How to help our children/loved ones in the future when we’re old and hopefully lovely and manageable

[I8toys]

What advice or actions would you put in place (now that you have the knowledge of dealing with all aspects of elderly care) to assist your loved ones if you lose all rationality or capacity in the future

I’ll start

• Wills
• POA for health and finance
• Funeral plans and wishes
• Decluttering/ downsizing
• Spreadsheet of accounts- savings etc. this helped us so much when Fil lost capacity but we still found all sorts of accounts/ bonds

So don't stop driving then

I agree with this, better a modified home or downsized one than assisted living type flats. They don't usually offer much assistance beyond providing an everyday way to spend all your life savings. I accept savings are needed if you have to go to a care home but retirement complexes are different.

Get into the mindset of paying for any outside help that is needed and leaving my busy adult Dc with jobs and families of their own to live their own lives. That is why I lived like a pauper and what my now almost million pounds of assets are for!
(Sorry. Just been through this.)

Watertight Advance Care Decision so your kids don't have to make difficult decisions about health treatments when you are on your last legs, or even your second-to-last-legs.

I suspect a huge market for driverless cars will be older better off people who can't drive for themselves any more.

Possibly, allthought I was thinking more along the lines of a decent automatic with all the modern tech. Continuing to drive and get out and about is so much more useful than a smart phone or laptop

People often recommend making advance directives, but how will you know what you want until you’re in that situation? For example, some say that if they were elderly and had terminal cancer, they wouldn’t have chemotherapy to prolong their lives. Yet in that situation, people often cling on to treatment until the bitter end.

Also, I’ve known people who’ve had a stroke or dementia, whose personalities have changed as a result. Sometimes their likes and dislikes change too. So unless we end up in severe pain which can’t be relieved and won’t pass, it must be very hard for any of us to predict when we’d want life-saving treatment to stop.

You can go on changing your minds about things as much as ever if you retain mental capacity for the decision. But my own advanced refusal of treatment prolonging life is designed to guide my attorneys and the doctors when I don't have mental capacity. And I think people struggle to imagine what that would really be like.

I work with older people, the vast majority of which have mental capacity for the decisions I'm involved with. But I do see people who genuinely haven't. They can't hold all the options, side effects, ifs and buts in their heads. ALL medical treatment comes with 'costs'. If this, then possibly that, and if that happens then the other might be necessary, and you could need hospital admission, and more medication, and... and... and... it just isn't as simple as treatment X means living, and if you don't have treatment x you will die. So im happy with my advanced directive and I devoutly hope it does mean a shorter life for me if I'm honest. I've been to 3 funerals in 2 months and in every case it has been a 'happy release' situation. Enough.

@Printedword it's why my 85 year old FIL is just about to exchange on a 3 bed bungalow -near to lots of facilities and with £130,000 extra to add to his funds- money if needed for cleaner/gardener/ironer/carer visits ( if not needed- as they aren't at moment) he's not obsessed with being lonely etc and says as well as a bad investment he finds the idea of seeing people regularly 'popping off' in the complexes or being moved to care homes- depressing!! I do kind of get this - each to his own -

Get a dosette box or the pharmacy to box and deliver meds and take them at the right time.

Use delivery services and outside help rather than rely on relatives to do tasks.

Accept a social services assessment for care, and work with health professionals to manage health problems so they don't develop into a crisis.

Apply for e.g. attendance allowance and get help with the forms if required. Use this to help pay for the above.

Also, PoA has been mentioned but could do an Advance Decision refusing / allowing certain medical care etc in certain situations. (on Dignity in Dying website)

Give doctors permission to discuss with relatives

Use a call thing you wear to alert medical staff if you fall etc, rather than relying on relatives.

We moved MIL and FIL into a McCarthy Stone assisted living property - I know big mistake and it will be a PITA to shift. However we were desperate. Husband has prostate cancer and the frequent calls from MIL I can't cope with FIL who was being investigated for dementia were increasing. This had been going on for years and they lived in the arse end of nowhere in a 4 bed detached double garage property. We had to move them after erratic behaviour from MIL witnessed by social services and DH was just undergoing radiotherapy.

TBH its been a blessing in disguise. MIL completely went downhill a few months after moving them, went into respite and from there into in a care home under DOLS after she became violent - she was diagnosed with vascular dementia and has undergone a complete personality change.

FIL is just about managing living independently with assistance in the form of medication given by managers at assisted living, 1 home care visit per week and DH helping with laundry and shopping. He lives near to a doctors, hospital and is able to walk to MIL's care home. We would never have persuaded them to move into a care home directly from their home and moving to another house would have just added additional burdens to everyone. I cannot fault the management at FIL's assisted living - they really look after him and notice if he's not back and give us a ring.

