DM is homeless and penniless

[Pottlee]

I don’t know where to post this really, so apologies if it’s the wrong place.

My mum has been carer for her mum for maybe 5 years. Grandmother has now sadly passed away. Inheritance wise she has left a small amount behind, which is split between her two 60 ish year old ‘children’ (my mum and my uncle) - around £5-10k each. Mum and her brother have a fractured relationship but showed themselves to get on for the sake of their mum. Not sure it’s going to be as hunkydory now their mother has passed.

Now to the main point - my mum has nothing, like nothing to her name. She has no home (lived with her mum as carer), no money (other than the small inheritance) and no income at all. She has never worked so had made no contributions. She also had never claimed any benefits. The home she lived in with her mother will be sold and that money will go to an equity release company and to pay off a load of other debts.
What on earth happens to her now?
My uncle says she’s my responsibility now, but I would hate for that to be the case in that I don’t have room for her to live at my house, and harsh as it sounds I don’t want to become responsible for her for the rest of her life - hats off to everyone who can do it, but the idea of me having to care for her the way that she cared for her mum is just a no I’m afraid. We are close in a way but don’t get on in another. I couldn’t live with her. It would make my life unbearable and no doubt spell the end of my marriage because my DH couldn’t tolerate her daily either. My 2 DC love her but daily it would be disastrous. She is very lazy, judgemental, negative and nasty. And as I said would be able to make very little/no financial contribution.

So 1. Is she really regarded my responsibility now? 2. What should she do with regards of somewhere to live (she has no money for that) and income for the rest of her life? Is she not entitled to anything as she’s made no contributions or claimed anything at any point?

I’m aware I may come across as heartless because I don’t want to take her on so to speak, but I do want to help her set herself up somehow if she can. I’m just not in a position to be able to offer a place to live or financially.

please if anyone can advise who she can speak to or what she can do. Thank you.

No there’s no social contract where you have responsibility to parents.

In some cultures there might be. But not a general one in the Uk.

When you have kids you have legal responsibilities unless you choose to relinquish them (which you can’t always do) or the state does because you fail to meet those needs.

There’s no legal basis for an adult child to care for their parent the same way.

and again. Most people have a family of some sorts even those who don’t have kids. Families don’t have to include children. Family doesn’t even have to include parents. Siblings are still family even if they don’t have kids and their parents are dead.

You seem to want to take this issue and use to moan about people who have kids. Derailing the thread.

Why do you feel the need to do this?

It's not a contract if you didn't sign up to it.

@Riapia I agree. It's shocking.

I disagree.

He doesn’t want to get dumped with his (as he sees it) feckless sister. That’s enough to try and palm her off on her daughter. He has no more responsibility for her than her daughter does.

People chat legal shit all the time. He may genuinely think that or be one these people who simply think because it makes sense to them it must be true.. Or hoping he doesn’t get saddled with his sister.

The women has managed to get through life being financed by other people. She isn’t some idiot who can’t think for herself.

You are simply making up that he may have access to money, or I charge of upkeep.

If anyone was taking advantage the person living in the house is the person most likely to be doing it. Bills need to be paid, food bought and so on. If the Ops mother was her mother’s carer it’s far more likely she was the one dealing with hers mothers money.

Obviously they need to find out all the details of all the debt.

But it appears you have cast Ops mother in the role of some unintelligent women that must be at the mercy of the villain brother based on nothing. Or maybe simply the sex of the people involved.

If someone has been taking advantage it’s just as likely (or more so) that it’s Ops mother.

There is no document relating to the "social contract," but it's a construct that civilized people understand. Accepting largess with no intention of holding up one's own end of the bargain is not admirable.

Absolutely! Very, very few of my contemporaries became SAHMs!

My expectation that people should house and care for their parents ended when it started to take two parents working full time to rent or buy the minimum space the family needs with no spare capacity. Most of my generation (40-50 years) are struggling to manage the care of their own children between needing to work/childcare fees/subsiding university accommodation let alone time/money or space to care for their parents.

