How can I care for my elderly mother if my husband doesn't want her in our home?

I think it's your husband who has to man up and do the right thing. Making passive-aggressive comments about your mom hoping she will hear him? How immature is that?? That's your mom. She has dementia. Why doesn't your husband go and stay in a hotel while your mom stays at your place? Why should you have to take your elderly mother with dementia to a hotel to care for her? I can't imagine anything more inconvenient.

Your mother's assets should be used for her care. If that means using it to pay for a hotel room fwo days a week to care for her, why not. Your husband makes a point about how he feels. My mother mentioned to me about moving in with my husband and I so she could preserve an inheritence for her heirs. I do all the work while others sit back and wait for their reward. Even though I am one of the heirs, why should I assume all the responsibilities so all can benefit. As DPOA for her, her assets will be used for her care. The team effort for the care of your mother is commendable, but compromises need to be made.

Has your mother and husband ever gotten along with each other?

His saying mean things about her so that she will hear him and want to leave is not right and sounds like he could use some therapy to deal with his anger. Has she been mean to him over the years?

I read your profile and see that your mom has dementia. As this worsens, she is going to find it difficult to handle moving around from one persons house to another for 2 or 3 nights. At some point in her decline, she is going to need 24/7 care which will become beyond what any of you can handle separately or together.

My mother in law has never liked me and for that fact would have not liked any man with any backbone who married her daughter. She doesn't like my brother in law either and he is a passive, needy person.

She has been mean to me, my children and to my wife. After ten years of putting up with this narcissistic, borderline witch, it reached a point where the drama was so bad when she would visit, that I decided for the well being of my family and me that her mother would no longer be allowed to stay in our house. I also told her that I really did not want her visiting her mother with the boys for they appeared to being used as a buffer between her and her mother. If she wanted to go visit the source of all of her own mental health problems fine, but I was tired of such a sicking person wrecking havoc in our family at home and on vacations which at that point she was no longer allowed to come along on because of her drama.

At first my wife agreed with this, but then she backed down by letting her mother stay with us to which I responded by taking the boys away from the house while her mother visited. That got her attention, but then she caved in again. Well, that time the boys and I did not leave which threw her mother for a loop and I was so glad to hear her say in the morning that she was not going to stay with us again.

A bit later on, my wife was visiting in her mother's house with the boys and witnessed her mother being abusive of our children like her mom had abused her and her twin sister. Well, I was not there to fight her battle which her therapist thought was great. My wife took our children and left that visit early. From that point on, she became more pro-active about her mother and set up some needed boundaries. Her mother has calmed down some with age and with knowing she is not going to see her grandchildren if she were to keep abusing them.

I've shared all of this to say that if your mother has been mean like that to your husband, I can understand why he does not want her at home. However, his making mean comments about her so that she can hear him and his nagging you about her are not correct. You need some sort of break from all of this drama. The grandson sounds like a lazy, angry man who is milking grandma for all of the money he can. What does he have to be so angry about for he's got it made and will get the inheritance? For years my wife put up with her mother's abuse and wanted the rest of the family to so that her mother would not leave her out of the will. Then she reached the point where she saw that doing so was not worth all of that money. I'm sorry that you are caught in the middle between an angry husband and your mom's angry grandson. I'm not a therapist, but seeing one might help you deal with this stress before it kills you.

How come the grandson has more say and control over your mother's care than you and your brother do? I think you two need to stand up to him. Anyway, she is your mother, not his.

I wish you the best in working through all of this dysfunction.

If your husband doesn't want your mother in his home, that is his right and you should accept it. If you want to share in caring for your mother, that is your right and you should insist, as kindly as possible, on finding a way to do it. These things can be very difficult to reconcile, but where there's a will there's a way… (no pun intended).

Seriously, put any inheritance out of your mind. I have to say it makes me want to spit when squabbles break out about that. Is that why your family wants to look after your mother? In exchange for a mention in her will? Of course not. Leave it out of the picture and the whole thing becomes much less stinky.

Where does your mother ordinarily reside? Is the grandson living in what was her permanent family home? How far from you is that?

If it's within reasonable regular travelling distance, perhaps you could go and stay in her/their home for your part of the caring schedule. If your husband kicks up a fuss about your doing that, then at that stage he would be being unreasonable and you would have to be firm about it. I realise that this idea would also involve considerable effort on your part to sort matters out with your nephew beforehand; but from the sound of it you're not his principal bête-noire and it shouldn't be impossible.

If the distance is too far, then could you perhaps offer to provide a week's respite care at - say - two- or three-monthly intervals to whoever looks after her full-time?

Of course, either of these would depend on your not having other commitments, beside your husband, that would prevent you from staying away from home. You might have a job, or children, or pets, or anything else you can't easily leave to take care of itself - but your husband does not fall into this category. Nothing terrible will happen to him if he has to make his own dinner every so often.

The chopping and changing in any case doesn't sound ideal for an Alzheimer's sufferer. Continuity in surroundings is, I think I'm right in saying?, very important in reassuring them and helping them to cope with their confusion. Extremely difficult to achieve when the carers are having trouble co-operating.

This whole thing is very hard on you. I'm not suggesting there's an easy answer, especially not when you've got so many conflicting parties being mad at each other. Can I just add, don't fall in to the classic female trap of trying to please everybody? Maybe sit down with a big piece of paper, mind-map your priorities and see if you can't figure out a way forward. Once you're clear in your own mind about what ranks as most important, next important, less important and so on, perhaps it will be easier to find the right compromises.

Very hard. I'm sorry you're facing all this trouble in addition to the worry you must feel about your mother just on its own. I wish you every success in finding an answer you're comfortable with.