Both my dad and my uncle (brothers) were hoarders. We found receipts for washing machines, spectacles, cars, hotel stays etc from the 1970s onwards. They would have upgraded the tangible items multiple times since then!

When my dad died, the house was the house I grew up in and me and other family did painstakingly go through everything (there was a skip and multiple trips to the tip as well as trying to rehome items) but I was glad we did because I found some (decent) jewellery of my mums that was thought to have been lost maybe a decade previously , in a carrier bag under a bed. Both my sister and I each have something from there to remember her by.
My uncles family lived further away and couldn't clear his house, so I paid a house clearance company and it was so much easier, but I didn't have such an emotional attachment to the house or it's contents.

Get rid of all assets/money so your family don't see all your hard work going on paying for care whilst those who haven't contributed much get all their care paid for by the state.
You are all aware that both care in the home and care homes have completely different charge rates for social services and private funded care I assume? Those who pay privately and have probably contributed far more in terms of taxes etc. still fund the care for others in addition to their own care. The UK system is straight out of Sherwood Forest.

Is this not regarded as deprivation of assets?

I have just found this thread and oh my goodness this is a subject close to my heart.
I care for my mother who has dementia and arthritis.
I won't bore you with how that has changed our relationship but it has been horrible and I have laid awake many a night wrestling with how I must not do to my DC what she has done to me.
I once heard Joan Bakewell say, "I decided I wanted to stay at home for as long as possible and so I set about putting in place all the things I needed to make sure I could do that" .
That's what I want to do, not like my mother who says the same but has rejected all advice to facilitate this and will only accept help from me, in short, I want to stay here and YOU will look after me.

In early to mid retirement, drive for your community's volunteer driver service, and then when you need it in later years, use it to get to appointments for low cost.

That's a good idea. It would be nice to know you have given something to the service and helped others before needing to use it yourself. Kind of like paying it forward.

Can I add: if you do leave it too late, because your head is in the sand and you firmly believe you are never going to die, when your husband finally does does and your children are left to declutter around you because your house has been taken over by mice, moths and hornets, as well as all your decades of hoarding, your house is now unhygienic and unsafe to live in, as well as having over 40 years of frozen food and a larder from the post war era, show a bit of humility and gratitude for them rolling up their sleeves and digging in to allow you to remain in your home.

Long winded way of saying don't be a cantankerous old woman! Because this is what I am living at the moment because my dad didn't teach my mum how to look after herself, and she is from a background and generation where women didn't have to. She has never worked, never looked after her own money, won't downsize from a 6 bed house, is morbidly obese and disabled, probably has undiagnosed ADHD or similar, and hasn't got the first clue how to look after herself. She will spend extra on anything to have home delivery to 'save' a delivery fee, even if she will never need or use the extra.

Vote to legalize Euthanasia and put me first in the queue.

This is close to my heart. We have pre Xmas given our DDs and their spouses a comprehensive list of our finances . Also listed my jewellery and suggested they might take some now to have in hand for theDGC and their future wives/ husbands. I’ve got a mindset for ordering online and getting help in although DH is very reluctant. My friends are dying off rapidly but DH’s are tougher so I would happily sell up and move nearer one daughter preferably in sheltered accommodation,while he hangs on to his pub friends. I come from a family of hoarders so I’ve inherited a lot of silver and paintings so I’ve listed all that. But we completely forgot to tell them where the deeds for the house were! Just did not cross my mind or DH’s . Best laid plans. We’ve also given them as much as we can and to the DGC for university just praying they won’t indulge in drugs .
we are sensible but it’s horrid .

Agreed, am clearly seeing the difference between living and existing. I don’t want to be a ghost who exists.

Get a care alarm so if you need help there is someone available 24 hours a day to talk to. They will have numbers of family to call and if they cannot be contacted they will get ambulance or police to come round depending on what is wrong. Have a key safe so people can get in in an emergency.
My mum had one it took the worry away that if anything happened like a fall she could just press the button and talk to someone instantly to get help.

@Stanislas you sound very lovely ! My FIL is 85 and he's of that mindset too

That's what I want to do, not like my mother who says the same but has rejected all advice to facilitate this and will only accept help from me

Same

Sockets at hip height made a huge difference to mum and kept her safe at home. She wasn't falling over trying to.plug and unplug things at skirting board level. Family contact numbers stored in Alexa so can shout for Alexa to call for help. Cleaners,gardener,carers...appreciate these all come at a price.

I am 60 and already beginning the decluttering and Swedish death cleaning. We have a will but I need to specify individual items to be left to certain people. Have life insurance and funeral plans. Set your social media to what you want done with it when you are gone.