much, and they're bound to end up in care for easily a decade each, so there's no inheritance to be grateful for in advance.

Question: how much would you help the DP?

I wouldn't help the dp no.

A five-bedroom inner London house will be worth at least £1.4m, and could be massively more than that depending on where it is, won't it? So unless he knows for certain that he's been written out of the will, there will be an inheritance coming. Even if they have to go into residential care, the house will be sold and the cash invested, so care fees might not make that much of a dent.

So looked at from a purely cynical perspective (which I believe is morally okay in an abusive situation like this) it is worth not alienating the parents. In which case, it becomes a question of doing the minimum to placate the parents, while telling the authorities (in strictest confidence) that the DS cannot and will not be his DP's carer.

I would then use the parents' unwillingness to move to pressure them to accept local authority carers - 'I know it's awful and not what you want but it's either this or they take you into care'.

And I would consult a lawyer about whether it was possible to sue for the return of the deposit in a way that the DS could spin as being initiated not by him but by 'the authorities', so they didn't retaliate by writing him out of the will while they retain capacity (the bar is quite low in terms of the amount of capacity required to change a will.)

Do not help people who are unwilling to help themselves. Once you've bailed someone out once, they'll ask you to bail them out again and again.

It's an interesting one.

Were they loving parents before they became ill with alcoholic dementia and Alzheimer’s?

I would find this a very difficult situation. My instincts would be to help my parents or any other family member.

I thought a PP was rather money-orientated suggesting that the friend should not alienate the parents in order to gain an inheritance.

That would be my question, too. But with alcoholic dementia, you may not need to answer it too hard.