I am a full-time single mom of three boys, one of which is neurodivergent, and I work a demanding full-time job. I am already spread very thin.
About a year ago, after many instances of my mom ending up taking ambulance rides to the ER for falls and septic utis, we decided to have her build an addition to my home and move in with me.
I knew it wouldn't be easy, but I was also under the impression she still had independence and the ability to take care of herself. However, 3 days after getting here, I don't know what happened. She slept one day for probably 16 plus hours, and when she woke up, she was super confused.
I took her to the ER, and they ran a ton of tests on her to rule out a stroke, uti's, or any other infection. Everything checked out clear. No raised white blood cells, no stroke.
By the end of her visit to the ER, her behavior had progressed into absolute paranoia and hallucinations. She spent the next 5 days at my house insisting my children were abducted, the neighbors children were abducted, that she had 1 millions of dollars, that people are trying to break into the house, etc. She even called the cops to my home at 2:00 in the morning one night. I also caught her standing at my door in the very early morning with no pants on, shouting out for my boys. Another time, she was fully naked and about to come out of her room.
I work from home, and she was shouting for me all day, being combative and verbally abusive. She was refusing to change her depends, or it's the toilet, and then insisting on coming down the stairs without using her walker. She got stuck twice, and I had to have the neighbor come and help. I don't have any family nearby that can help.
It probably goes without saying that this has been extremely traumatic and disruptive to mine and my boys lives.
I called the agency for aging to see if they could help, called a bunch of neurologists trying to get in for an appointment, and no one could take us, and finally I called Adult Protective services. She suggested I take her to the ER again. But at this point, I couldn't get her in the car, and I can't physically make her. APS gave me a non-emergency number so I could have a medic come and help. One of the Medics discovered and empty Percocet bottle that was filled on March 29th, but empty by April 13th. So she had to have taken 120 pills in 2 weeks.
My mom is now in a short-term care facility. She is still having some delusions, but she is now more aware of reality. She knows when certain bills are due, when her birthday is, a lot of what's going on around her, but she still is not making good decisions, and she's being extremely combative and abusive towards me.
I don't know what to do. This has been so extremely stressful, I feel like I can't even concentrate at work or on anything else. I told her that I can't be her caretaker because I'm already spread so thin taking care of my boys and working full-time. She knew this moving in. I didn't expect to have to take care of a possible disabled addict, and someone who is going to rely on me to care for her while being so abusive.
She absolutely refuses to go to long-term care. She's telling me that I will need to buy her out of the addition she built on my house in cash.
Unfortunately, I didn't think I would have to do any type of legal agreement for her building in addition to my home, but I'm finding out that I may find myself screwed over. I can't afford to refinance and pay her out.
Thoughts? I don't even know where to go from here.
If as you say have no 'legal agreement' on her owning part of your home because she spent money to build on the addition, don't worry about paying her back personally.
One thing at a time. I gather she's been living with you for one year. Okay, you gave it a good chance and now she needs a higher level of care.
Would it be possible for you to rent the addition on your home to a tenant? That will certainly raise money every month that can be counted as income of your mother's and go towards her care bill in LTC or AL.
You must refuse to allow her to return to your home. The fact that she's in short-term care right now is a plus because they will have to find her LTC.
Don't worry so much about this. Talk to a lawyer though. Preferrably one who has a backround in Medicaid rules because your mother like millions of others will probably need Medicaid. Many people make the mistake in assuming that Medicaid and the nursing home, memory care, or AL are all the same entity. They're not.
Medicaid is reasonable to deal with. The business end of any care facility is not. Medicaid can make allowances for people and do. They don't demand every cent and don't care if a family ends up bankrupt in the street. That's not how Medicaid operates. That's a care facility and the two are not the same thing.
Take the step of talking to a lawyer. Or even a social worker in your state's agency for social services about Medicaid.
The rest is.. the rest.
This is too important and affects the lives and well being of five people to not get the best advice on what your legal liability is and how best for you and your mom to navigate this stage of her life.
