Hello,
I take care of my mother in law. She has dementia and it has been progressing for 20 years. Most of that time, I’ve been taking care of her.
She has always been angry but in the past decade she has been physically abusing me. She has punched me in the face. She has put me in a chokehold. She has threatened to kill me and my children.
I am at a loss. We cannot afford the care recommended by her doctor, which is 24-hour supervised care. But I am in fear for my safety and honestly do not know how much longer I can go on before simply giving out from all the stress. Has anyone else experienced this? What do I do?
This is your choice. It is up to you how you wish to spend you life. None of you are her prisoner. Above you say she has dementia and is somewhat an abusive madwoman. Yet she is judged competent. So let her use her competency to have her own life. Without you. I am sorry to sound so tough, but these are the facts. You each owning part of the house is fine; you can force a sale of it. See a real estate attorney.
I understand the toughness. Thank you for your input. I am much more optimistic than I was six hours ago.
Take her to an ER and walk away.
If you sold her assets, your family would be homeless.
20 years of this? The picture is becoming more clear.
You and your husband have been, mostly, financially irresponsible. Your mother in law has provided your means even when you's decided to throw a couple kids in the mix. Mom in law paying your life bill, for 20 years, probably made her angry and gave her the idea that she could hit you. And she's pretty much been right for 10 years. You took the punches for shelter.
Oh and now the 'children' are adults. So they're living off gramma's dime too?
Wow! I fully understand that it's not a bad joke. Just a bad story. I don't think you're confused as much as you are worried about your shelter.
You're not a victim in this yucky show. You and your husband helped create it and nurtured it with childlike irresponsibility.
Get some real help from all programs who'll give it to you.
Believe it or not, simply Googling “elderly dementia patient hits me and invested in our home before she became sick” does not magically give one all of the solutions and a handy list of programs.
The next time she hits you, you call 911. You send her to ER. You tell the police and the people at the hospital she is a danger to you and herself and she can't come home. You keep doing that if necessary. You are going to have to work with the social workers at the hospital to find placement, and you are going to have to prepare the finances. Her money pays for her care until she's broke then she goes on Medicaid. You do not have to liquidate the house, you can stay there, but Medicaid will put a lien on her portion of it. You will have to be able to afford the expenses now without MIL's income.
If you don't get her out of the home you may want to find the right medication to sedate her.
Her current income goes right to her own care, but we are all three considered partial owners of the house with the way we bought it, before she got so ill. It worries me but I am able to do more research now with some of the info you provided me, e.g. “lien.” Did not know that was a thing. My legal literacy is a bit poor, as you may be able to see.
My husband is equally concerned and working with me but she acts differently around him. Like a switch. I think it’s hard for people to understand how scary she is if they don’t see it firsthand, as my son did over this past holiday. And honestly we just felt like we had to keep her with us no matter what, even before we got the house. I cared for her for years before we lived together. We thought it was the right thing to do. No one else would take her. She has siblings who have no idea where she is and won’t reply to any contact. And as you might guess, she was an abusive parent to my husband as well in his childhood. So whatever effect that has on a person, I take into account.
Thank you for your kindness. I feel considerably more optimistic now.
What is your Husband's view?
A doctor said you would have 70,000 bill if you refused to take her home is pretty laughable. Unless he is also a lawyer and the hospital administrator of billing department. That threat seems however to have worked.
So basically this person will have to go into care. Her assets will go to pay for her care. Her home will not be counted as asset until after her death and upon sale of said home. I don't know what kind of shenaigans have gone on with the sale of the home, but that's not here nor there.
Next time don't get Mom from the ER. They will place her. Let her become a ward of the State and they will soon enough let you know what they will do with her assets. As to 70,000 bills? Don't over worry them unless you have 70,000 to your name to worry over. The important thing is to get the danger out of your home. Or her home. Or the home that belongs to all of you.
Sorry this is such a mess. I imagine somewhere in here is a POA? I hope that person has kept meticulous records as to mom's assets and expenditures, and can just hand them over to social services when they are asked for. Wishing you the best going forward.
I am writing under great distress and do not have the best legal literacy skills or real estate knowledge. Of course it is stupid that I did not educate myself long beforehand. And that is why my posts are confusing. We are joint owners due to a choice to move in together while she was lucid. We wanted to care for her and could not fit into our house altogether, nor could we all fit in her house. We also lived very far apart. Could not drive to her five times a day while working full time, which both my husband and I still do, thankfully. So we all three became joint owners of this home after we both sold our own homes. Our interest in the property is considered equal even if our financial contribution is not. But I did not understand how one third of the interest in the house could be liquidated without forcing us out of the home and selling it until another poster referenced a lien being placed on the home. Now I am doing much research and contacting lawyers regarding our state laws and it does seem indeed we cannot be forced out at all, thank God. Of course renting and etc would be a solution anyway, but I catastrophized in my panic. However, we do live in an extremely rural area where real estate is far and few between, rental or otherwise.
The POA situation has just kept getting more and more complex over the years. We can’t invoke it because she’s still not declared incompetent (utter insanity, trying to figure that out concurrently all these years while dealing with our own health, our other parents dying, our children, etc). But we do have records that prove she is not contributing to the house, that we are taking care of her, that we buy everything she needs, that we are paying the full mortgage, that she doesn’t pay rent, all of that.
I thank you for your thorough reply. God bless.
(that is if the medications will not harm and it does not sound like she had adverse reactions when they were prescribed.)
The doctor is not acting in her best interests.
If she has been diagnosed with dementia she is a far cry from being "competent" Again another reason that you should find another doctor.