Hello, long time lurker, first time poster.
My mother is 71. Over the summer we noticed her having some serious memory issues and I took her to a neurologist. The diagnosis is clear: dementia, possible early Alzheimer's.
Additionally, in late 2022 I visited her home to organize all of her paperwork. This was scattered throughout her house in piles. It took 7 hours to organize and file it all. But when I examined the bills and the statements, it was clear that she is in serious financial hardship.
My mother was a housekeeper for over 30 years and her income was at best lower middle class, if not then it was scraping the poverty line. Since the summer she has lost all of her customers and doesn't work. Last year she filed for roughly $21,000 in annual income.
She collects social security, which is about $1200 monthly. She also has a small pension from my dad before they divorced. That is about $642. She also gets about $600 monthly from her 30+year live in boyfriend who has not been good to her and has a criminal background. So that's about $2442.
She has a mortgage against her home, which is worth about $450,000. Monthly payment is $995. She owes $86,000. She also has a line of credit that she opened in 2006 and borrowed $80,000 (though I don't think all at once). She owes $74,000. It is a variable interest rate so payments last year were around $150-$180. Now they're over $400. I have no idea what she spent the $80,000 on but I suspect she used the line of credit when she had a tough month and couldn't make ends meet.
She bought a Toyota Camry brand new back in 2020. I then told her that was a mistake. She borrowed around $30,000 and now owes roughly $13,000 on it.
Property taxes on her home are almost $10,000 annually. She currently owes almost $6000.
With an annual income of $29,000 (assuming the boyfriend pays the $600 a month, which is a big if -- he also pays her in cash and it seems that money is spent on frivolous everyday things and not going towards debts), she has $180,000 in debt.
She has two annuities. The first had about $40,000. In November they withdrew $10,000 to pay for outstanding bills. This amount didn't even cover everything. I'm suspecting they are going to withdraw more.
The second annuity was opened in 2004 and deposited about $24,000. Not a large amount but when I look through her financial papers she has made several withdrawals throughout the years. The last record I have was from 2021 with the amount of around $4100 remaining in it.
Over the decades my mother has taken a wrecking ball to her finances. The only option I see for her was to sell her home and use the equity to finance assisted living care that specializes in memory care and go through the Medicaid spend down. Many of the assisted facility places in NJ require two years of private pay. Once she's financially available, then apply for Medicaid and they will foot the bill for her care. At least that's how I understand it works in NJ.
We were in the process of doing that in January. I spent a week cleaning out her entire home and we had a buyer, even $5K above asking. Then my mother talked to the real estate attorney and pulled out of the deal at the last minute before she could've been in breach of contract. So that's that.
I'm not sure where to go from here. I considered guardianship but due to complications I've decided not to pursue it. I think I'm at that stage where I have to just let the chips fall where they land when the annuities run out and she has exhausted all of her money. Someone is going to take that house -- the tax man, the two banks, or even her untrustworthy boyfriend -- eventually and then I'm not sure where she'd land. I guess a nursing home that exclusively takes Medicaid, though I don't know how many those and the process in getting into one of those.
Thoughts -- how would you handle this?
Submitted March 21, 2023 at 11:06PM by bmy78 https://ift.tt/yWYeLgs
