Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Aging family members, are you prepared?

A cousin called and said that 93 year old Uncle Jim had just been taken home by the police after he drove his car poorly and what should they do?
A subsequent Zoom meeting pointed out how woefully ill-prepared my cousins are for the inevitable passing of their father.
1. They don't have a family lawyer.
2. They don't have a legal power of attorney for both health care and financial dealings.
3. They don't know if Jim has a will or if he does, where it is or who made it for him.
4. They don't know if Jim has a living will for end of life issues.
5. They didn't know that one of them should be listed on their dad's checking and savings accounts as "or" so that they can pay bills from those accounts.
6. They aren't sure what or where Jim has for assets.
7. They collectively were given property up north, but aren't sure if they have a legal deed to the property.
8. They didn't realize that dad didn't have a valid driver' license.
9. They weren't sure if the car was insured.
The list goes on, but this is a cluster bleep just waiting for a day to happen.

The wife and I drove over there and picked up the car keys and took the car back home here and Jim wants it back, but I'm doing him a favor by not contributing to the delinquency of an uncle though he won't see it that way. There is no doubt that uncle should not be alone or driving and should be in an assisted living facility. The cousins are not local and have pretty much abdicated any responsibility and are fighting among themselves.

It occurs to me that some of us here on the Fire might be in the same situation or might even be "the uncle". Are you and the family prepared like you should be?

Yes.

I am the elderly member.

Never.

Everyone over the age of 18 should have #4, and it can cover the health care portion of #2 without the need for a separate PoA.

In most cases a trust is a better option to cover #5, #6, #9 and the financial part of #2.

Someone who was “given land” but is unaware of the filing status of the deed is in over their heads from the start and would probably be a poor choice to manage the affairs without some extensive guidance from a third party.

I’m the aging one, we have our affairs in order.

Absolutely.

Getting old SUCKS!! Rio7

Honestly, no. Uncle Sam took care of that for me for 20yrs. and since retiring in 11' I haven't made any arrangements for me or the wife. Stupid, I know. Thanks for the reminder.

Having just watched this happen with my fathers passing, it was a shock. The man had a will (very generic) and a personal representative, a trust, and insurance.

Still, my sister ended up handling the funeral, the burial arrangements, the cleaning of the house (3 roll on dumpsters full!), the distribution and recording of assets, and the list goes on and on.

What I learned was:

1) Get your house cleaned out and toss all the junk years before you pass.
2) Specify if your home is to be sold, or left to an heir.
3) Specify where your assets should go as an addendum to your will. Keep it updated.
4) Have a medical directive in place.

Surely these are only a starting point.

My father really dipped my sister in the soup by having a basic will (really just a template with his name inserted) and then appointing her to carry out his unknown wishes.

My sister had 4 nephews and nieces driving past her house non-stop, calling and asking "where is the money?", and making outright threats against her person from one of these little [bleep].

While the other siblings have tried to pitch in, Sis will not let anyone help her. She has had the burden of trying to guess what to do with all my father's crap. Farm equipment, his home, his shop, his ATV, his guns, his personal effects, etc. Now she has to arrange for an auction.

DON'T DO THIS TO YOUR KIDS!

Wiser words won't be found about elderly parents.

Seven years ago, we had to move my parents from the house they lived in for 50+ years to retirement community/assisted living/nursing home. The house was not very big but my dad was a hoarder. He would never allow us to throw out anything and he just kept everything, and always added to his stash with "emergency" food supplies like canned goods and boxed items.

It took us several months to clear the house out for sale. I can't even count the number of dumpsters we had to rent. At first, we tried to keep the important stuff and toss everything else, but it was impossible to sort through. I'm not kidding, my dad kept all of the ledgers from the junk store his father set up when he arrived in the US, showing every sale and purchase made from the mid 1940s until the early 1970s. It was interesting at first, then it just became a hassle and everything went to the junkyard.

To this day, we still have bad dreams about having to start over with cleaning that house out. What we should have done in the few years prior to the move was slowly get rid of the junk when my parents were out of the house for the day.

I understand the “hassle” but disrespecting your parents and tossing their belongings in the trash while they are not home, isn’t exactly the answer...but hey that’s just me

When my wife and I got married, within a month or two, we made wills. Many years later, when my wife had Alzheimer's Dementia, I had to eventually place her in a memory care facility. Because we had no children and almost no family -- closest living relative, a nephew, lived 600 miles away -- I had our attorney who specialized in estate planning, to set up a living trust. POA, Living Will, etc. Everything my wife and I owned was transferred to the Living Trust.

The will within the Trust documents was very specific. On my death, every single thing we had was to be sold with the proceeds going to take care of my wife at the memory care facility. Because my wife died a year ago, now, when I die, everything is still to be sold in an estate auction, real estate broker, etc., with cash disbursements made according to my directions in the will.

A very near, dear, and trusted friend of mine and my wife, is the Trustee.

Some people live in denial. "Ahhh, I ain't gonna die for a long, long time." Or, "Yeah, I gotta do that ... mañana."

Boys and girls, if you've not taken care of this, I suggest you have an attorney do so for you now.

L.W.

I agree Jeff. The children of a lady in town did exactly that and in the process threw out some one of kind historical documents covering the 1918-1935 time period. She has never forgiven them.

Things have been factored in,have been for a while.

My father is 88 and my mother is 84. They own a farm in ND.... the land has been rented out to an area farmer since 1998. They will not let, as far as I know, any of the children know their intentions after they pass. They have been the kind of people that will , naïvely , take the word of a stranger over their own children.... they refuse to, as far as I know, allow anyone in the family to understand what their plans are after they pass.

I am sure it will be a cluster fuq at some point. So be it.... some of my arse licking siblings will "take care of things".... whatever .....

I wasn't advocating throwing everything out at once. What I meant was that I wish we would have gone through their stuff early on to identify junk (like 50 years of canceled checks all piled up in boxes that will never be opened again or supermarket coupons from the 1970s) and gotten rid of the obvious garbage, it would have made the eventual clean-out a lot easier. You're right, it's not cool to throw away things that others care about, and the sorting process is the first step to take to ensure that the truly important things are kept.

I'm the oldest in my family as well.

People’s true characters are exposed at such times

Just had the conversation again with my parents last night about making me Power of Attorney. (Their request)

I think this time they are actually going to see a lawyer like they were supposed to 2 years ago.