You say you are stretched too thin to be a caregiver.
I believe you!
There seem to be vital steps you have missed along the way that I’m sure in hind site look like big red flags.
Your mom was already using a walker and there are stairs she must climb? She has some sort of pain that requires very strong meds? You combined your financial well being with hers and possibly jeopardized her future care by not taking the necessary legal steps.
Find a certified elder attorney. Don’t wait. Be brutally honest with the attorney.
She made some really poor decisions but they didn’t start with moving in with you.
Your mom was out of her mind on drugs when she acted out. Hospital delirium may be part of what is happening now.
Depending on the extent of her possible addiction, she may not be able to manage her own care. Depending on her remaining assets she may have to have access to the money she invested in your home. Try to lay bare the facts of the situation so you can deal with them in a logical, non emotional way. When she sees you dealing with things in a practical fashion, it will have an effect on her reactions. She may have to be in a facility for a while to get her meds straight. That may extend to longer term or it may be brief.
Get yourself into therapy so you can beat back the anxiety and make better decisions going forward.
Please let us know what your attorney advises. We are here to bounce issues off of and hold your hand but you need professional help to navigate this situation. Good luck.
Hindsight is 20/20, and I was so busy with my children (4, 10,& 13) and work, that I didn't notice some possible signs.
I see a therapist regularly. My priority is my children.
I spoke with a lawyer, and I don't live in a fillial state, so I won't be responsible for her financially and since she's not on the deed, and there's no signed agreement, the addition would be considered a "gift".
However, that doesn't feel good on my conscience. But I simply cannot afford to pay her back. I'm barely making ends meet myself.
I think she was overmedicating and that masked the severity of her disability. When she came for Christmas, she was able to get up and downstairs with a railing. When she moved in and didn't have a local pain management doctor yet, and ran out of percocet, she fell apart at the seems. She could barely move a few steps.
This feels like a nightmare, and I wish I could just wake up.
Did they not check that a medication could be causing these problems? Your Mom may have a sensitivity to this drug.
The other thing would be Mom does has enough money to privately pay for 5 yrs, which is the Medicaid look back period.
MEDICAL PROBLEMS:
1. Who is the MPOA?
2. Are all advance directives and Medical/general POA in place and done by an attorney?
3. Did you not understand you were taking an elder into your home, who would become more ill and require 24/7 care; what plans were made for that eventuality?
4. What is the neuro-psyc diagnosis and prognosis evaluation after testing and scans?
LEGAL PROBLEMS:
1. You allowed your mother to spend her money to build an addition to your home. What legal advice and protection did you do for shared living costs, who paid for the addition?
2. Did you understand Medicaid rules for 5 years lookback should your mom require within 5 years any Medicaid assistance? Did you understand the repercussions of "gifting"?
3. Is your mother wealthy? Can she afford ALF for 5 years until that lookback is clear.
4. Can you afford to "return the funds" your mother used on YOUR home so that lookback is clear?
5. Is your mother diagnosed legally incompetent? Are you her POA or guardian.
FINANCIAL PROBLEMS
1. See LEGAL PROBLEMS.
So this is a brief rundown on problems and questions in need of answers.
You are going to need the answers to these questions when you see an elder law attorney, and that is the step that should have been taken before you allowed this elder to spend her money on your home. That was a crucial and almost irreparable problem now for you and your mother.
She almost certainly needs to be in care. Sounds like she has FTD or Lewy's or perhaps some other dementia exacerbated by drug addictions of some kind, but whatever she has she cannot be the problem of your children, nor of yours given you need to work full time.
She is absolutely right on one thing, your mother. And that is the investment of her funds for her care into your home. A critical mistake, and one you need the legal and financial advice of experts on.
I am so very sorry. Your post to us forewarns others, and that's little comfort to you now.
We are just a forum of caregivers, and I don't know of an attorney or financial manager here, tho Igloo is wonderful with any questions about qualifying for aid.
