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Having said that - be very careful about what you charge. If your relative needs Medicaid later, they will check if assets have been given away in order for them to qualify. If they are paying you too much, they may determine they do not quality for Medicaid.
Because there are 3 adults in my house (including mom), I was told that the MOST I could charge her was one-third of the monthly mortgage, taxes, and utilities (we didn't get into paying for her care).
We actually do a new lease every January for this amount and provide it with her paperwork to renew her Medicaid. I've been told it helps decrease her spend down. I'm not sure it really does. After spend down, they only leave her with $591/mo for expenses but the lease is for $700. Must be new math. :-)
Personally, I would not charge them for the care I would provide. However, you could hire a caregiver to come in once a week to provide personal and other parent related care....that is fair and gives you a break.
You are providing them one-on-one care in a safe and clean environment. It makes sense that they should compensate you for what they would pay much more for elsewhere. Of course, they should pay for their own personal items.
Again, this all depends on what they can afford.
1. The parent gets medicaid or needs to plan for medicaid and spend down. 2. Not every child has sufficient money to support a parent so the extra money might help. One never knows what will happen once you start cargiving. The needs of the parent increase and the child might have to give up a full time job for part time or no time and the savings from the rent might help in the future.
3. Other siblings might not contribute anything and the child who the parent is living with is expending funds. Shouldn't they get some compensation now?
The amount should start a fair market and then drop according to parent's ability to pay vs children financial standing.
Also consider their ability to pay.
I don't mean to sound harsh because every family is different, but I'm a caregiver for an elderly woman whose family does utterly nothing for her and I do ALL of her care with no pay whatever and have no doubts that if she dies before me they will immediately throw me out with no compensation whatever.
Life isn't fair. Get used to it.