You’d think in this age you could easily find all the experts you’d ever need with a search engine. This, as my son keeps telling me, is the Information Age.
Who knew? It’ll be interesting to see what they call it once it’s become archaeology, possibly the personal plastic amulets age, or, maybe, the carrier bag era, or, even, the tiny toy era, on which experts will say in hushed tones at an excavation ‘We have now reached the Lego strata below which we expect to see the rare emergence of a carpet,’ History books (paper E readers) will have fanciful pictures of us all dashing around carrying carrier bags full of mobile phones, wearing necklaces made of credit cards.
Back in the present you would think it easy to source the expert you need. For normal things it might be but the more unusual the expert, the more likely you are to Google whack it or turn up a totally failed search. There is undoubtedly a lot of stuff on the Internet, indeed most of human ignorance is there, with pictures, but the longer you trawl through it the emptier your net.
In the matter of financial advice for those funding a demented person, experts who are properly accredited are thin on the ground, though there is a lot of opinion readily available, much of it cancelling itself out. I was really fortunate to be recommended to a proper financial assistant by a solicitor and even luckier to be given a free consultation. Not knowing if the meeting would actually be useful at all, I nevertheless prepared for it as thoroughly as I could. I went through all of the papers pertaining to my mother’s finances and my father’s will and checked them against the findings of the solicitors acquired by the executor. These solicitors had charged £11,500 for getting a will through probate and had taken a year to do so. So I didn’t necessarily swallow their findings, hook line and sinker. There were indeed a lot of pieces of paper but lots of pieces of paper is what solicitors are supposed to be quite efficient at. I was also angry that they had taken a month’s worth of care money off my mother for nothing much, so I made like Santa and checked it twice.
The conclusions were inescapable. I was going to have to sell my mother’s house to finance her care. This has big repercussions for me. All my life my mother has blackmailed me. Whether it was ‘Just run upstairs and get my bag because your legs are younger than mine’ or ‘go back into hospital and starve off another stone because we want you a bit thinner,’ it was always followed by a gusty sigh and ‘you’ll be so rich when I die.’ I was gullible, I was young and my mother made her fingers into a gun and shot me when I didn’t do what she wanted, so there wasn’t much option. Nevertheless it’s one thing to say I will have to disinherit myself to support my abusive, demented mother, it’s quite another to do it.
The expert, however, was really expert and very helpful. Within the first few moments he had saved my mother money by telling us she didn’t need to pay Council Tax. In all the web sites I’ve read, and there have been plenty, and all the doctor’s leaflets, and there are sheaves of them, none of them ever said that. I shall be on the phone to the Council first thing Monday morning. What else transpires is that I shall not be able to raise the full value of the house in equity, and that sources of equity release mortgages are thin on the ground. Naturally the next bit that follows is that the expert has the ability to sort everything out for a sum which will be a percentage of the funds raised.
I wrote some notes and there’s a lot to think about. Happily the expert also knew how long it would take to get the scheme off the ground, so I can have thinking time up to Christmas, which, now I have more knowledge, gives me other avenues to explore and other things to enter into my search engine and believe the results or not, depending.
The expert was thoroughly accredited and keen to demonstrate his credentials. As he came recommended by the solicitor we engaged for my mother, through the recommendation of a good friend, I was quite sure of his bona fides but if you were obliged to go down this route to finance care I would suggest that you proceed with all caution. You only have to think for a moment about all the newspaper stories you have read about old people being scammed by cowboy builders, roofers, glazers, plumbers and investment counsellors to know that as the problem of dementia expands, so its girth will attract sharks; it’s bound to, people who are at their wit’s end dealing with dementia, especially spouses of older demented people, are easy targets.
Even though my meeting was above board, helpful, professional and OK in every way I still finished it feeling like I’d been steamrollered. I then compounded this by deciding to pop in on my mother. I don’t often do this, it’s hard to do if you live that far away but I thought the opportunity to do a surprise check was too good to miss. I found my mother half way through watching a video with the carer. She wasn’t was well dressed as she usually is but she wasn’t scruffy and she was delighted to see me. I took some shopping in and a cake, so we had cake and tea and then went home, where, as the S&H is off visiting his girlfriend for the weekend, it was wonderfully quiet. So I went to bed early and slept, then I had a lie in and slept and then I intended to do dolls but I watched the TV and slept.
Right now I’m off to bed and my plans tomorrow are to sleep. My eyeballs have stopped aching and I don’t feel as if my ears are going to explode anymore, which is good.
It’s been the hardest week. One of the features of this disease is that you cannot afford to let the grass grow under you. In ever-changing circumstances you have to keep one step ahead and keep thinking on your feet. No matter how greatly understanding the care home, agency or other professional body, you still have to have the money for the next end of month ready and waiting. One of my stipulations to the financial consultant is that I must have enough money ready always in the bank for things going wrong in my mother’s house and for a funeral. I have known of people having to take out bank loans for funerals. Funerals are horrendously expensive, if you were relying on a will going through probate to turn up some money, with solicitors such as those engaged by my father’s executors, who took a year, the interest raised on the overdraft could swallow any funds left in the estate thus leaving you bereaved and in debt.
As always throughout this experience, my mother-in-law stands behind me, helping. When she died I was £16,000 in debt and that was thirty years ago. This time I’m doing the sums well in advance, with appropriate assistance, even if I have to pay for it. It doesn’t help that my mother is continually screaming down the phone about costs, these being, of course the costs of the agency that she chose at interview, as being the only one good enough for her. I have taken the precaution of getting the bank to send the bank statements to me now, which will distress her less and distress me less also. There is nothing quite as distressing as having to write a cheque for £10,000 against a bank account that someone demented has carefully lost the statement for, so that you don’t know if there are funds to cover it.
There’s no doubt about it, this disease makes you put your inheritance where your mouth is. I am so glad that back last autumn when my mother was remaking her will and having a lovely time leaving money to all and sundry, that I popped into the solicitor and asked if he would put in a clause saying that if the money was needed for her care in her lifetime then all bets were off. I cannot imagine anything more annoying after all of this, if everything was settled leaving all of the people on the long list a little something and me at the end a big fat nothing, or worse, a debt. Or, worse still, having to shuffle my mother off to the nearest pavement with a begging bowl so her grabby relatives, none of whom are short of money, could have a nice extra tax-paid top-up.
Dementia is difficult. It makes you ill, it makes you poor, it makes you tired and that isn’t when you are the demented person, just the carer. It also makes you tackle your deepest demons. When my father-in-law came and lived off us for five years he never offered any financial contribution, he just reminded us comfortably that his son was an only one and would get it all when he died. This was fine until he remarried and immediately rewrote his will to give his new step children a third each, not that there will be anything left. This time round after a life time’s blackmail along the lines of Great Expectations here we are again, three people in debt financing a lunatic.
At least I have a clear conscience, a plan of action, a financial expert and this weekend the clocks go back so, barring panics, falls or abusive telephone calls, I’ll get more sleep. It knits up the ravelled sleeve of care you know, Shakespeare said so, and, as I am a ravelled carer, I’m off to do my knitting.
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JaneLaverick.com – still and always free to read.