I'm going to speak quite frankly here as to my frustration so trigger warning.
So, the FMIL has been "almost dying" for the past 18 months now. But then something new comes up. Something that requires numerous inpatient-days that require co-coordinating for the husband to see her whenever as well as all the outpatient days she has thereafter.
This is exhausting work, granted, but the FSIL (I will NEVER call her any kind of sister even if/when we get married) is using this impeding crisis to get her husband, SO's brother, to soft-sell him on "it's your parents" so she can have mental health days. Visit with her own family. Whatever.
They pay her $65K a year. They pay him nothing. With the next cancer thing she'll be on, they already told her and SO that there'd have to be another 24/7 caregiver for one person. They are already spending $170K for two of them. Oh, and money is so not an issue for them.
For the second week now, he's been enlisted in working days for this Brother's Wife because she "needs a day." She is scheduling that increasingly around the weekdays SO has off from working FT. The only thing Brother does is come in and assist this deplorable wife at the end and butter up the parents (as I said they have money).
Brother's Wife is paid $65K. If she cannot negotiate PTO for herself then she needs to negotiate an agency for respite care instead of screeching at us that we should do it for free, backed up by Mommy.
The one time I brought up outside care, Mommy waved her checkbook at me and challenged me to read all the statements about how she paid for car insurance once upon a time. Oh really.
He lives here below rate and we have a good relationship. For now. But what is this, two years, five years, indefinite of him going over every weekend to take care of them for free because this handsomely paid "fambily" (snort) caregiver wants her PTO?
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By law, an aide needs a certain amount of time off. Is SIL working a shift 7 days a week? If so, she is entitled to time off. I worked out that if she works 8 hours a day 7 days a week she averages about $23 an hour. Now you have to consider anything over 40 hrs is time and half by law. So 65k is not too much. Yes its logical to think that the hours he works should be paid. That she is scaling down her hours and should not be paid for them. But it seems his family feels that as a son, he works for free. If his Mom eventually needs 24/7 care, then more aides will need to be hired so that 3-8 hr shifts are covered and a weekend.
Seems to me Mom could afford a nice Assisted Living where she would have 24/7 care. In the longrun it would be cheaper. I suggest that if you marry that you live far enough away that your SO could not do any care. All my in-laws live one to 2 days away. Because of one SIL, think it is the best thing.
At this point, AirBNBing the house, doing all the improvements, getting the property management so we could just rent makes no sense. What'd make more is just BSing to them that he's on call every day and if they on-call him with less than 24 hours notice, he has other things to do. As obviously they aren't respecting the weekends like they are the Saturday-Sunday for paid "SIL" or her antics with her optional family visits.
We didn't ask her to do this. She is increasingly incompetent at doing this but she gaslights the ILs into thinking that we're all one happy family and that the $65K is what, somewhat extraneous.
We need someone over there who is going to be prepared to deal with infection control, with diapers, with lifts, with whatever very soon and NOT go out for hours at a time taking smoke breaks, darting home to see her cat, or whatever while offering only pure, and gaslighting (on her part) emotional support.
We need a CNA in there so at least she knows what to do when the issue isn't so salient that she can call 911.
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Her doctors have told her already that she will need another caregiver right after she spends a month in a hospital for the latest thing. Doctors. And furthermore, this is not a situation where the parents are spending down everything they have to get Medicaid, They won't ever be that poor or anywhere close to it.
So therefore, let's be realistic. Bring in at least a CNA. With their numbers, actually they could afford an LVN/RN. We are all for that, bring in someone who actually has a certificate or a degree to ensure that infection protocol, med management, fall risk and all this are dealt with in a day-to-day way that perhaps we could learn from.
Far more than Baby Jane SIL there is doing, not getting them their covid shots, delaying us from getting dad his "supplemental" covid shot the one day we were offered it. We showed up and there was dad ready to go, and SIL had taken the car to bring her hand-prepped lunch to MIL. It took two hours, and SIL wasn't allowed to visit her face to face..
Yeah, this was another smoke break while petting her cats. And meanwhile, we're sitting there in their house without THEIR car and HIS wheelchair because SHE told him, the client, that we should "cool our jets."
Ever seen the movie "Whatever happened to Baby Jane?" Well Jane is it. I called her and was like, well, the CDC, FDA, Biden Admin and Fauci are all over the news saying that he should not have gotten this loophole as a J&J recipient. She hung up on me.
As far as Baby Jane herself, no, we don't feel a need to validate her. You work, and you do stuff that doesn't require your family to personally validate you every day. How is this any different?
I look forward to your reactions about how this is supposed to be a "compassionate" situation that we should all "pitch in on" expressly against medical advice when the one paid person is promulgating and encouraging that.