As my wife and I age, we need more help around the house every year.
Recently, our children have been having meetings to talk about us and our long-term care options.
I practiced elder law for twenty years and have told them that, in my experience, the oldest daughter in the family usually takes the reins of managing parental elder care. My children weren’t impressed. They think my knowledge is old and past its shelf life.
There won’t be much for our family to do as we get older. When our house becomes too much work for us, we intend to convert it to cash and hobble down the road to assisted living.
After the move, people who know how to do the cooking, cleaning, and lawn mowing will do those things and will be paid a fair day’s wages for their efforts.
In my law practice, I saw too many disasters created by family members doing amateur caregiving in the home of the elder. When the time comes, I will take my chances with paid professionals.
In my profession, I saw that family care can exacerbate the very problems it attempts to solve
When I practiced law, I regularly had to explain to families that love and affection are poor substitutes for professional training, paychecks, days off, and the proper equipment you receive in elder care.
Family members can provide care for a while, but the day will come when love may be insufficient. Then, if they do not hand the work over to professionals, exhaustion might eventually take the caregiver down, along with the parent.
I once had family members come to me to discuss an aging parent who was in the care of another family member.
The person had spent a couple of years of living with the aging family member and using the older person’s income as their own.
The elderly family member’s health needs increased, and the caregiver became overwhelmed. However, they kept the elderly family member at home because they didn’t want to risk losing both their housing and income.
The other family members came to me to establish a guardianship and move their elderly family member to a safe place.
The experience estranged them.
Families think this won’t happen to them, but it could.
I have well-intentioned children, but I plan to live my last years in residential care
When our children raise the issue of our plans for when we can no longer maintain the family home, my wife and I are quick to assure them that they are neither expected nor welcome to take up the role of caregiver for us.
We remind them that they are old too. We are in our late seventies, and they are in their fifties. We want them to finish out those final and most profitable years of their careers and have a retirement, like we did, without the stresses of caring for an ailing parent.
I practiced elder law long enough to have seen negligent and uncaring long-term care facilities, but I will take my chances there.
My family can show they care by visiting me, listening to me complain about my ailments, and laughing once again at that story I’ve told a hundred times. The physical labor, however, will be done by people who know what they are doing and get paid for it.
Do you have a story to share about how you’re living in retirement? Contact the editor, Charissa Cheong, at ccheong@businessinsider.com
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