My nephew lives with my mothher she is 85 he is 33. He hasn't had a job for several years. He sleeps all day and plays video games all night. When he goes out to smoke he friends the stray cats. They now have 3 cats in the house and one on the proch. Even worse than the cats my mother has been in the overdraft for 3 years in the amount of around 10 thousand dollars. Some of her children tried to have an intervention boy what a mess. She sided with the nephew. Her blood pressure is running 219 over 98 and her a1c is to high her bllod sugar stays around 290. They eat a lot of fast food they purchase with her credit card. What do we need to do? She is mad at the 3 sisters who tried to interevene and the nephew said you can't make me move out.
Sounds like she may need to file bankruptcy? How do you know she is charging fast food on her credit card? Which, by the way, is her prerogative.
Let's step back a bit. Why is grandson living with granny to begin with? Whose son does he belong to? Why did you or your siblings choose not to care for your Mom directly instead of entrusting to a person seemingly irresponsible?
That said, caregiving is REALLY hard. Have you ever done it? How do you know grandson is not caring well for your Mom? Your Mom needs a 24/7 caregiver. What did you expect?
If it is none of my business then fine but am I committing elder abuse by sitting back and letting her health fail and go bankrupt?
Your Mother has allowed this behavior and all of you are responsible for allowing this ne'er-do-well into your mother's home. His behavior is CLEARLY not new. At his age he should not be playing such childish video games.
You also need to think about who will care for her when you do get him out. She enjoys his company, and would be lonely if he were gone. What can you do about that? Good luck.
Just a little sympathy here for you. This is going to be a very difficult process, with your mother, nephew and brother resisting all the way. If there is anyone who can back you up, like a clergyperson or close friend or business person - banker or insurance or accountant? - please get all the help you can.
God bless you.
Before you go to the attorney, if your mother is hesitant about doing POA's, remind her of what happened to the bank with the charges and just explain to her it's the only way you can will have the authority to control the situation. After you get the POAs, if you do, you can then gather information, confront your nephew and his parents and make some agreements. Maybe he COULD stay there and take care of her to keep her at home, but medical services will pay for visiting home nurses to come to monitor things such as high blood pressure and diabetic blood sugar. If she gets supervision in that department, and he is told about her dietary needs and doesn't comply, that's a different issue. If he has no access to her money to buy fast food, then she will already be eating better. Consider what you would have to pay a home caregiver for 24/7 care before you rule out having him stay. Your mom is comfortable with him there, and if he is willing to clean up his act, he could be a good choice to care for her as she continues to age.
I was in a similar situation where my mom raised my niece and nephew. The niece had three children and when she moved out she left one of them there so that my mother, who has dementia, could raise her. The niece often left the other two children there. It was a very abusive situation. My niece stole from her, ruined her card, charged her own home’s electric and phone bills on my mom’s checking account and used up $4000/month using my mom’s debit card.
We filed multiple reports with APS, but my mother always told them that there wasn’t a problem and they went away.
My niece forged checks, I filed reports with the police, and since my mother wasn’t willing to press charges it did no good.
Through all of this, I did have POA. This issue was that my mother still needed money to spend for groceries and her bills but couldn’t be relied upon to reign in my niece. Plus, my niece would blackmail my mother and tell her that she would take the great grandchild away if my mother didn’t give her what she wanted.
It was a slow process but we prevailed.
The first thing is that someone needs to be made POA. Both my sister and I are for my mom.
Then, we closed the old account, and we opened a new one with my mother’s name on it and mine. This way, I could log onto the computer every day and see if anything was being charged on it that shouldn’t be. If you talk with the manager at your mom’s bank they will work with you. The moment I saw a charge on there, I called the bank and told them that I did not authorize the charge and have it removed. I gradually closed the loop around the spending and had to eventually get my mom out of the house. She was living with my brother for a short period of time and is now living with us.
It is very hard to overcome this type of situation. Especially when the person is living in the house. He can eventually claim “squatters rights”.
Your mother needs to assign a POA (not the nephew) and she needs to fill out a will stating who will get what.
Sorry you are going through this. It was hell for us because none of us lived locally to my mom, except the niece.