Bathroom renovation causing family grief.

Just so you know. My mom and sister treated my husband horribly for many years and my mom only changed her tune about nine months ago. My husband has supported me thru all of this and is the love of my life. He is awesome! My children are awesome productive members of society but neither live close enough to help. My 75 year old mother in law comes and occasionally stays with mom to give us time off. My in laws open their homes to my mom visiting with us even though she is extremely difficult to have around. I do have blessings in mylife but the downside is the loss of my ffamily who I thought cared but were really out for what they could get.

Thank you. I feel so tired and trapped but I really see nothing else that I can do to change what is happening. This was just the next chaos my siblings have piled on.

I get your situation now. You have to be the responsible one. I hope you get the reward you deserve - happy loving children, a long healthy life and a quick easy death, followed by eternity in heaven.

I know that this is a no win situation. We have decided for now to keep everything as is since it was acceptable up till whatever talk my brother had with my mom when he told us something needed to be done. I Will talk to her regular doctor and see what he thinks too. It might simply be something we can't change to try to meet her needs.

Man I wish it were that easy. My brother would gladly move in and hire his drug addicted sons or alcoholic ex wife to care for mom during the day while he works which would allow them to continue bleeding her dry till she was destitute. That's what they were doing for six years prior to my dads death in july 2012. Took us till January to get one of the kids (26 years old) out of the house and we almost had to literally evict him after everything my parents did for him. My sister is gung ho on putting mom in a home where she could access her and her money to bleed her of monthly amounts ranging from several hundred dollars to larger amounts. The financial advisor my dad used said the investments were in high risk stocks because they were pulling out easily 35, 000 a year to give to thier grandkids and kids. I assume that he was referring to my siblings because I sure wasn't getting anything. Mom is rather clueless about this abuse and wants them to love her so cowtoes to everything they want. We early on put down the rule no more cash out the door to them. It goes in the form of a check so it can be tracked. That way if she ends up in a home and they go back five years to see where the money went we are covered while we handled her finances. Right now we have set in place mmeasures to create steady consistent income in safe investments while protecting the bulk of her estate and encouraged her to do what she wants with her income. This will make it possible in the future to place her in a home if that becomes necessary. I have a full power of attorney for my mom and handle all of her finances with my husband. Geesh this is only the tip of the iceberg of the things my family has done since my dad passed. I simply want what is best for my mom but I love my husband and want to protect us from them a much as possible.

What a mess. I may be way off, but if it were me, I would offer to go back to my own house and let her and your brother do what they want! It sounds like they will never be satisfied with anything. That is a no-win situation for you.

Stay calm and friendly. Take a quaalude, if you can get one. Tell them it seems no one is satisfied with the arrangements, and so they should work out what they want without considering you, because you will only be a visitor. If they want you to stay and take care of her, they will have to tell you what they want, and put it in writing.

If you aren't ready to leave, or at least to threaten to leave, you will find that they will jerk you around day after day, year after year.

Start as you mean to go on. It almost sounds like they DON'T want you to live with Mom. If that's true, shout hallelujah, kiss them all goodby, announce your schedule for visiting, and leave.

You have done your best. You can walk away, or stay, but on your own terms.

I get the feeling that for some reason you are thinking that this benefits me. I could really care less how it effects me. I care how it affects mom. She had a concern we listened and came up with a solution that seemed to work for her and she was happy. Then my siblings obviously talked to her and because she would be spending thier inheritance they somehow swayed her into the idea that climbing into a bathtub would be a better way to deal with it after basically ordering us to fix the problem. You see since moms will gives us the house and they split het investments any time she wants to make changes to the house which is hers, my siblings question our motives. It's frustrating because we are here 24/7 they come in for maybe 1 partial day a month if we are lucky and never call or anything. We rarely get time off and she makes to much money to qualify for any respite care. We get to listen to her tell her doctors and anyone else who will listen about not only this issue but so many others. We are the ones who spent months trying to get her into support groups for her depression without forcing her to go. We gave up our home friends and life that wr loved to move here to care for someone who tells me regularly that she didn't even want me. Frankly I am afraid that the next move by my siblings will be using this renovation issue against us if we do it then they will say we went against her will and if we don't then they raised the issue and we ignored it. Talk about a rock and a hard place. Which would you choosr?

