Any advice on handling a disagreement with a sibling about the level of parent's decline?

Any person at age 90 or otherwise needs a plan in place for managing finances when the time comes that he/she can’t. It doesn’t matter how competent mom is today, she may not be tomorrow. It’s better to plan while she’s still hitting on most of her cylinders.

By standing in the way of sister’s push to get this done, you may be shooting yourself in the foot. Dealing with management of their affairs would be twice as hard if, say, she were lying helplessly in bed after a stroke and dad’s wringing his hands as you’re all trying to untangle the financial mess so you can pay for the care they suddenly need.

Don’t wait.

Why don’t you set up a meeting with Council on Aging. You can both be present at the meeting. Have a needs assessment done and see what they recommend for your situation.

Your mom will need help at some point even if she is doing fairly well now. It’s best to be prepared before something tragic happens.

Best wishes to you and your family.

I think you are BOTH RIGHT if that makes any sense. There DOES need to be plans, paperwork, and you do need openly to be able to talk together with your parents. Be honest. Find out what is what. Keep any anger or insistence at bay. I am assuming you both are in the same area as your parents, and are both seeing them, thus aware of where they seem to be at.

Families vary in how secretive and private they are, but with parents in their 90s it is time to put the cards on the table and at least discuss all of this.
Admire you for trying to honor one another's and your parents positions. I think you will do great despite one perhaps a bit more proactive than the other. So glad of your support for your parents. You're to be congratulated for wanting to work TOGETHER when so many siblings squabble and it all goes South, causing great pain to the parents, and backing them into their corner more than ever.

Good luck. TALK TO THEM after you talk together. Come to a way to approach all this gently and with love. Tell them you no way want to switch roles and would have utterly no idea how to do so, but that you DO want to be support for them, returning the love they always gave YOU.

Be open and honest with each other & parents and stay calm. Have a plan in place because at their age changes happen quickly.

I’ve seen situations like this get out of control and ruin families lives forever

Tell your sibling that advice is only heeded when it is wanted. While your parents are still capable of handling their financial affairs, they are legally entitled to do so. While your parents are still of sound mind and capable of signing legal documents, make sure their paperwork is in order. They need to set up powers of attorney for financial and medical matters, if the time comes when they are no longer able to make judgements for themselves. Usually the spouse is the first level of POA, and a child is the second level of POA if the spouse is not capable. There can be conflicts when there are co-POAs, or when one child is POA for medical matters and the other is POA for financial matters. Sometimes it is better just to have one POA, but have backups. They also both need to set up living wills, explaining what their advance medical directives are, and they both need to have wills, if there are assets. They will most likely need an elder attorney to help with these legal documents. I was an only child, and was my mother's POA for both medical and financial matters. I took over my mother's financial affairs when I started to notice that there were late bills and she was not filling out the checks properly. I asked if she'd like me to take over her finances and she was glad to let me do it. At that point, I set up all of her accounts online with autopayment so that I could monitor what was happening.

Do you currently do anything to help mom and dad? If you don't then sure your parents can do what they want but if you are "helping" them in anyway then your sibling is 100% right.

This is a discussion your sibling should have with mom and or dad. These are your siblings concerns not yours.
Mom and or dad should then tell sibling to butt out if that is how they feel.
You should stay out of the discussion.

Now if you notice mom and or dad are having problems then forming a "united front" to discuss concerns with mom and dad is a good idea.

If you and or your sibling are doing things to "make it easier" for mom and dad then you are both "guilty" of propping them up and giving them a false sense of independence and you should stop helping them so they fully understand that they do need help. (if this is the case)

A family meeting with a banker? A neurologist? A Geriatric Psychologist?

Have your parents been tested for competency? At their age, things can certainly decline quickly. Might be good to have a baseline.

Your sibling and you might be seeing things from a different perspective. We all look at things differently. When my mom started with cognitive decline, she had been living with me and hubby for a year or two. No one else would have been able to tell she had any decline going on but since I spent so much time with her, I did notice little things. Some people brush these things under the carpet and say "oh we all do that" or "oh she's just getting old". But that's not the way I saw it. I saw it as the writing on the wall showing what was coming our way.

It's possible that you and your sister could be at opposite ends of the spectrum on this? Does she give you examples of things mom has done that lead her to question mom's abilities?

People with memory issues can be VERY good at hiding their symptoms and making up for it in conversation with lots of vague answers, etc. It can be hard to accept that our parents are declining, but very often that is what is going on.

Your sister might need to find a gentler way to assist your parents. OTOH, doing too much for them before they need it is not a great idea either. I did too much for my mom and made her able to do less around the house which was not a good plan on my part. Someone told me I was DISabling her not ENabling her. I was kind of mad at first but then I understood that she was RIGHT. Ugh.