A stay at home mum in a spacious house with granny in a comfortable annex is
very far removed from any one I knows situation. More likely a loft or garage conversion to allow their kids a room each. Multi-generational living belongs in an era where you could buy a 3 bed semi for 3x an unskilled wage in my opinion (sadly).

@CanImakethisbetter
I agree there's little to go on.

But the women of this family are not very clued up on financial matters or how to go about establishing a solid financial footing for themselves.

Literally dozens of women here have offered what is actually common sense advice wrt UC and housing, and some have advised that the will and the exact state of the finances be examined, something the OP has not done yet. The debts need to be combed over carefully. The executor needs to be identified. The circumstances in which a woman who is just slightly older than me has ended up without a bank account in her name need to be investigated.

There are families where the women are conditioned to leave the finances to The Man and accept the advice and pronouncements of The Man in all matters related to the women's duties. I wonder if this is a family like that.

It sounds as if your mother has spent large chunks of her life doing not very much at all, so she will have to be economically active for a few years at an age when most of us are starting to wind down. That is the result of her own choices and she should not expect much sympathy.

She will get social housing easily if she applies for a flat in an OAP complex or a 1 bedroom flat and isn't fussy.

It's not like 3 bedroom family houses which are like hens teeth.

And she will qualify for benefits. She's not going to be able to get a job, realistically.

so your uncle let her do all the caring and now won't even help her make a phone call? he's a fucker, IMO

your mum has been silly, but she's not your responsibility.

Well I was also born in 1963 and it was very much the exception not to work!!

Why can't she get a job? I'm only a little bit younger and working full time. Why should she get benefits if she's capable of working?

You have no clue what the ‘women in the family’ have an idea of.

The ops mothers could know full well and be playing dumb about the debt. The grandmother had her own home. There’s nothing to suggest she was financially illiterate. If it’s elder abuse she may not even have known about the debt on the house.

I have said several times the debts need to be poured over. But since ops mother had no income of her own, all bills must have been paid from the grandmothers money and it’s more likely the ops mother controlled the finances. More likely than it was the uncle.

How do you know the uncle is ‘very clued up’ on the finances? Because he has a penis

The mother understands money very well. Which is how she has managed not to work.

Yea some families have set ups where men control the money. Surprisingly some don’t. Some have the women controlling the money and some do it equally. Why on earth do you think this family is the former? There’s literally nothing that suggests that.

Where one sibling is the permanent live in care, and they have a history of living off other people, It’s far more likely they have a hand it.

Its entirely possible she didn’t want benefits so no one looks at her bank accounts to carefully.

We have no clue what’s gone on. But I can’t see how it’s more likely to be the Uncle on the basis he is a man.

I really wish people would stop assuming women are a bit thick and always the victim in a story and any man must be involved is the villain. It’s basically saying women’s are always less intelligent and men are always more intelligent so women must be the victim.

This is true, but presumably he was content to leave the care of his mother to his sister, so he didn't have to do it?

Too funny!! I'm 60 and my MOTHER was born towards the end of the war lol!

Utter nonsense!! It totally was NOT.

NRFT but I'm halfway through. Lots of why hasn't she claimed anything? Because not everyone is part of an online network like MN where they get educated about things. Lots of people don't know places like MN exists. Lots of people know absolutely nothing about housing/UC/disability/EHCP or any of the rest of it. If you know nobody involved with any of these spheres either through work or as a service user, then you can quite conceivably know nothing about any of it.

I remember when I was younger thinking unemployment was for if you'd spend every last penny of savings and sold all your possessions after losing your job, disability was for people who used a wheelchair or were blind and could not work, ill health benefit was for the terminally ill, housing benefit was for people in council houses and you got one of those by being pregnant and thrown out by your parents! All nonsense, but that was the extent of my "knowledge" of these systems because I didn't know anyone involved with them in any way. I had no idea of where people could go for advice about any of it either. As a result, when I needed help I ended up in a very bad situation before I came to somebody's attention, because I was clueless that there was any help out there. I never learned how to use a computer, never saw the point, didn't need one for my job other than the work-related systems they trained me on, so to Google for information was not something that occurred to me back then, I wasn't even sure what Google was really.

