Ten Tough Conversations: Successfully Discussing Issues of Aging with Our Parents

Ten Tough Conversations:

Successfully Discussing Issues

Successfully Discussing Issues

of Aging with Our Parents

By Tye J. Cressman, Esq.

Copyright © 2014 Tye J. Cressman, Esq.

All rights reserved

First Edition

PAGE PUBLISHING, INC.

New York, NY

First originally published by Page Publishing, Inc. 2014

ISBN 978-1-62838-431-4 (pbk)

ISBN 978-1-62838-432-1 (digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Title

Copyright

Dedication

Disclaimer

Introduction

Conversation #1:

Dad, You’re Not Driving Anymore

Conversation #2:

Mom, you still control your checkbook, but now so do I

Conversation #3:

Mom, You Can’t Live Alone Anymore

Conversation #4:

Dad, You Aren’t Going Home

Conversation #5:

The Government Will Take Care of You

Conversation #6:

It’s not safe for him to stay here

Conversation #7:

You Can’t Take My Mother’s Money

Conversation #8:

I’m suing you because I love you

Conversation #9:

Dad, you won’t remember this tomorrow

Conversation #10:

Dad, it’s time to go home

Conclusion

About Tye J. Cressman, Esq.

Dedication

To the wife who loved me: Meghan

To the lawyers who trained me: Chris & Lisa Youngs

To the parents who supported me: Barry & Lynn Cressman

To the clients who trusted me: thank you

Disclaimer

This Book Contains Legal Information, But Please Don’t Rely On It In Making Decisions

While several disclaimers are included within the text itself, it is important for any reader to understand that the issues discussed in the book necessarily involve many laws. Because good legal advice relies on current laws, which vary from state to state, and change year to year (and month to month), the author here, though a lawyer, wishes to make clear that this book is written for general information purposes only, not legal purposes. No reader should rely on its contents when making legal decisions. There is no substitute for the legal advice of your legal advocate—your own lawyer—who understands your particular situation, your state’s laws, and the state of the law at the time when you need legal assistance. No book, and no online information generally, should ever be relied upon in making a decision of legal consequence.

Disclaimer: Examples & Stories are not based on real people or events

This book contains many examples and stories that may resemble real situations, but are fictitious examples provided for illustrative purposes only. For narrative purposes (and to make difficult concepts more readable and understandable), some examples and stories are structured as if they are based on real people and situation. They are not.

It is important for readers of this book to know that any examples or stories from the text are not real, and not based on any specific person or persons or families, alive or dead. While some of the examples may seem to be drawn from actual events, please be assured that they are not. Any similarity between a situation or scenario or example presented in this book and any real persons or events is purely coincidental. Many circumstances described are very common to many families—which is why they are used.

Over the years, I have assisted thousands of families in resolving difficult issues relating to aging, and it is possible that some of the examples in this book resemble those circumstances, or vice versa. However, the examples and scenarios presented in this book are fictitious and created by me for illustration. They are very general, and likely bear resemblance to many, many families and persons.

Again, especially for former clients of mine, please do not read any examples in this book as being drawn from your particular case. I assure you, they are not.

Introduction

Successful communication and successful aging

Nearly every family issue I encounter as a lawyer has its roots in defective communication. The prevalence of poor communication in many family disputes cannot be over-stated. The issues I am asked to resolve involve bad communication that often occurred, or started to occur, many years ago. While often the specific answers I give are legal answers, the ultimate solutions I present to families relate to improving communication between parents and children or between siblings. In estate litigation disputes, it is often too late to effectively solve such problems. That is why I wrote this book: I want parents and children to communicate better about difficult issues during life.

Hopefully, everything contained in this book registers as common sense to you. However, I have found, again and again, that common sense too rarely makes an appearance in difficult family discussions. While an outside observer—which a lawyer often is—could easily solve most problems that he or she encounters, imputing that problem-solving guidance to a family can often prove problematic. Necessarily, family decisions are more weighted with emotion, and more dependent on the success of intra-family communication.

This book sets out to teach a fairly complex skill: providing children and parents with some tools to communicate successfully about the most difficult topics they may ever discuss. Most families already have these discussions, in one form or another, and many of them go very badly. It is no surprise: the issues in these conversations include giving up autonomy, altering living situations, and often contemplate death.

Estate planners and elder law attorneys conduct and oversee these family conversations many times each day, and we undoubtedly pick up several traits of families who successfully navigate such sensitive issues. Simply put, this book is intended as a readable and practical guide for a child or parent intending to conduct a difficult conversation on at least one of ten issues related to aging. Hopefully, you find it helpful: while one size certainly does not fit all when it comes to family dynamics, there are many tips included in the proceeding text that can benefit any family.

To start, every family’s goal should be successful aging for the parent(s). Successful aging is a lot like successful living, and is dependent on the reasonable maintenance of three important and very personal characteristics:

Autonomy:

The ability to live successfully in an independent setting, without significant support needed to accomplish daily living activities

Dignity:

Being treated by others as capable, competent, and able to make choices regarding the individual’s life

Self-Governance:

The ability to participate and play a principal role in decision-making

for the individual’s living arrangements, care, and finances

In other words, for most of us to be happy, we need to be able to live independently, be treated with dignity, and maintain control over our own affairs. Successful aging requires that though our abilities of self-governance may decline over time, we are able to maintain some semblance of independent living. And even as our independence may wain with our physical decline, our dignity remains. Finally, as free people, we seek at all times the ability to decide our own destiny. To do all of these things throughout our lives, even to an increasingly limited extent, means we have aged successfully. In successful aging situations, both children and parents understand and desire the above statements to be true and correct. In the best situations, siblings act in concert to achieve the ultimate goals of the parent(s).

We all desire to live successful lives, defined under our own definitions of success; but we also desire successful declines, reluctant as we may be to acknowledge our natural and inevitable withering. As an end point, we also seek respectable and successful deaths. Most of us are more inclined to acknowledge death in the abstract, rather than evaluate the end on its own merits. As a practical deterrent to that actualization, we pursue a path towards death that unfolds in a way that is dignified and moves forward on our own terms, much as we lived our lives.

However, practically speaking, we cannot walk this path entirely on our own, without the help of others. We must learn to communicate effectively with the others who will help us on that path. For children to effectively communicate with parents facing future mortality, this mindset—this context—must be understood.

In order to successfully communicate with our parents about difficult aging issues, children must always be mindful of the effect of such issues on a parent’s autonomy, dignity, and self-governance.

When entering into discussions with parents about subjects such as: (1) ceasing to drive, (2) signing Powers of Attorney, (3) allowing caregivers to enter the home, and (4) entering a nursing home, specifically, children should strive to consider the effect of their suggestions on the autonomy, dignity, and self-governance of a parent.

Too many families launch into these discussions without considering the practical and personal consequences to a parent, which is why many such conversations are ultimately not as productive as they could have been. However, understanding how to address these embedded emotional issues eludes many children.

The ultimate goal of this book is to make these communications between parent and child successful. While the simplest answer is often to bring in an independent expert—an elder law attorney—many of these conversations still have to take place between siblings and