Gathering with Family for the Holidays? Read this first!

As you celebrate the holidays with your loved ones, we encourage you to take time to talk together honestly about the future. Aging involves a host of questions and issues that many of us are uncomfortable facing. Procrastination will not make them go away, and there is no better time to address these issues than the holidays- when families are all together.

One of the most complicated realities of aging is cognitive decline. As parents age or suffer illness, they frequently face periods of memory loss, confusion, or changes in personality. These may be temporary, prolonged, or permanent depending on the circumstances. Check in with your loved ones and pay attention to noticeable changes in appearance, lifestyle, or behavior. Are they having trouble keeping up with things around the house? Are things out of place or unusually messy? Take note if one parent seems to be covering for the other; finishing sentences, correcting or rescuing lapses in memory. This can often be sign of decline in cognitive ability.

Planning ahead for these issues can provide vital safety nets that will be needed when a crisis arises or when your loved one can no longer make decision on their own. Legal authority to make decisions for another is vital.  Generally, this is done in the form of a Power of Attorney. A Power of Attorney allows a trusted child, friend or family member to step into the shoes of an elder person to help manage important affairs when he or she is unable to do so. Acting as Power of Attorney, an adult child can pay mom’s bills, deposit her checks, and arrange for necessary care or do a host of other tasks that will arise. Most importantly, these plans must be made before your loved one is in prolonged state of confusion or memory loss, in order to be effective and helpful. Once cognitive decline has set in, it is much more complicated and costly to make the necessary legal arrangements to help a loved one in need.

The possibility of long-term care, or relocation to a nursing home, is another difficult topic for many families. A good starting point is to simply ask your loved one their thoughts and feelings on long term care. Cost is the biggest concern for most families, and adult children are often in the dark as to their parent’s financial situation and assets. Take the time to broach these topics with your loved ones. There are a range of options for care, including budgeting for help in the home for a number of hours per day to support a loved one who could benefit from some help around the house or assistance administering daily medications, but doesn’t need to relocate to a full time facility.

Finally, it’s important to think about the “little” things children simply don’t know. Do you have long term care insurance? Life Insurance? What are the details of your Medicare plan? Do you have a prescription plan? Discuss these issues with your family. Make sure they know where you keep your important documents. Consider keeping a list of your current medications somewhere accessible to your family in case of emergency.

We hope you will take a few minutes between bites of turkey and slices of pie to address these important issues. An open and earnest discussion with your family about aging and care planning is not only practical and necessary, it gives your loved ones the gift of peace of mind.

Happy Holidays from all of us at Gelbman Law!

Megan Flowers is an elder law attorney at Gelbman Law, where she works on matters of estate and long-term care planning.