Are caregivers covered by HIPPA or other privacy laws?

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Are caregivers covered by HIPPA or other privacy laws?

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Give them a one page summary account and invite them to come peruse the 16 binders of info.

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I'm thinking windyridge's Plan B is the best way.....but seriously, yes, GladImHere, after spending several hours digging thru binders and files and going online and printing out bank statements, and oh yes there are receipts up the wazoooo..... I am thinking I will get an appointment with my law office, maybe they have an assistant, and I will log onto mom's accounts from their office (I bet they have a high-speed printer....), and then spit out everything the assistant says is needed. If they want all the piddly receipts, I've got em, in spades. I am NOT going to think about any of this for the rest of the weekend!

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And Mallory, you do not have to do this yourself. You can hire an accountant to assist, you guide them, then you also have an impartial 3rd party so sibs are less likely to question. It does not mean you have to do the work, and you could pay yourself to do it. But, quite frankly, you have been through enough, I would hire it done! Less problems all the way around.

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I would consider that "expenses of administration" means those of administering, resolving and concluding her estate, including disposition of assets, which includes the house and all other outstanding issues.

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.

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Gardenartist, I just re-read her will. It does say that the Executor "shall pay from my estate the expenses from my last illness, funeral expenses, expenses of administration, " and other items. So there is a time shift---the estate covers things from before she was actually dead ("my last illness"). I find that interesting--I think I paid some of those expenses out of our joint checking account. I know I paid some of her funeral expenses out of my own credit card account. It's going to take a little time to get it all sorted out, but certainly, there are going to be quite a few line items.

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Mallory, my mom had a conservator and the court only required categiries be reported, for example utilities was listed as one line item which included phone, internet, television, natural gas,electric, water, waste water. Well you get the idea. If sibs want to verify have documentation available to them. Let the wade through it. I can almost guarantee they will not take the time. Make it easy on yourself.

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Mallory, there's another issue that you can throw out to even stall providing them with any financial information at all. Check your mother's will to see if there's a provision requiring that the expenses of the last illness be paid, and see if there's any mention of disposition of the estate. If the latter provision is included, they can't even get an idea what they'll get until you've sold the house.

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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after staring at about 16, 3-inch thick binders full of documentation, and looking at my humble Brother printer which is prone to over-heating....I am abandoning any idea of printing off wads of paperwork.
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.

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malloryg8r,

I just thought of a completely different way to approach this. If you have copies of her past taxes which would show her income and how much of a medical deduction she got each year, that maybe it would suffice.

Their expecting Z amount instead of X amount is unrealistic and reflects on their lack of awareness and involvement.

That's just a random idea that came to mind. It would probably only be doable if a CPA has done her taxes all along for they would likely have past copies on file.

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Mallory, I like Windy's suggestion B! And there are ways you can do that subtlely.

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."

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I don't think HIPPA law is the least concern. It's to protect the privacy of the patient. Do the simplest accounting to your sibs if any at all. I don't remember the details of your situation. You were the primary caregiver? Executor? Sibs do much to help? Depending on the answers I would,

A....Give them the most basic accounting.

B......Tell them all to stuff it

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And yes, I will be removing account numbers, names, etc so that there is no personal info about the caregivers themselves. They did an awesome job for mom and I don't want them getting any heat over this silly request.

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thank you GA and CMag, I have kept exceptionally meticulous records, and yes I suppose I could burn thru a case of copy paper (and a few printer cartridges) with "too much information".
The siblings are questioning why they only got X amount of money (from her bank accounts) instead of Z amount of money. In their silly little brains, from far out of state, they were expecting "more" than they got. That is what this is all about. So now, as Executor, I have to "prove" to them that X amount is in fact correct, and there was no excessive expenses. Really quite STUPID of them to be even asking this question!
I am sure they will feel very embarrassed once they see, there was nothing unusual going on, whatsoever. But, they sure are paying a lot for me to get this paperwork together.....

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Mallory, I've only done trust accountings for a sibling, but never went into the detail that you describe for external expenses. For my own time, I documented down to the .8 or .10 of an hour, and included mileage, mileage rate, etc. But I also anticipated a challenge.

I wouldn't think you need to detail names, visits, hours, hourly rates, etc.

First, though I would check with the probate court and ask for a sample accounting. If they don't have one, ask about the level of detail needed to be provided. It wouldn't hurt to do some online research and find some law firms that address this. Look for ones in your county that would be familiar with the probate court there.

Accountings can be laborious; I would start with the broader classifications and only provide detail if asked.

I might write something like:

Happy Hours Caregiving Agency, Week of May (insert date), 2015: $_____

Jane Doe, independent caregiver, ____ hours, week of April, 2015: $_____

Or if they did bill by the month, eliminate the "week of" and just include the month and the total billed.

If siblings do want more detail, I assume you have the bills: sometimes just using the old legal trick of too much information will stop them - send copies of the bills and let sibs spend their own time going through the bills.

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I'm sorry to hear of your mom's death in June. You have enough on you dealing with your own grief to have this ridiculous burden added.

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?

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Are caregivers covered by HIPPA or other privacy laws?

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