No Planning
Seniors must plan. No planning or bad planning increases the probability of bad outcomes. Carmen and I call our company Care “Plan” It. For seniors, plans are critical because with no plans, you force your children, your community, and your caregivers to make a plan. Here’s a quick lesson in why you should think about your plan.
By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail
Benjamin Franklin
Seniors Want To Remain In Control
Most seniors become enraged when they start to hear things like “You can’t stay in your own home anymore,” “You can’t drive anymore,” or “You need to live with a caregiver.” That anger is usually a lashing out reflecting the fear of losing control.
Most seniors become enraged when they start to hear things like “You can’t stay in your own home anymore,” “You can’t drive anymore,” or “You need to live with a caregiver.” That anger is usually a lashing out reflecting the fear of losing control.
Having A Plan Helps Seniors Stay In Control
Without plans the loss of autonomy increases. Repercussions of not having a plan pop up everywhere. As seniors, if we don’t have a plan we tend to want to keep everything the same. However, without a plan, the desire to keep things the same often results in seniors hitting a wall.
If you live in a two-story house, what happens when you can’t climb the stairs. If your home costs $3,500 a month and you don’t have the money, what do you do? If you get Alzheimer’s Disease, where do you live?
A Plan Helps Your Spouse & Family Identify Your Wishes
If the Ager did their homework and made their wishes known, they have a much better chance of staying in control. But frequently, seniors wait or procrastinate planning.
Their medical condition, their medication, their treatment, the effects of their illness, or just advanced old age strips them of their ability to manage their day-to-day life. Life overtakes them.
Responsible seniors have all their end-of-life chores completed. See our Section on End-of-Life Chores here.
End-of-Life Chores Include
Planning allows a family member, caregiver, or medical professional to know your wishes. Even when you can’t speak, you have created documents or ap[pointed a person to speak for you. In other words, the senior made a plan and gave others the information to follow that plan if they lose capacity.
What Happens When There Is No Plan
Concerns over planning can be large and small. Big planning issues involve end-of-life issues: what life-preserving medical interventions do I want, who gets my money and stuff, and where do I want to be buried.
But what about small acts of planning, like having a budget to get through the next three months. Or having a plan to get to the doctor’s office now that you don’t drive?
Consequences of Having No Plan
Carmen and I have seen this manifest in so many ways. Here are a few situations where we discovered no planning:
These situations shocked Carmen and me. But let’s look at them more closely. No adult wants to be told how to act. At seventy or eighty you’re an old dog, and learning new tricks is not high on your list of “to-dos.” Parents are especially reluctant to be told how to behave by their children. So when a child says I’ll give you money if you follow my requirements, the senior may say no deal, or simply tell the child what they want to hear, and then take the money and do whatever they want.
Terminal Illnesses & Planning
The diagnosis of a terminal illness is an obvious life-changing event. But it’s extremely rare that seniors are confronted with terminal illnesses by surprise. Behind the surprise often are facts like the senior refused to see doctors, take prescribed medication, eat healthily or lead a healthy lifestyle.
In other words, most seniors know when their likely targets for terminal illnesses. If they haven’t heard the warning signs previously, they’re unlikely to want to hear them now. More importantly, their family members and friends are likely to feel awkward about telling them. If you’ve been telling them all along about how important it is to see the doctor, take medications and quit smoking, do you really want to be the person that says, “Told you so, and now you’re going to die!”
Do Doctors Explain Everything To Seniors?
The doctors will tell them right? Maybe. But Carmen and I have witnessed situations where the senior was hard of hearing and did not hear the Doctor’s diagnosis. They just nodded their head because they were embarrassed about their hearing problem. We’ve also heard about situations where the Doctor asked the family to share bad news with the patient. The family didn’t want to share the bad news, so they never told the patient. In other words, there are lots of ways a terminal diagnosis doesn’t reach the patient. It slips through the cracks. Crazy, but true.
How No Planning Impacts Money Issue
Another common problem aggregated by lack of planning is money. Spendthrifts are common. That’s a person who spends irresponsibly. As we age, we usually decline cognitively, emotionally and physically. If we had issues about money as a young person, it’s likely it gets worse with age.
Who is supposed to intervene? If I do intervene, do I assume responsibility? If I tell my eight-year-old brother that he’s spending all his money, what do I do next? Do I have to help him readjust his life? Move to a new home? Supplement his income with mine? Of course not, but people who intervene often feel they have to help fix a problem they’ve pointed out. Also, if you do try and intervene, the senior often says “Mind your own business.”
It Is Always Better To Plan
These are complicated issues and Carmen and I are simply trying to point out that people who don’t plan can get into trouble. If these people do not acknowledge their problem, or describe it in irrational ways (e.g., I made a bad investment, I lost a big bet on the Giants, I have addiction issues, etc.) fixing the problem may be impossible for a family member. That said, compassionate helping, especially non-financial support, is always an option for family members.
Planning Among Complicated Family Structures
Modern family structures are often complicated. Some people marry two, three or more times. Each marriage may come with biological children, adopted children or stepchildren. Each marriage has its own family dynamics, and in turn, impacts prior family dynamics. One family may emphasize independence, another may be dependent.
Carmen and I saw this numerous times when people have married multiple times. Inevitably, some marriages and children will involve addiction or mental health challenges. The children or spouse in that situation may become dependent on a parent or parents. When a child from a marriage emphasizing independence is asked to assist a parent actively involved with a dependent family, it’s likely that any financial contribution will support that dependency. If you support a parent supporting an addict, you’re now involved in that environment. Don’t expect to change it.
Carmen and I heard all the time about money leaving the bank account of a senior and moving to a child or grandchild. When we were allowed to investigate this further, we discovered that this often happened in the last two to four years of a senior’s life.
These were not transfers planned as part of an overall estate plan. They were not transfers incorporated into an estate plan. They were more like stray checks, loans (co signor), or cash transfers to children, grandchildren, and siblings. They were often for cars, travel, payments to rehabilitation clinics, or to support a business.
What they had in common was a lack of documentation. This was a lack of documentation even thought at least one of the parties had a cell phone capable of making a video recording. In other words, no written document, and no video.
Perhaps not surprisingly, Carmen and I did hear of numerous stories when as the senior got closer to death, the receiving party often struggled to document the transfer or characterize it as a gift. For the nonlawyers, gifts are outside of most will and trust documents and are not characterized as loans. In other words, the recipient doesn’t want to pay it back and doesn’t want it to be negated from anything they’re entitled to in the will.
Quick Ideas
> Show up at senior’s location and help them work through a plan
> Use CarePlanIt techniques to enlist the senior to start planning