When we bought our house 15 years ago we were thinking ahead. It has a great handicapped assesable shower in the lower level. I had no problem getting dad (ALZ) to use it until Mom came home from rehab. She could take a bath in their bathroom, and then Dad decided he no longer liked the shower! We figured out the real problem was he wanted to be with Mom... Maybe If you "visit" with her she will be better about this?

PS we have been TOLD by nurse that we need to remove bath and get a safe shower installed for her with chair.

I think her having a safe shower is more important than you not having a bathtub when she dies its STILL her house why not install a "wet room" all the nh have them and they are very safe im sorry but you not having a bathtub seems to dominate this question? So its hard to understand what the problem really is? She may be making excuses as she dosnt want to wash? Either OR put in a safe shower its not what they want sometimes its what they need!

Sounds like to need to take the tub out for a low shower and then reverse the process later.....or let brother do it later.......

My mom has plenty of money to do the renovation so that isn't an issue. I think as far as caring for her it would be a plus. My husband and I will inherit the house someday but frankly a house without a bathtub is not an asset so the renovation would not benefit us at all. The problem is that she is constantly concerned she will have another hip surgery and the six in lip on the walk in shower will cause her great pain. She also doesn't want to disturb us in order to take a shower which it doesn't but we can't convince her of that. Then we were told by my brother basically it needs to be fixed cuz she is uncomfortable with the situation and he started talking of her sitting on the bath bench to crawl in and out of the shower which we think is downright unsafe. We talked with mom about doing a change after this happened and she thought it was a great idea. Then my brother and sister spent a day with her and suddenly she has done a total turn around on wanting it done. I am just trying to figure out legally if we would be better off insisting on having it done or just leaving the situation the way it is will cause us problems in the future because my brother insisted on changes being made.

I own my own home and it is sitting empty while we are living in my moms house. She gave us the master bedroom when we moved here to help her after my dad passed away last year. Anything we bring into the house seems to cause her great distress so most of our things are confined to the garage or the bedroom including some of our foods etc. My office stuff is also in the bed room. We also have a recliner in the bedroom with our tv because mom only watches certain shows and will watch them over and over. We can't watch tv in the main part of the house because she will walk in and turn what we are watching off.

It may not be that there is a problem with your Mother using the shower in the Masterbath, but that she does not want to use "your" bath/shower. Have you thought of moving your Mother into the Master suite & you & your husband moving into another bedroom. That might solve all your problems.

OK, I reread and you say it is a 6" step to the shower in the master bath. I would still help her in , make sure she has seat in there, and be ready to help her out. Bathrooms are the worst places for our elders to be anyway. I wouldn't get rid of the tub either if it was the only one in the house. So, if you must renovate, I would change the mater bath shower to one with a lower lip.

jojo, I guess I still don't understand the problem....unless she isn't giving you the whole scoop. She is using a walk-in shower with a 2-3" lip and she doesn't like it? Why? That's the first thing you need to know.....which you need to know before you could renovate anyway. Is the problem the 'master bathroom'? Do you KNOW she takes a good shower? Have you watched? That may be the only way to detect problems you may be able to correct. How often does she bathe?

She baths herself but doesn't want to use the walkin shower in the master bathroom. I have insisted that she use it up till now but when my brother told us basically that something needed to be done it put pressure on us. We actually would rather not get rid of the only bathtub in the house, but find ourselves wondering how this will will be used against us when she passes. Its complicated but my siblings have treated us pretty badly so far and I feel like I need to protect my husband and I from whatever they do next. I told my husband that her refusal in front of the contractor would protect us from future accusations from them but he doesn't think so.

I refused to let my mom get in the tub/shower. No way could she keep her balance and try to lift the other leg to get into the tub. She used the shower with the 3" lip BUT I did put her seat in it. I also had the handheld shower head. She could control the temperature and sit down while doing it.

And let me share another thing. I noticed as my mom got older, she really didn't want to shower at all. It had nothing to do with where she showered. She didn't do anything, so she didn't need to shower.....I tried telling her about all the dead skin cells. My bathroom was too cold.....I got a little electric space heater and warmed up the room beforehand......I covered the AC vent in the summer. All that bathing was drying out her skin......I put baby oil on everything after her shower. After doing that for 5 years, I was able to bathe her in less than 5 minutes.....and while I thought I set the water temp at a nice level, I found out it was too warm for her. I never would have guessed that as much as she complained about being cold all the time. So, it may be that you don't need to renovate anything, just reinvent the experience.