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

[northernsunshine]

Inspired by the other thread, I’m saying what I’m saying. Too many people - in particular white British people - care more important their inheritance than their relatives.

So much moaning and sniping about their relatives having to sell their homes to pay for their care - yes, it is a service! Unfortunately under capitalism that is how things work. 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.

I don’t blame us (I’m also white British) I blame capitalism and individualism which promotes us all to be separate from our families, to be obsessed with buying and scrolling and to reject community, be suspicious of our neighbours and to be isolated because we’re more economically productive that way and “they” (business/ the gov/ the man) can wring us for every pound.

The obsession with money ruins families, it makes people greedy.

I disagree
My DParent has a lot of money tied up in a property
I always tell them to downsize and use the money to enjoy themselves !
I have zero interest in their money and would rather they spent it on themselves .
I can’t stand the vulture culture these days .
Also if I was needed to help my parent I’d step up regardless of money , surely that’s the default mode ?

Ime, it is the elderly person who doesn't want to go into a care home NOR do they want to receive any personal care from their children. The elderly people I have come across prefer to remain in their own homes as long as they can and then have carers come to their homes for visits.
Much of this has little to do with inheritances and a lot more to do with not wanting to move into a care home.
What are adult children meant to do?
Force the elderly person to leave their home?

I do moan about the cost because it is £1800 a week. So £70 000 needed to go into the home for a year. Plus an additional £30,000 to pay the capital gains bill he'll get selling assets to fund the home. THAT'S 100K A YEAR . I don't think sniping really covers it, to be honest, I want a machine gun for this one.(There's nothing cheaper, before you ask).

And I have no choice but to put him there. He's incontinent, completely senile and liable to collapse every time he stands up. At home he rang the police saying my mother was an intruder . He wandered off in his pyjamas and had to be returned by strangers. Home carers would be more expensive even.

I need to work to pay my mortgage, to support my sons and also help the 3 other elderly family members in their 80s and 90s relying on me.

BTW - staying home to look after relatives is "free" is not true: Who is going to pay the contributions you owe for an state pension while you stay home to look after your relatives? Who will pay for your old age home if you need one? Who will pay for the hospitals and drugs that your old person needs?
Answer:the kind-hearted working people who contribute their taxes for the broader good of all.

cared for by relatives

relatives = a woman

I agree with the PPs that mention you can’t have an inheritance, yet expect your parents to look after themselves.

I think a good portion of people want to leave things behind for their children. I mean I do, and most of my parent friends want to aswell. Although I’m in my 30s, leaving an inheritance is something I think about. But of course, if I need to use my wealth to take care of myself, then so be it.

I have friends who have been full time carers or part time but have contributed towards the care of their relative, but only because they could - and as a result the assets stay within the family. Although, if they had to give up all of the money etc, they would.

It’s all about attitude really, sometimes the family house is seen as the family house and everyone chips in to protect it. Whereas for others it may just be greed.

Not white British. You are talking bollocks. There isn't an ethnic / religious group that I am aware of that has a perfect reputation when it comes to inheritance and looking after their elderly.

Lots of cultures look after their elderly whilst elevating men and oppressing women. Should we really be looking to them with envy?

I've heard of other cultures looking after the elderly at home but I don't know how accurate that is. Maybe in the past when people didn't live as long to develop late stage dementia? Otherwise I genuinely don't know how they do it after having experience of elderly relatives with dementia. Of course when I was younger I thought you look after your relatives, but I was SO naive to the complex needs of most elderly people in this situation. My mum looked after my nan for 3 years but her dementia was only mild, even then the last few days were awful and we barely managed.

Sorry but there comes a point people need looking after by professionals. With what goes on in some care homes I think that's testament to how hard caring is as I tend to believe that mistakes and negligence happens almost by default rather than malice.

I have the same views as other posters here who have put forward the feminist perspective.

It is unrealistic to expect women to work full time, do all the work of raising children and running a household and then add a couple of old people needing 24/7 care on top of that. Thanks to the government’s promise that the elderly can stay in their homes as long as they wish, and the entire health and wellbeing decision making system being built around that, some women end up responsible for running another household on top of all that.

the other thing I wanted to point out is how old age has changed. Thanks to advances in medicine, older people live much much longer than previous generations. Gone are the days when a sickly elderly relative spends their last few months in their daughter or DIL’s home before peacefully passing away in the night. Nowadays, any daughter taking on the care of an elder is looking at years, sometimes decades, of commitment, including being woken at night, cleaning up constant diarrhoea and frequent trips to the hospital.