The grandson should be taking care of her, period. She supports him and so it's his job. Unless you take a firm stand your husband will ditch you and the whole sorry mess. Do you want that? Sorry to sound harsh, but you need to get some big girl panties and take a long hard look at the situation.

ptg123 - everything you say is right, and reasonable, and fair. But if the husband isn't in the mood to be fair or reasonable..? I'm just anxious about how this would play out. x

SAY TO YOUR HUSBAND - "I am so sorry that you are troubled every time my mom is here. However, it is difficult for me to tell my brother that I cannot take up the responsibility because my husband does not share a good rapport with my mom. I know it is my fault and my responsibility, but you don't know the support and love she gave to me when I was a kid. Now that she has turned to me and wants to spend some time with me, I can't say no. I know I was hurting you when I took up this responsibility and you never liked it but please understand that she is my mother and I need her as much as she needs me.''

"Oh, I forgot to mention. I work four jobs, have four children and 3 grandchildren. I am working at least 18 hours a day. I sleep very little, sometimes 4 or 5 hours."

Wow, @hepi22. That's a lot to take on and the situation with your mother and husband definitely makes it worse. I have no suggestions to give that most of the other people haven't said already. I just want to say that I admire how you're able to keep up with all of these and that you are in my prayers.


Gianna

One of my jobs is outside the home. That is the reason I can only take care of her 2 days a week. The two days are Sunday, and one of the days that I work from home. I have three jobs that I do from home. therefore, I can take care of her and do my jobs at the same time. I make her three meals per day and if she wants a snack in between I can do that too.
To answer the other questions, the nephew does not want anyone in their home to help him out. Just like he said we could not hire someone to take care of her at my brother's. It's a very difficult situation when someone doesn't want to cooperate. Well, I am trying to do the best I can with what I have. I need my 4 jobs because my husband is disabled, so he doesn't work.
I think someone mentioned something about the money not being important, and of course it is not, but if I was going to get some money in the end, I may be able to quit the job outside my home and take care of her more days. I just can't pay my bills if I don't work and no one is going to help me. As it is, I am always buying her clothes and of course she eats here 2 days a week and it all comes out of my paycheck. No help from anyone. I am fine with not getting anything in the end, I have assumed that already. I just can't help her anymore than what I do, since I have to work.
I'm sorry, I made this a little too long again, but it helps me to write this down and then read it. It's somewhat therapeutic. Thanks for reading and for all the suggestions and comments. I really appreciate it all.

The grandson was given all of her inheritance but he sounds like a lazy bum who basically has been supported by grandma correct? Does he live in grandma's house? Do all of you basically share in the care of grandma to be able to keep her home and any monies that she may have in a banking account? Who holds Power of Attorney for your Mom? Is it the grandson?

Whoever holds the POA (hopefully NOT grandson) needs to step up and start making some decisions to care for your mother on an ongoing basis. If nothing else either you or your brother need to file for guardianship if necessary. With dementia your mother will very soon not be able to handle changing homes every couple of days, they need stability and they need for everything to basically be the same routine every day, it is very upsetting to them.

Your husband is demanding and resentful of his past treatment by your mother and you are afraid to cross him on this point. If you weren't you would be standing up to him telling him........
"Look I understand that you and Mom have been at odds for years and for that I am sorry. This however is MY MOTHER who is old and now mentally ill and she needs my help. This entire situation is extremely stressful and quite honestly I do not need you making it any worse than it is. If this was YOUR mother I am sure you would want me to respect her and her illness, I therefore need you to show Me and MY Mother the same respect, my mother is ill and maybe some of the problems you two had in the past was this illness coming on, but I need to show my mother all the love and respect that I can show her through this illness, after all she did give birth to me. I would therefore appreciate you giving me a break, knock off the disrespectful remarks and attitude, I understand where you are coming from but I need you to understand that you are not just hurting her, you are hurting me as well, so please be the bigger person in all of this and if you cannot say something nice, please just keep it to yourself. When my mother dies, I do not want to spend the rest of my life agonizing or thinking about how my mother was mistreated in her last days, this is going to make my life miserable."

You have to take the inheritance totally out of the equation, what if your Mom was flat broke, how would you and your brother care for her? If your Mom cannot be taken care of by splitting time between the 3 of you then why not put her into assisted living where she will get to know the home and people and be in the same environment, day in and day out, then you can all go see her and spend time with her.

Your nephew may not wind up with any inheritance to speak of, her money may have to be used to pay for assisted living or a nursing home. All of her money that she currently has is suppose to be used on HER and HER healthcare, NOT ON HER GRANDSON!! Who is in charge of her money???? If she becomes ill enough she will need to go into a nursing home and they are expensive, most people anymore wind up having to go on Medicaid to help pay the expense of it. Medicaid does a 5 year look back on every cent that was spent of hers and if it was not going towards HER CARE it becomes a penalty of sorts and they will not pay for her care for a period of time to make up for squandered funds. If she owns a home it too may wind up having to be sold or it may be taken by Medicaid after her death to repay them. These are all things you MUST think about NOW!!!

Bottom line is your husband may have a right to feel the way he does or he just may be acting like a jerk and putting more pressure on you and making a difficult situation into an impossible one. You sound like you are afraid of him so you are going to have to make a call on what you do, personally if it was my husband I would tell him what I wrote above....basically backoff!

The grandson may have the inheritance but you can always gain guardianship of her which trumps POA. Make sure HER needs are met and that grandson is not throwing away her money and then there be a huge problem when your Mom needs medical help and you find there is no money or home left.

I am very sorry that you are in such a difficult situation. Caring for a person with dementia/Alzheimer's gets more difficult as their condition becomes worse, it is the most difficult thing I have ever done and it can ruin a marriage and disrupt your household.

God Bless You!