As I've posted here, my 94 year old dad is currently in skilled nursing but will be moving soon to memory care. He still owns a house and 2 cars and I, as guardian and conservator, am responsible for keeping the house maintained, paying utilities, property taxes, yard maintenance and insurance. He has not lived there for 1-1/2 years. There are rats living in the back shed (I think my husband is on a mission to get rid of them. He has baited 3 times and they keep coming back). I was there this weekend and the back fence between his house and 2 neighbors has blown down so that's another thing to deal with. I have to have approval from the court to sell the house and he will receive a copy of the paperwork. The guardianship attorney has urged me to do this as the house is becoming a money pit. How do I tell him? He is going to come unhinged and he will insist on seeing it again but it is not wheelchair accessible. I'm not really sure how to approach this.
You are dreading this because you anticipate - and I can't put it better myself! - that he is going to come unhinged. He may, briefly. And that will make no difference either to the fact that the house must be sold and you have the legal authority to do it, or to the reality that the process will by then be under way.
It isn't quite the same situation, but I have just come from a family who dread similar things. They thought they couldn't get Dad vaccinated because they'd never get him to his GP. The wife had cancelled two CT scans because she couldn't get him to agree beforehand to the appointments and didn't know how she'd get him there if he refused to get in the car. This morning, she is fearful that her long, long overdue respite break won't happen because she can't explain it to him. Well - he has been vaccinated, he did attend the CT scan, and I am hopeful that by getting her to focus on the next goal - booking and implementing the respite plan - we can stop her from sabotaging this too.
Here is a useful mantra: "nothing is EVER as bad as you think it's going to be." What's key here is that you don't need your father's co-operation to sell the house, and you mustn't let your fear of his being upset about it stop you doing what you need to do in his best interests. Don't anticipate problems that won't make a material difference to anything. Eyes on the prize.
I had my Mom assign me POA thru a lawyer. I wanted all the Ts crossed and Is dotted. Mom gave me the ability to sell her house. So, I put it up for sale. I never told her I did it. I never took her back to it once she moved out and I definitely didn't show her pictures. It just gives them the impression they could go back. And their minds no longer can reason that they r where they are because its safer.
Most people who suffer from Dementia want to go home. My Aunt would tell a friend she would be home as soon as they let her out of this place. But the "home" she was talking about was where she grew up. You just have to make up little white lies. Its a shame the courts feel they need to keep a person suffering from Dementia informed. I mean, you received guardianship because Dad had a Dementia. Dad may get the letter and have no idea what it means. If he does, just be honest and say that he could no longer afford to keep it up. Yes, he may get upset but then he hopefully will forget. I would make sure I took the letter, once he read it, and not mention the house again. Eventually as the desease progresses, he will forget he had a home and except where he is.
He's not in charge of his finances, if you are the guardian. Plus, if he is in Memory Care, he is not competent to take care of such things. There is a good chance he will forget what you told him, and still believe that he owns a home. Why upset that thought?
Have you changed his address for the post office? Perhaps change it to your home so that he doesn't need to receive court papers and become agitated. You can then deliver only "pleasant" mail.
The house must be sold to pay for his care. Simple as that.
I had a perfunctory hearing with the guardianship judge and got permission.
I had already gone through guardianship Conservatorship process, mom and dad had been served legal paperwork during that process but didn’t understand or even ask me. They also got paperwork on the house sale but never brought it up with me. Dad had very little short term memory at this point but mom still functioned fairly well.
If they had confronted me I would have fibbed a bit (Or maybe a lot) as I had to do a lot of fibbing the last few years to take care of them.
I think we sometimes become a slave to our parents dementia, putting of what has to be done because we don’t want the hissy fits. But this is a case of doing what has to be done.
You are dreading this because you anticipate - and I can't put it better myself! - that he is going to come unhinged. He may, briefly. And that will make no difference either to the fact that the house must be sold and you have the legal authority to do it, or to the reality that the process will by then be under way.
It isn't quite the same situation, but I have just come from a family who dread similar things. They thought they couldn't get Dad vaccinated because they'd never get him to his GP. The wife had cancelled two CT scans because she couldn't get him to agree beforehand to the appointments and didn't know how she'd get him there if he refused to get in the car. This morning, she is fearful that her long, long overdue respite break won't happen because she can't explain it to him. Well - he has been vaccinated, he did attend the CT scan, and I am hopeful that by getting her to focus on the next goal - booking and implementing the respite plan - we can stop her from sabotaging this too.
Here is a useful mantra: "nothing is EVER as bad as you think it's going to be." What's key here is that you don't need your father's co-operation to sell the house, and you mustn't let your fear of his being upset about it stop you doing what you need to do in his best interests. Don't anticipate problems that won't make a material difference to anything. Eyes on the prize.
Please do not use rat poison, where I live eagles and owls are being poisoned by eating dying and dead rats that were poisoned. If possible find a company that uses terriers to kill rats. They are remarkable effective.
But unless the shed is completely sealed up, rats will continue to get in. We have a family story. My Dad was living on the other side of the country, there was a mouse in my grandfather's shed. Grandpa wrote a letter telling Dad he had killed the mouse, the following week another letter arrived, telling Dad the mouse had been killed. Over the course of that summer my grandpa trapped over 100 mice.
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