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By Susan C. Price
[Questions are followed by answers and then, inevitably by ADVICE...you DID expect that...didn’t you?]
I recently visited my parents, who are in their nineties and live on the opposite coast. They are in bad shape! Mom has dementia. Daddy is mean to her. Doesn’t help her. She had not bathed in a couple of months.
All my life my parents had been physically and emotionally abusive to me and my three sisters. My father used large loans to try and control us. He expected and insisted that I should stick around and care for them.
Since her stroke and with the dementia, my mother has become a nice person. On this most recent visit, my father even attempted to be loving and actually hugged me!
The real part that concerns me is that their oldest granddaughter (daughter of one of two deceased siblings) is stealing from them. Hundreds of thousands of dollars. She got Daddy to change his will and cut out the rest of family.
I don’t care about the estate myself, but don’t you think criminal charges should be filed against the granddaughter? What do you advise? –Kay
Dear Kay,
There are many issues here, as I’m sure you know. Let me try to help you think through the morass that family and aging and illness issues can produce. I have had experience with personal caregiving, estate management, and legal issues involving the dementia of family members and a friend.
- It is very hard to survive dysfunctional families, and to experience family members on the sad side of the aging process. I suggest you allow yourself to fully feel and acknowledge that sadness before you begin to tackle the rest of the issues. And, if you have not already done so, counseling can still provide benefits to you, even years after the abuse.
- Most folks don’t know much about dementias: what they are, what they can be, how to help the directly affected party—let alone how to help the caregivers and all the other affected parties.
If you and/or your father want to understand this better, I suggest you begin by reading a basic book on the topic, such as The 36-Hour Day, by N. Mace & P. Rabins.
- If your father is not bothered by the smell of a person who has not bathed in a couple of months, that suggests he has some strong mental/physical/aging deficits of his own and is unable to care for your mother except in a minimal way. You might want to think about what, if anything, you or other family members want to do in helping him.
There are licensed gerontology counselors who can help your father and your family deal with all the issues that dementias bring. You can find them via your or your parents’ healthcare provider and/or via licensure listings in your or their geographic area. (I needed to find an eldercare attorney in another state. I looked up the State Bar online and found their eldercare sub-specialty group with a list of providers. The eldercare attorney I selected had a list of local gerontology helpers of various types.) - If, as you state, your dad is “immature and vindictive,” I would not expect him to change much at this point, but...a gentle approach via the person he relates with best...might improve his situation. If he feels better and is able to think more clearly, the fiscal issues, also, might be handled better. When folks are unable or unwilling to change, you need to act to protect your own feelings. Sometimes, just distance will do, sometimes a full separation is needed.
- If the granddaughter or anyone has taken funds not belonging to or due them (for care or other services), this can qualify as “elder abuse.”
You can choose to report this abuse, especially if you feel that the “wrongdoer” might also take advantage of someone else, or if these actions will leave your parents in fiscal trouble and unable to meet needs. But first consider the following:
- Do you feel comfortable discussing this with your remaining family?
- Do you want to take the risk of increasing family ill feelings by bringing the law into “family” business?
- If the money doesn’t matter to you or to “Daddy,” do you really want to start a criminal case—along with all that entails? Once you start it, it will be out of your control.
- Given all the issues this family has, do you want to “stir the pot”...or let it ride into the sunset?
[We would really like more questions to answer, so send ’em in....]
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Copyright © 2013 by Susan C. Price
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From working with Senior programs involving housing, employment and food, I don't think the problem of Senior Abuse has been understood in all it's ramifications. The element that Susan highlights here is the one that the legal/social system has tools to deal with, but is the lesser challenge.
ReplyDeleteA large part of the senior population, maybe a majority, suffers from the "abuse" of poverty, lack of good food, and the dislocation caused by changes in their environment. Which make the "Golden Years" a hard place to be.
The current debate over Social Security partially obscures the degree to which many Seniors barely survive month to month, and the current economic stagnation (unless you're on Wall Street) is making things worse. Plus, the resources to partly mitigate the situation get harder and harder to find for the NGOs trying to make an impact. Don't know who to ask about this, but I do know not to expect anything from the political class for the next thirty six months.