After 18 months with mom living with us, my husband is unhappy and won’t talk about it. Advice?

no comfort care in my area...sigh .....

momhouseme,
Check with a Tax Adviser for the exact rules.
General rules are: you can claim your elder as a deduction if: they live with you for 6 months or longer of the year filed for, as long as you provide half or more of their support during that time.
Just avoid pulling the fast one my brother did: He started filing papers as if Mom lived under his roof instead of ours, by using one of her former married names. When I asked Mom about it, she just laughed maniacally, as if it was hilarious....she clearly knew of it.
I only discovered it while looking for something else for her online.
Goodness only knows how long they'd been pulling that off---not even we were qualified to claim her as a dependent--even though she lived under our roof for 6 years! While she lived with us the qualified time, she supplied her own support, so we didn't qualify.
My brother, OTH, supplied NO housing, NO financial and NO medical for her--he barely ever even gave her a ride anywhere. If he'd been caught at it [& the time limit has yet to run out on IRS coming after him], he'd be in real deep kimchee!

There are various rules for when adults Caretake for children, adult children with special needs, or elders, that could allow them to be claimed as dependents for tax purposes.
States that have income tax, may also allow some variations on same idea.

My mom has Alzheimer and I love her very much but I sure don't like some times.
Does that make me a bad person?

mlaynaM10, no you are not a bad person--just human. Alzheimer changes the person and caring for someone with Alzheimer is a trial. During the holiday time, see if you can get someone to help or get some respite care. You need
to be away even if only for a few hours each day to get a well needed break and come back to the caregiving with a new perspective.

Again you are not a bad person don't be hard on yourself. Do the best you can with what you have. Get some home health aides in for regular visits, you will
feel much better.

Lizann thanks so very much. It is so hard but my health is not good either. I have a back problem so that adds to problems too. I am going to have to put mama in the nursing home after the first of the year and I really believe she will be happy.

We have discussed it and she seems to be fine with it right now so we will see what happens.

I'm late weighing in on this, but I'm right here in the same situation now. Having mom live in the bedroom right above ours certainly puts a damper on our love life. It makes him grumpy and it makes me grumpy and our relationship suffers greatly from a lack of intimacy. I wish I could find somewhere else for my mom to live, but she just got back her from a month in hospital and rehab. She's too far gone for AL, has home health coming in, she's passive aggressive, codependent, high anxiety especially separation anxiety. We finally put our foot down and just got away for a weekend, made sure she had food, somebody to stay with her etc. She threw a fit before we left, and another when we got back. Something's always in chaos around here.

He's unhappy because you have chosen your mom over him. When is the last time you had sex? You are going to have to choose between your mom and your husband. If you want to stay married, he has to come first.

i m 36 , having the same problem, i lost my dad 15 yrs ago, and my only sibling five yrs ago due to cancer. i m a mother of two kids of 4 and 9 yrs.My mom is staying with me and my husband wants to put her out of the house.I kept her with me cos she looks after the kids when i m at work and also to distract her mind after the death of my sister.

So, is your mother's depression being treated? It can be very hard to live with someone with depression.

To update on this post from last year, we applied for VA aid and attendance for my mother and found a low-income apartment located within a retirement community that two of my grandmothers had lived in and which the VA approved as well. We are all very much happier. Mom feels as if she is on her own and taking care of herself and I feel like I got my life back. And hubby is happy and relaxed again. It took a long time to work everything out (and a good deal of drama with my siblings) but thankfully it worked out for Mom.

This is such good news. Often our parents don't want to live with us any more than we want to live with them. It sounds like you found the perfect solution for all of you.

My husband did this, too, a bit. On the other hand, I remind myself that he's been pretty supportive considering how much our lives have changed with my mom coming to live with us.

On one hand, he's convinced that we've done the right thing. On the other hand, it's hard that we have had to make so many changes to our lives. It's sometimes hard having her around, all the time. He probably feels the stress of her illness even more than I do, as he sometimes feels a bit of an outsider in his own house.

Sometimes, I will ask him if he feels left-out. I ask him if he regrets our choice. He basically just grumps back. However, I think I see that it makes a difference that I ask. Meanwhile, he does sometimes admit that he feels like an outsider in his own house and isn't sure what to do about it.

Sometimes, I will tell him I feel stuck in the middle - that I want to make sure that all three of us can live a decent life in this one house and not always sure how to go about it.

Things are better. We grump and grouse, but I think the fact that we do sometimes spill our guts or sometimes just ask if the other one is having a hard time, while it doesn't solve it all, just helps the other one know that we haven't forgotten about them.

The other night, we had concert tickets. Unfortunately, Mom had just been admitted to the hospital and he and I agreed that, while she was probably fine, that I should be at the hospital to talk to the doctors and get her settled. Instead of having dinner and a show, together, I couldn't go. I told him that I felt bad - that I know part of the fun is to go, together. I begged him to go and enjoy it for both of us and not to feel bad for me that I'd missed it. He couldn't find a friend to go (it was the very last minute) but he did go and gave the extra ticket to a stranger waiting in the ticket line. He did enjoy it. He hates doing things, alone, but he went and it seemed to be good for him to get out of the house. I told him it would be better than his plan of sitting at home and worrying about how Mom was doing, which wasn't going to help either of them.

But it's hard. It doesn't always work out that well here, either, so I know some of what you're going through.