I surely wish you the best, but you need expert advice. Just be certain you take to appointments the answers to questions above. I hope you will update us as you make your day to day steps to correct what can be corrected here.
Therefore, it seems mostly a financial issue.
In order to not be the CG, the OP either needs to help rehome her Mom or Mom needs to pay to hire someone to help her if she stays. Both require money. The money seems to be tied up in the house and addition.
The "cleanest" solution seems to be buying out the Mom's portion so that Mom can move elsewhere, but...
"I can't afford to refinance and pay her out."
Right now the Mom is in a "short-term care facility" (is this for PT/rehab?) Therefore this may be an opportunity, and this is why the OP should talk to a social worker about her Mom being an "unsafe discharge" and letting the facility and social worker know the OP is not and can not be her caregiver.
Any decisions after this may depend upon whether the OP is her Mom's PoA or is not, and no one is.
If there is any wavering.. a push from staff + guilt from family = Congrats! You are now the fulltime caregiver.
If you DO want to but have no idea how it could work, how to get help etc, say so.
However, if you are a firm no, stand firm & keep that no message crystal clear.
"She's telling me that I will need to buy her out of the addition she built on my house in cash." I would simply tell her that you cannot give her the cash for the addition and she will have to accept repayment on a monthly plan. She will just have to accept that and deal with it.
I am glad that you will not have your mother back in your home. She needs more help than you can provide and since she is only 70 she could live another 20 plus years (yes even with all her health issues).
You sound like you have so much on your plate and this added stress with your mother must be really hard to deal with and handle. I am really sorry this happened to you when you were trying to help your mother out by moving her into your home.
With that said that is exactly what I would do right now, TT a real estate attorney in your area. Go to AVVO and do your research, easy to follow directions, you can review attorneys in your neck of the woods.
Explore your options, one may end up being selling the house, or figure out how to buy her out, possibly with a payment plan? If she is not on the deed, or there is no agreement, what she paid is indeed a gift.
This will not get better, time to make some hard decisions.
Is she on any meds for anxiety/mood/depression? If not, this would help her (and you).
Are you her PoA? If not, this needs to happen. This is a serious condition she needs to agree to in order to live together with you (at least for the time being). This needs to happen soon before she truly loses legal capacity to do so (and one doesn't need to be "perfect" to meet the criteria). If she doesn't assign you (or anyone) then the likelihood that she gets assigned a 3rd party guardian is almost certain. She becomes a ward of the county/state.
How old are your sons? Teens? Old enough to help more with your Mom or around the house? My 3 sons had to help me and my husband a lot when both my MIL and SFIL were imploding at the same time.
I think at this stage the only practical thing you can do is to keep a social worker connected to your Mom. It may not matter that she's refusing to go into AL because it may not be affordable anyway. Ask the social worker about waiver programs, and have them assess your Mom for in-home services.
Answers to the questions above would be helpful.
"I am a full-time single mom of three boys, one of which is neurodivergent, and I work a demanding full-time job. I am already spread very thin."
If you can't. Then you can't. Be clear to her & to her medical team.
Therefore to return home, Mom will need to be independant. Or, obtain enough help (home help/aides) to help her with ADLs.
Mom may fight & refuse other options put before her (hey woundn't we all?).
If she cannot be independant at present, she may go into a rehab setting to adjust meds, get her strong enough, have more assessments, until either deemed independant again or transfer into LTC.
If LTC is the directluon, I'd imagine you will need financial or legal advice regarding separating funds between you - effectively buying back your Mom's home/your building extention. If that happens, maybe the rooms could be locked so no access to your home & tennented out to provide income? Just a thought.
At present, your Mom's health & safety is the crises focus. The financial & property stuff can be later.
However unreasonable mom has been, it is totally ethical to expect repayment even if not legally required. It’s your mom after all. And to be fair, Payment A is whatever she paid to build the addition, and Payment B is based on how much more your house is worth than one with one less bathroom or better yet, a whole unit, at the time you sell it. And the payments are made to facilities.
