Are caregivers covered by HIPPA or other privacy laws?
For caregivers, are their activities for my mom protected by HIPPA or other privacy laws? my mother (passed away in June) had 2 occasional caregivers, independent contractors, and they did awesome work for my mom. Now, when going over last year or so of mom's transactions, in order to prepare an accounting for my 4 siblings, how much detail do I include about these caregivers? Isn't it an invasion of privacy for me to share information about the caregivers, how much they were paid per hour.....would it be sufficient for me to just give a total amount per month? And skip the details. Just have a "caregiving" category and not put down every day of the week they were there or what they did. It would take me forever to go over their time sheets for that much detail!
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A....Give them the most basic accounting.
B......Tell them all to stuff it
But first, as to printing everything out - save yourself time and money. I sent trust accountings by e-mail. I kept a log of activities in WordPerfect and used Excel for the accountings It's sooooo much easier to just click a few icons and let Excel complete all the totals. Or copy your accountings to disk and send the siblings each a disk.
I an almost guarantee you that if you send them a spreadsheet by disk, they won't spend as much time going over it as they would with a paper copy.
You also don't have to enlarge the print size; do it in what's easy for you; siblings can enlarge it when you send them the Excel spreadsheet (but lock it first so no changes can be made - that's important).
There's another method you can use, which actually makes it easier for you. I used this when I did Mom and Dad's taxes, and kept an up to date accounting of where they were tax-wise so I could anticipate whether or not end of the year payments would be necessary.
I had an older version of Excel; Excel 2013 is a major step backward in ease of use and is totally not user friendly. If you have an older version, use it.
You probably have a variety of expenses, including the caregiving, bills you paid, transportation, medicines, etc. There are 2 ways this can be done:
You can create a separate spreadsheet for each category (all within the same workbook), i.e., one spreadsheet for all the household bills, another for food, another for caregiving, etc. In Excel, the total of each column in a spreadsheet can be linked to a summary sheet.
Example: in your caregiving sheet, you might enter bills for each specific week or month, then create a total for all of the caregiving costs. That total would be linked to a summary spreadsheet of all types of costs. The difference is that this latter sheet doesn't provide breakdowns.
If this doesn't make sense, post back and I'll provide more detail. It's clear in my mind, but I don't know how anyone else might see it.
Moving forward, e-mail the spreadsheet total, with or without the linked line item breakdowns. Depending on the number of categories, this could easily include up to a dozen or so different spreadsheets. If the siblings want the breakdowns, send them the backup data to review, again, not in print but electronically. Then let the siblings wade through all the data.
The point is that you have to create something for yourself to arrive at the summaries; keep that as your reference but if the sibs protest, send all the backup data and let them try to figure it out.
And yes, definitely add your time for preparing this. Once they realize you're not doing this for free, they might begin to realize that every request diminishes what's available for them. And don't forget to include your time for dealing with the house cleanout, disposal of goods, calls to auctioneers, etc.
What I found after doing this was that my sibling didn't even bother to read it but instead would ask questions. I said "it's all in the accounting."
Patients are covered by HIPPA laws. Still, I would only report per month. The other idea sounds too work intensive and too much detail. Why on earth do they want so much detail? Are they greedy siblings that don't trust the money was spent and spent properly on your mom's care? If they were so concerned, where have they been this whole time?
Whose the executor of the estate, you?
So the sibs really aren't going to know for sure what, if anything, they'll receive until the house is sold.
You SHOULD NOT be paying her expenses out of your own funds, unless there are no liquid assets right now, but you need to keep very good records on these expenses and reimburse yourself before distributing proceeds to the sibs. I speak from experience.
.Does your attorney - which I'm assuming is an estate & probate limited practice guy (so he's a specialist) - do litigation? I'd ask him ASAP if he does. If not, ask him who he turns over clients to if there is litigation. Most probate guys seem to me to be very formula oriented & dealing with claims and negotiating competing claims to settle an estate is within the purview of what they routinely do. But if other heirs are planning on challenging either validity of will or suitability of executor or decisions made by executor, well, that could mean litigation - which is going to be very time consuming & costly all around. Not all probate guys do litigation.
If there is anything in your background (& hubs or kids under your roof or dependency for that matter) that could be an issue for suitability, you could find yourself challenged as executor. I'd suggest you pull your & hubs current credit report from the big 3 to see if any recent requests of the report and by whom. If a law firm or PI firm show a pull, then your sibs legal is gathering info on your suitability.
What point are you in probate? Have you been appointed, will ruled valid & letters testamentary issued?
I'm just going to add up the basic info, and tell them, I do have all the individual time sheets, doctor appointment times/who took mom, etc. And the caregivers themselves did fill out time sheets, but after mom died, I'm afraid they may have tossed them.
I am most definitely keeping track of my time to provide all this silly documentation to them.
To those who don't know, I was the main caregiver for mom, and the 4 sibs were completely un-involved. She died very suddenly after a minor knee procedure. They did not help me one little iota with anything---not even the funeral planning, and I did ask them to help. I have heard more from them since mom died, than I ever did before. They are just greedy, wanting their money, and they are surprised that there is not more.
My time now should be spent on getting her house all ready to sell---this silly request for "where did the money go" is just delaying that sale, and the house is the biggest asset, so, why would they want me to spend time doing other stuff? They are just not thinking this through very carefully. As I said, they are SILLY.
So their request would be premature. You could tell them so and state that you'll advise them when the house has been closed, and in the meantime, inquiries such as how much they're going to get and/or what the expenses were are premature.
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