My MIL moved in with us for the last 5 years of her life. At the same time my DM spent her final 2 years in a care home. For MIL we set up a bed in what was our dining room, washed her in our tiny downstairs toilet. It coincided with us both retiring. It wasn't too hard for the first 3 years, Covid started after 18 months, we could leave her on her own while we went out for a few hours, shopping or for a walk. The last 2 years got increasingly difficult. She had dementia, sometimes didn't recognise us, didn't know where she was, complained about the food, but she couldn't swallow solids, so we couldn't give her what she wanted and didn't understand why not. We did get support, but had to pay for carers, and they never came when you wanted them- they would turn up at 7.00pm to put her to bed, she didn't like going to bed before 10 00, so we only used them when absolutely necessary. She went into respite care 3 times, for just a few days each, abd she came out worse every time she went in. So it was a tough few years, and not everyone could do it, and it depends on the personality of the person. She was very mild mannered and easy going. We couldn't have done the same fir FIL as he would have resisted help, particularly with his personal care. My DH, spent her last 18 months virtually unresponsive, laid in bed in a care home. She lived 150 miles away, with other family members nearby, wiped out what little money she had, but she was safe and cared for. I think she would have been a lot more difficult to care for at home as she needed 2 people for the simplest of tasks. Care costs are high, but if you need 24 hour care, 2 people to be on hand, looking after all your needs, it is not going to be cheap.

As it stands my DF hasn’t got a fat lot for us to inherit so it’s a moot point, but no I don’t want to essentially give up my life become a full time carer and that would be the same if he was a millionaire.
I’ve always helped him and will continue to (with shopping, driving to appointments, meals etc) but if I was to move him in with me my own mental health would drive me into the ground. If he had the money I would absolutely want him to prioritise paying for care rather than relying on me.

Said it before but I really don't get the romanticisation of cultures that look after their elderly. There must be plenty of cases of neglect, poor care and outright abuse because elder care is hard and these people are only people with all the normal range of human flaws.

And yes by people looking after their relatives we all know that it means women.

I really look forward to hearing how inter generational care works for you and your family as I was very sad not to be able to care for my Mum at home and would be keen to understand how you make it work?

I’m white British, although not sure why that’s relevant. I was a carer for my Mum who had dementia for years. I did it because I loved her not because I was preserving an inheritance. By the time she went into a home she was waking multiple times a night and was wandering off and being brought home by the police so required 24/7 care. By the time of her death in a care home she was violent, doubly incontinent and eventually bed bound. If you have done that in an inter-generational home, then absolutely hats off to you because it was more than I could mange and more than I was willing to put my children through. I was completely broken. I had times out of work or in flexible part time roles so my career was decimated and I have a massive gap in my private pension so will have to work into my 70s.

She has worked hard all her life in a low paid job but had strived to buy a home which we sold to pay for her care and I was grateful this gave us the choice of a good care home. But it was a constant stress to eek the money out so she could stay there and not be moved to somewhere cheaper if she ran out of cash and became local authority funded. Despite her paying higher fees to subsidize those that were local authority rate payers as the council don’t pay the going rate so homes charge more to self funders to cover the gap which always felt very unfair.

I’ve found sharing with other carers massively valuable over the years so I hope you’ll share your story so we can all learn from you.

I’m asian, this inter-generational care stuff usually falls on a woman, usually some poor DIL. I don’t care about an inheritance, I just don’t want to be a round the clock carer to my awful mother.

I do agree with you about people moaning about having to sell their parents house to pay for care. Especially if they are never actually going back to the house, thats just venal imo, they may as well just say “this was my inheritance, I want the general public to pay so I can collect my 200k”. Either you pay yourself or it comes out of general taxation. It is unreasonable for anyone to expect to be housed for free with the taxpayer picking up the bill.

Imagine how long a thread berating Asians or Black Caribbeans would last on here…

I think it’s more about the extortionate pricing, the private sector greed (they quote for the maximum), the lack of options and the fact that people who have not worked end up in the same place as someone who has worked and saved all their life. It also means that resources are being sucked into the private sector so when the money is gone, who pays for the next level of care?

Yeah was going to say this

It is generally expected the female child or even one child will give all the care and then inheritance nicely split.

Now many women are working, like more just men did, there isn’t the expected free labour, plus sisters are finally seeing sense that brothers do fuck all, generalisation, so would rather none of them get the money.

Because it’s 24/7 at that stage for, who knows how long.

The OP also overlooks those elderly people who for whatever reason resist care. You can't just waltz in and force them to submit to your probably necessary and well-intentioned ministering. If an elderly person, no matter how at risk, or batshit to the point of violence, is deemed to have capacity, there is fuck all you can do without falling foul of the law yourself.

SS and other professionals won't intervene unless there's a proper crisis and even then you're lucky to get much more than a sticking plaster reaction and a shrug.

It's been a real eye opener dealing with elderly care services over the last year. They will uphold an individuals right to "make unwise decisions", bang on about "the least restrictive options" and the rights of a person even if there's a safeguarding issue and it's impossible to argue with it, because people should retain autonomy and dignity as far as possible. However, things like "fluctuating capacity" can be a useful tool for SWs and Doctors to swerve bigger picture issues.