Like many of us here in New Orleans, their home was destroyed in hurricane Katrina.
When he collected the insurance, he reimbursed his mom and then she used the money to make payments to her senior residence.
Of course, the ideal way to handle these situations is to have a written contract with the specific details spelled out before allowing a parent to add onto your home.
When emotions are high, sometimes important decisions are overlooked which is a mistake for everyone involved.
Sadly, my cousin and his wife divorced after his mom moved in. Having a parent move into our home places stress on a marriage.
Some people are able to handle this situation and others aren’t or they don’t want to. It’s hard all around.
The thing is that we forget, these days, what "geriatric" actually means. We forget that our parents are old. We are unaware of the fact that we are growing old too.
The past 11 years have gone by for me in a flash. I'm sure they have for both you and your mother as well. I find myself struggling with the most heart-felt, extreme emotions all the time, and they started a few years ago. I struggle daily with the expanse between what I (myself) can offer my mother and what she actually wants and what she actually she needs. Those 3 things -- what I can offer, what she wants, what she needs (and will accept)... when none of them match up, it makes for a terrible time.
Depending on where you live, your mother's financial situation, any VA benefits she may be able to draw upon based on marriage to your father (if he was an active service member), and the state and local benefits available in your area, there maybe options you are not yet aware of. You do not seem to have provided enough additional information for us to be able to advise you about other options.
But if you're like most people, the calls you've made have given you enough information to realize that there is no fall-back plan. Your mother's physical and mental health has deteriorated and there is no public agency coming to the rescue.
If it is any consolation to you, here's this food for thought: you mother may already have known this based on her own experience with her own parents or other relatives. She may (like most of us) not have been able to imagine a time when she would be in this situation. When she agreed to the extension on your home she may have been in a very sound state of mind. Her desire not to seek medical care now may be based on everything she knew leading up to this point -- and may make a lot of sense. It may seem crazy in some ways -- but not in others. It isn't as if our country has suddenly stopped taking care of the elderly. It is only recently that people lived into old age in an unhealthy state for extended periods of time. It is often only those of us left to witness what that experience is like who realize that living an unhealthy extended life is not desirable.
That doesn't make it easier for you. I often feel like my own mother -- a person I adore beyond measure -- is attached to me by an inelastic cord that runs around the front of my neck and that I am dragging in to my own future. Her inability to be independent, to make sound decisions, to care for her dog and her own home are an enormous weight I never anticipated having to bear. And yet here we are. And it isn't because she is a bad person, or stupid, or selfish. It's because she is nearly 85 years old and still alive, but with a brain that is slowly falling apart.
You have a place for her to live (I have one, too, for my Mom) -- but, more importantly -- you have your mother.
My advice is to try to just listen. To recognize in any given moment that she is there, with you, with your children. My advice is to swallow the resentment you feel -- resentment you may well have shared with her (and that she would have been your champion against) in the past, but that you should not share with her now -- and try just being there with her now in the same way you would want and need for her to be there with you. Because in my experience that will make life easier for all of you in the short term.
In my experience that will give you the space you need to figure out what comes next, and will give your mother another moment of simply living with people she loves.
Old age in this age can be brutal. For you, your children, and your mother, you can be the person who makes it somewhat less so. There is grace in that. For you. For you Mom. For you all.
You have a complicated mess on your hands.
My cousin and his wife allowed his mother to build an addition onto their home. It didn’t work out well for them either. My cousin and his wife ended up getting a divorce. It generally isn’t a good idea to mingle property or funds.
When emergency situations occur we often don’t think carefully enough about the future. Hindsight is always 20/20.
At least you told your mom that you cannot be her primary caregiver. Your first priority are your children. Your mother will have to understand the importance of your job and family life.
I wish I had advice for you on the house situation. Stick around for other posters to reply.
Wishing you and your family all the best.