Here's my deal in a nut shell: My husband's fully disabled, immobile. I do everything for him. I have 3 older cats with special needs, one with lymphoma/diabetes/hyperthyroidism. Basically, I'm busy and stressed as it is.
My brother who is 80, ten years my senior, has always been needy, but this last year has taken the cake. He lives alone since Mom died in 2000, he's learning disabled (can't read), has a history of drug addiction/alcoholism, multiple serious car accidents resulting from his absent-mindedness and basically a lock and chain around my ankle for as long as I can remember. Everything that happens to him, he's dragged me into to bail him out, save his face with him employers, do all his administrative work for him and care for him and his pets during all the multiple recoveries he's undergone.
June 2024 he went into serious congestive heart failure and fell and broke his hip all at once. Fast forward, July 2024 cardiologist gave him days/weeks/months to live. Basically his heart was blown out as a result of his neglect of signs of failure for months, and anesthesia during necessary hip replacement surgery made his heart even weaker. Now he's beginning to get ulcers on his toes from poor circulation and recent vascular attempts to open leg arteries with stents failed... way too much plaque. Forgot to mention, he's chain smoked since he was 12.
I'm all he has, and he could care less that I have an older disabled husband and 3 sick cats. I go to his house 2 to 3 times a week to bring groceries, pick up after him and his cat, tend to his foot wound care, etc. The other days I've arranged for County Assistance to send aides 2 hrs per day. I'm not happy about how he's turned my life even more upside-down than all the decades before, but it is what it is except for MONEY!!
Brother expects me to pay for everything. His food, clothing and other personal needs. He's always been cheap, but now that his part-time job is gone and SSI is his only income, he's worried about spending his savings on his needs in case he keeps on living even in the undesirable physical shape he's in. And guess what... he will keep on living... the guy simply won't die. Honestly, the horrendous car accidents and major drugs injected in his life should have killed him 10 times over.
I'm living on the same income. Lost my long-term job due to having to tend to my husband's needs, only on SSI, have no pension, and my husband's pension doesn't transfer to me when he dies. Plus I'm 10 years younger than my brother, so I have to financially support myself longer.
Where do you all draw the line with those you care for who also expect you to pay for their needs too? I get my brother's fear... will he outlive his savings? He simply isn't a willing candidate for a nursing home... chain smokes, total slob, blasts his TV all hours of the day/night, etc. How do I get out of paying for everything for him, which he expects?
If you aren't his PoA or legal guardian, then he needs a court-assigned legal guardian. Here's how you do this:
You stop doing anything for him: you stop going over, you stop paying for things, you stop having conversations with him except to tell him that the county is going to come over and do a needs assessment so to let them in for this. What you're actually going to do is report him to APS as a vulnerable adult. It takes a lot for them to remove an adult from their home but this is why you must completely step away, do NOT insert yourself or APS will not see the need to get him into the system for placement into a facility.
Your brother is not your puppetmaster. You don't have move a muscle whenever he calls or whines to you. You've done yeoman's work all these years. You must stop. It will feel bad for a little while. It will be bad for a little while and then you will be free. Once he's placed you can have any type of relationship with him (or none) that you desire, or you move on and do much-needed self care and tend to other priorities.
Your brother has a solution. He's not going to like it, but so what? YOU don't like what your life has turned into. You're not responsible for his happiness. Calling APS is the right thing to do to protect him and get him sustainable appropriate medical and custodial care. It's a solution if you allow yourself to see it as such. It doesn't matter that he doesn't think it's a solution -- it is, and it's the only one.
I wish you strength, clarity, wisdom and peace in your heart as you defend strong boundaries with him.
NO, I'm sorry brother but I can't buy you any more food or clothing or any thing else because I need my money for my own family. Period. End of sentence.
If he needs food or clothing there are plenty of free food/clothing banks that he can go to, or have the county aides pick it up for him.
As long as you continue to be his only solution things will never change.
I would also call APS reporting a vulnerable adult living by himself, and let them come do an assessment on him, and if need be take over his care.
You have enough on your plate and as you already know, your husband must be your number one priority, not your brother.
Let the state handle things with your brother after you call APS, and know that they will get him placed in the appropriate facility if needed, whether he wants to go or not.
Time to put your big girl pants on and start saying NO, and call APS. You'll be so much happier when you do both those things.
You can not continue to do this.
If you are not his legal Guardian you can report him as a vulnerable senior that needs help. (your State will have an Elder abuse hotline number. Or you can contact your local Senior Service Center or Area Agency on Aging any of them will have a Social Worker that you could talk to about options)
If you are his legal Guardian you can contact the Court that you send reports to and say you can no longer be his Guardian. The Court would appoint a Guardian if there are no other family members willing to take this on.
There is the expression here at AC that goes around often, and that is that "there will be no solutions so long as YOU are all the solutions".
I wish you the best of luck. I think that you know you should never have take all of this on. There are resources for those in need without assets; they should not be the resources of family members, who clearly need their own resources for their own care.
Best of luck to you.
If it makes it easier for you, frame it as you CAN’T, not WON’T.
You don’t need advice really. You know what to do.
Your brother is so messed up in his thinking, quite frankly, he should have only received half of that house if inheritance is an obligation, you were as much your parents' child as he was.
At this point and his messed-up thinking, which by the way, not being able to read doesn't mean you can't be a self-centered, self-serving manipulative sob, as your brother has proven, I would tell him to pay you back and pay his own bills from now on.
He has used you and should be ashamed of himself.
*Mission Creep* The original plan to assist had blow up, out, up & was ever growing. Having to use my own funds was creeping in next.
*Social Contract* Not an actual contract - but it FELT like something I was locked into. When looked at closer it mostly came from my own ideas, but also from feels of obligations, expectations from the wider family & also communitity.
The councellor explained there were many versions of this *Social Contract*. One she was seeing more & more of as her own friends got older was this 'lure of inheritence'. You will inheirit therefore you must do what I want now. This, she said was NOT a contract at all but MANIPULATION.
Leaving someone money in a will is FUTURE issue. It does NOT = the intended beneficiary being obligated in the present & until date of death.
We talked about my friend's Mother.. retired at 50. Told her son she was moving in with him to be cared for, provided for, meals cooked to her preference, driven around & everything paid for.. for the rest of her life. Oh, & her DIL quit her job too.
Mother expected this because #1. She was his Mother. Family.
#2. The son would inheirit (her crockery & small 1 bed flat).
Point 2 was irrelevant to now. So it became a discussion about #1.
The Mother's expectations needed a reality check.
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