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!
Fortunately, the executor's or trustees legal fees will be covered, but again, from the proceeds of the estate. This could take a year, or more, with the attorneys draining the estate. There is a formula, not sure, but attorneys get 1/3rd?
The VNA of Michigan gave its staff cell phones to use rather than their own cell phones, although some of them did. By using phones titled in the agency's name, it avoided the issue of individual staff's names and personal cell phones becoming available to patients.
If your concern is that sibs would contact the caregivers and ask prying questions about the situation with your mother, what care they gave, etc., they would most likely be prohibited by agency rules of privacy, notwithstanding HIPAA, from discussing any kind of personal issues that as these.
Legal personnel are under similar restrictions. We were advised never to discuss client issues outside of the firm, and sometimes there was even a "Chinese wall" created to protect a particular client's issues from discussion with anyone but the attorneys, paralegals and secretaries working on that particular case.
The other alternative is that a "slick" lawyer could harass you just to frighten and manipulate you into settling and offering something to the sibs. Since there's no insurance and no guaranteed representation, these tactics are low balling and nasty.
But you could always hire an attorney and countersue, throwing the ball back in their court and beat them at their own game.
I doubt if any reasonable attorney would even consider a case like this on a contingency basis though, as personal injury and products liability cases were handled when I worked in that practice area decades ago. Contingency cases have to have a good likelihood of liability, and are more lucrative when there's a deep pockets insurance company involved, not a "shallow pockets" estate or its Personal Representative.
I can't imagine what the sibs are attempting to accomplish either, unless it's just plain harassment.
I don't think they have any direct recourse to caregivers anyway. Maybe they're trying to figure out how much you spent on caregivers.
Anyway, you have a lot on your plate so try not to let any potential anxiety over what they might do hover over you like a storm cloud.