Last year my SMs mental health went off a cliff - she's 82. Long track record of fragility. Plus organic brain issues likely heralding vascular dementia. She spent a couple of months in hospital being described as "pleasantly confused" as she accused me and my Dad if all manner of awful things. Eventually she was sectioned, and we hoped there would be some progress.

We hoped in vain. A particularly arrogant psychiatrist lifted the section and sent her home to frail 85 year old Dad who'd been her carer for 14 years since the last episode to work on their marital differences despite documented antipathy and aggressionfrom her towards him. Within a week she'd physically attacked him three times and he had to leave for both their safety, rendering him homeless as she owns the house outright.

She continues to live there, allowed to harrass my Dad on a whim in between insisting on no contact, who still loves her and frets about her, while having her confidentiality and autonomy preserved by the CMHT. If I wrote down everything that has happened in the last 10 months you'd accuse me of being a fantasist. But trust me, I did have better things to do than go into battle with medics and the authorities for shits and giggles. Not any more apparently.

Trying to care for elderly resistant relatives who don't want you to is a battle many people face, and often "services" are obstructive and unfit for purpose.

There are thousands of me out there, you can identify us by the ten thousand yard stares and the unhealthy coping mechanisms. And no, I don't have siblings, and no, there are no other relatives. And no, I can't just "switch off" or walk away. Money means absolutely nothing to me, other than bus fare backwards and forward to the hospital which is my life for the next month, at least, and after that who knows?

So forgive the rant and ramble, but "cosy intergenerational living" is going round and round in my head and making me feel a bit manic.

The more kind hearted cultures you refer historically have relied on the free labour of women in the home…

You're being unreasonable OP. Every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way - as a great writer once wrote. You can't see behind the curtain. I won't step up and provide care for either of my parents because they never cared for me. We now have a very polite but distant relationship. I've seen first hand abuse and neglect within non white multi generational households. Who is better, who is worse. Impossible to say!

I'm an older people's social worker. There may be a small minority of people who think like that but, in my experience, the vast majority of people want what's best for their parents. There is a reluctance to explore care home (and other) options due to guilt about "putting mum in a home".

As someone said upthread, there is often quite understandable resistance from older people to move out of their home into more appropriate accommodations (not necessarily a care home).

There are also huge numbers of people providing unpaid care to support their loved ones, in order to maintain them at home. Being an unpaid carer is not an easy option.

Exactly. I get fed up of people pontificating about it. I do it because my parent wants to stay at home, they don't want to go into residential care. I dont do it because I'm a scheming, money grabber who doesn't care, it's quite the opposite.

Caring can be rewarding, but also it's emotionally draining, physically hard and terrifying. Then ignorant people like the OP come along with their idiotic opinions. You try holding someone you love @northernsunshine, keeping them safe, whilst they are having a seizure knowing they could die in your arms and then tell me I'm doing it for the money. Educate yourself.

OP are you very young? I suspect if you ask women in their 60s and 70s you will find that looking after elderly relatives and having them live with you was perfectly normal and like life, sometimes brilliant and sometimes awful.

We had granny 1 (widowed) until she died so my mum 'looked after' her for nearly 20 years. Towards the end mum couldn't leave her home alone, had to help her upstairs to the loo all the time, help her eat etc. She also had three children. It really wasn't easy and made mum miserable as basically she was housebound and had no life.
We had a gap of about 5 years, then we got granny 2....
Granny 2 had looked after her own mother, who was by all account, a complete harridan.
In the 50s, 60s and 70s, grandparents often lived in part of the house to reduce everyone's housing costs and help with childcare. Sometimes brilliant, sometimes awful.

My own mum is 94, doubly incontinent and can't turn over in bed. It takes two carers to look after her. I couldn't look after her, even if I wanted to.
There'll be little to no inheritance. It's easier if one accepts that from the start.

Please can I send you a big virtual hug? That sounds so hard and I completely understand the manic!

Thank you xxxx

My interpretation of what you have written:

So much moaning and sniping about their relatives having to sell their homes to pay for their care - yes, it is a service! Unfortunately under our current system how things work is that they have to pay for themselves and for everybody else who for whatever reason can’t pay for themselves. There are other options, take a leaf out of the books of more patriarchal cultures where intergeneratinal families live side by side and where the elderly are welcomed into their homes and cared for by the women of the
family. This is free for those being cared for but not easy for the women doing the caring and somehow incomprehensible to most British people that this would be the thing to do.
I don’t blame us (I’m also white British) I blame capitalism and individualism which promotes us all to expect to be able to live a life of our choosing and be separate from our families needs, to be obsessed with giving equal priority to our needs and choices and to reject living our lives only for the benefit of others, be suspicious of our neighbours and to be isolated because that is the price of being economically productive that way and “they” (business/ the gov/ the man) can wring the elderly with wealth in need of care for every pound.
The obsession with a women’s right to live a self fulfilling life ruins life for everyone else who relies on them prioritising everyone but themselves for the benefit of their families, it makes women greedy and expect
what everyone else takes for granted

edited as some of the bold sections were wrong