Is it unreasonable to ask the one sibling who is living closest and overseeing parents (who just moved near them) to keep a spreadsheet of all expenses being spent on elderly parents? Just for transparency sake? They pay their daughter and boyfriend to do work for them; they also have very expensive tastes.
"People will fight over your money and anything you leave,
but won't fight over taking care of you while you're sick and dying."
AND
is it justified?
I’m going to guess that the fear is that it’s that your parents do not have over 1M+ so will run through their savings and then need care in a facility and the folks flat won’t have the $ to pay for it and Sissy will expect you to share in paying for both your parents costs of private pay of care in a facility, as we cannot put our parents in one of those Medicaid type of places amongst the unwashed, as someone has very expensive tastes. Is that it?
we need more of a backstory….., so what’s going on? Are your folks both competent and cognitive? Who’s POA? What exactly are the grandkids doing? Are they living with the grands and getting paid? Are IRS rules for household employees being done? What is your position in the overall family dynamic? Is someone in the family yammering on that no worries as there’s no more MediCal look back in CA anymore even if things went bad?
Are the parents judged incompetent in their own decisions and care, and is someone acting as guardian or POA financially?
The POA or guardian has a fiduciary responsibility to pay no more than fair market value for services and to keep meticulous records of all expenditures. Also a duty not to enrich themselves. That's if parents cannot make their own decisions, and a POA is assigned. The POA has no duty to share information with the family, but if the family suspects abuse and brings a court action the POA is responsible to the courts.
If, however, parents live independently and have skilled kids living in their same area, it is certainly up to said parents whether they wish to pay their children to fix the roof, shop, take them to appointments, or instead hire an independent operators to do such things.
A competent parent owes NO EXPLANATION to ANYONE on how, why, where money is spent.
A POA does have a fiduciary duty to keep meticulous records on every single penny in and out of the parent's accounts, BUT the duty to SHARE these records doesn't extend to family, but to the courts only.
If some sort of fraud or abuse of your parents is suspected could you explain it to us a bit?
If ur parents are paying a grandchild to care for them, there should be a contract. This will be needed if your parents ever file for Medicaid. Medicaid is going to want to know where that money went. If no contract, Medicaid may look at it as a gift and that will cause penalties. That contract should have signatures of all 3 parties and notarized. Me, I would have a lawyer draw it up.
If your parents are competent, they can spend their money how they see fit. If diagnosed no longer competent, then its up to the POA to keep records of their spending. My Mom had her bank statement as her record. The money went in, the money went out. Everything was paid by check. If I paid out of pocket for anything I, I wrote a check to myself once a month, put the receipts in an envelope and wrote the check # on it. Mom had a sm pension check ($200) that she cashed for her other expenses. When I took over, I kept track of that spending and put the receipts in a monthly envelope.
It is unreasonable to ask a sibling to keep a spreadsheet on parents that are competent. And if sibling does not hold POA (which is only in effect if the principle has been found incompetent) thats not their responsibility either. If the sibling does hold POA on an incompetent parent, they need to keep very good records but, they are under no obligation to show any if their siblings the records. They are representing the principle and are really not suppose to reveal the principles financials.