If OP's mother is the type who doesn't mix with others much and barely knows where the on/off switch is for a computer, I can imagine that she and OP's uncle and grandmother may all have no idea there's any help available. Although she has MN, the OP herself clearly didn't know at the point of posting this thread.

OP
3 things DM needs to understand
First. UC isn't backdated beyond the date of the claim, so she needs to put in an application NOW, not next month after an appointment with someone. The council tax on a house can be massive and DM is now liable for it all, she needs to claim for assistance with this NOW as well.
Second. She's of working age, so barring serious health conditions she's going to be expected to spend 35hrs/week looking for work, any work that her skills/experience/qualifications means she could have a chance of getting and if she's offered a job she has to accept it. If she doesn't do any of these things she'll be kicked off UC and have no income (there are lesser sanctions first). She won't be able to choose to work part time, they'll expect her to continue looking for more hours/a full time job.
Third. Temporary housing by council is a one-time offer. She has to accept whatever and wherever it is, unless it's officially unsuitable for her (this is not the same as unsuitable in her opinion). It may be awful but if she doesn't accept, she'll be kicked off the homeless register and left without any help.

She needs to get on the electoral roll if she isn't already because it's illegal to not be on it.

I can understand both your attitude and your uncles attitude towards her. She is responsible for herself though like everyone else is.

Uncle has no choice but to sell the house if he's executor, it's his job to get the creditors their money. He can't sit on it until OP's DM finds somewhere else to live. That would take ages, especially if she doesn't want to leave and tries to sabotage/block the sale. He has to sell ASAP even if that means evicting his sister.

Mine was a 13 year old in May 1945. She'd have been 98 this year.

'Pissed about for a couple of years then had a baby.'
So mum is now early sixties say she was born in 1959 now age 64 had OP or first baby around 1978/79. Where were all the childcare providers for this single parent ( the father died while she was pregnant)?
I never said women didn't work.
I had my first child in 1989 and know how hard it was going out to work with unreliable or expensive childcare . Childcare provision only became more reliable post 1997.
So who looked after the children of all these university educated working women in the 70s and 80s?
My female teachers of the 70s and 80s were either spinsters or older married women whose children had left home. A few women in the later 80s came back into teaching as their kids left home. I'm really wracking my brains but there wasn't any teachers with young children and the male teachers at primary were all post war relics.
Maybe there is a North South divide here.

I realise this is anecdotal, but I graduated in 1985, and I always worked FT, as did the majority of my contemporaries.

My mother and my grandmother also both worked FT. Granny was born in 1913.

Sorry, 92. Mental arithmetic went a bit cattywampus there.

Who is "accepting largess"? The children who had no choice over being born, or who they were born to?

My own mother was similarly feckless to the OP's. I tried to get her to plan for the future, be responsible, etc, but it all fell on deaf ears. She wasn't a good mother to me and was downright neglectful at times. I had to teach myself everything and I prioritised creating my own security as an adult, because I didn't have much of it as a child.

Are you seriously telling me that I should have picked up the pieces for her lack of responsibility, having lived with the consequences of it my whole life, and having worked really hard to carve out a decent life for myself?

Fuck that.

I helped her as much as I could in practical terms, but there was no way I was going to house her and provide for her financially.

By the way I'm not a "reproducer" (what a mean-spirited term) and I'm highly unlikely to become one at my age. It's clear you have an agenda that your shoehorning into a conversation where it's not relevant.

My mum would have just turned 80.

Dm was a supply teacher and a lot of people worked as teachers in the 70s/80s with junior school kids in this way

Teacher training college was suffice at that point