Best of luck.

Don't wait until mom makes a $20,000 mistake before one of you keeps an eye on their finances. We read a ton of posts here where elders with memory issues appearing to be fine wind up falling for scams by smooth talking con artists.

My mom was exactly like that. Then she frittered/was conned out of a lot of money. Before, she could have afforded in-home care. Now, it’s substandard nursing home. Makes me feel ill.

Be careful, things can go south very quickly. It’s a lot easier to have these conversations while your parents are competent. But if they resist, there’s not much anyone can do when it gets bad. I say when, not if. Statistically, neural decline is inevitable with one or both.

BrundyB: Make sure that your parents' finances are well secured. Smooth and aggressive scam artists target the elder population.

As our parents get older, they do not like to be told that they can’t manage their own affairs as they feel that their freedom to do so is being taken away from them.

Now is the time for you and your sibling to come to a compromise about your parents’ care. Your sibling is right in wanting to have the conversation with your parents about future care, and you are right in wanting to allow them to continue to have the freedom to make their own decisions. What you both should do is to compromise and have the conversation now with your parents about their future care, but let them continue to carry on with their lives while you both keep an eye on them to make sure they are doing everything correctly. Once your parents start to make mistakes in their finance, running of their household, etc., this will be the time for you and your sibling to step in and take control of the situation. In the meantime, please make sure that your parents give you both POA, one sibling as primary and the other sibling as secondary, before their memory problem gets to the point where they are incompetent to do so.

Everyone is assumed to have decision making capabilities until proved otherwise. That's the law.

I'd remind sibling about this (kindly put of course).

But for sure it can be noticed when decision making skills fade, judgement starts to look patchy, some decisions are outright risky!

Yes dear Father if you are reading - getting on the ladder is RISKY!

If you want to be peace-maker here (a thankless task) you can explain to both that decision making is not black & white - there are many shades inbetween. Many types & each situation can be assessed separately.

Eg choosing to eat crackers everyday for lunch is very different to selling the entire share portfolio. Yeah, both may be poor decisions.. Both may be stem from wanting to simply & avoid complicated choices. Selecting ingredients, food prep, time & energy vs crackers. Seeing one simple bank account vs many statements spread over paper & email, arriving at different times.

Maybe your Mother would like to & is quite capable of deciding her daily routine, what she wears, where she goes, what she eats, daily spending on houshold items or small gifts but may need support for decision making for larger financial decisions?

'Supported decision making' is the inbetween between full independance & others deciding: assisting someone to know the options of a choice, to present them in a way they can understand them & understand the consequences of each too. Then they are in a better position to weigh things up to decide. This preserves their *dignity of choice*.

Regarding decisions that involve care for your Father. Whoa. I am up to my eyes in this too.
BIG SIGH.

One example is a fall alarm.
- Let them complelety choose:
Do you want to get one?
- Assisted decision making:
If you had a falls alarm, & unfortunately you fell, the alarm may get help a lot faster. Without an alarm, if you cannot get up, it will take a lot longer to be found & assisted. Do you want to get one?
- Others decide: Get the alarm. (Although if this is not Mom's choice, she may rebel & hide it in the drawer like SO many do).

Wow, this sounds very much like where my siblings are. My mother is going to be 100 years old in December, but she still lives at home by herself! She’s still pretty sharp, but panics at everything. My sister and I live hours away, so my brother is her "caregiver", if you can call him that. He’s always there for her, and takes her shopping and orders her clothes, brings her to doctors appointments, things like that. Now she’s got a recurrence of macular degeneration, so I fully expect her eyesight to get much worse in the near future. I think we should start getting her used to caregivers coming in to help, since she relies very very heavily on my brother who is still working. He doesn’t want to go there, he just doesn’t have the bandwidth to argue with her about it; we all know she would heavily resist the idea. My sister is in La La Land and thinks she’s fully capable of taking care of herself. SHE doesn’t get the panicked phone calls if my mother can’t get a hold of my brother for 15 minutes. After being on this forum for a while, I can see how things can go downhill super quickly. Then there’s going to be a panic to get care for her! But as others have said, sometimes you just have to let the other shoe drop and have them get in trouble before everyone will accept the need for help. It’s hard!

Get an expert opinion from her medical doctor. He/She can test her mental competence and let you know if she needs supervision. Your mom might also benefit from a referral to a neurologist to diagnose the type of cognitive issue she has. In early stages, almost every type of dementia can be treated by medications to help sharpen her memory.

It might also be a good idea to schedule a visit with a lawyer. Your mom - and dad - should have wills and powers of attorney (legal documents) drawn up that appoint a specific person to manage each of their medical and financial affairs. These types of documents keep family arguments to a minimum.