“There are only four kinds of people in the world. Those who have been caregivers. Those who are currently caregivers. Those who will be caregivers, and those who will need a caregiver.” –Rosalyn Carter
These prescient words by the former first lady remain as relevant and true as ever.
According to a 2020 report from the AARP:
Ever find yourself in this situation? You get seated in a dimly-lit restaurant, the server hands you a menu, and you immediately realize with dread, “I forgot my reading glasses.”
Or maybe you discover a new food item in the grocery store. You turn the package over to read the ingredients label to find it’s written in microscopic text.
Whatever the case, it can be very frustrating when you don’t have your reading glasses handy.
Your daughter accompanies you to a doctor’s appointment for moral support, and the doctor addresses all his questions to her instead of to you.
Nothing like feeling invisible!
The nurse talks to you the way Kindergarten teachers speak to their students, sometimes using the “royal we” and often using inappropriate terms of endearment like “young lady” or “young man.”
There are some life experiences that you just can’t understand until you have lived them yourself. For example nothing can truly prepare you for becoming a parent.
Read all the books you want and watch all your friends have their own kids—you will never really get it until you’re the one doing the 2 a.m. feeding or calling the pediatrician about how, exactly, one might safely extract a Lego from a child’s right nostril.
A similar you-can’t-understand-until-you’ve-been-there rule applies to the often poignant transition from being your parent’s child to being their caregiver.
The holidays are a time for family, but sometimes the chaos of the season overwhelms all our best intentions to create special moments with our loved ones. With so much to do (and so little time to do it), it can feel like the holiday season comes and goes before we’re able to get fully on board. Sometimes, it’s all we can do to get the decorations up and the shopping (barely) done!
But there’s a big difference between merely surviving the holidays and actually enjoying them.
One way to bring the magic back into the season is to develop your own special family traditions. And what better place to start than with your grandchildren. They provide endless inspiration and make excellent accomplices.
After a loss, family is often tasked with the responsibility of handling the financial and legal matters associated with administering the estate of the deceased. While this in and of itself can be stressful and overwhelming, perhaps the more emotionally-draining ritual is sorting through personal belongings such as clothing, jewelry, and photos of a loved one.
One often overlooked personal item that must be removed when cleaning out after someone has died, are unused prescriptions and over-the-counter (OTC) medications.
What do you do with these now unneeded, but potentially dangerous, medications when your loved one is gone? How do you make sure they are safely disposed of and do not fall into the wrong hands?
Once upon a time, having three generations under one roof was common practice. And, in some parts of the world, it’s still a popular way of life.
Here in the U.S., Pew Research Center estimates that some 64 million Americans—20% of the overall population—live in households that include two adult generations.
And, it’s a trend that appears to be on the rise, and one that was likely influenced by the pandemic.
Landing a new job is a daunting task when you’re in your 50s or 60s. The prospect of transitioning to a new company or perhaps rejoining the workforce after some time away can feel like having to reinvent yourself from the ground up.
It doesn’t help that, despite the passage of the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA) in 1967, ageism is still very much a part of our professional landscape.
Workplace discrimination against someone on the basis of age can take many forms from being passed over for assignments and promotions to being excluded from key meetings to being denied training experiences. And—yes—it can also show up in the hiring process.
All major life transitions require preparation and adaptation. Graduation, moving into your first apartment, landing your first job, getting married, having kids, changing careers, retiring — each of these life events typically comes with a lot of planning.
Becoming a caregiver for an aging parent, however, is an event that takes many people by surprise.
Sometimes, there’s a sudden health crisis like a stroke or a deteriorating chronic condition. Other times, the turning point is a long time coming, but is obscured by denial.
While Medicare does not pay for long-term care, it will cover up to 100 days of care in a skilled nursing facility (SNF). There are, however, some fairly stringent and somewhat confusing qualifications patients must meet before Medicare will extend this benefit. Unfortunately, because there is some nuance to the rules, many patients find themselves having to pay for SNF care they assumed would be covered.
To help you navigate the ins and outs of Medicare’s SNF benefit, we put together a quick cheat sheet that explains the basics and a few of the details that are not always so obvious.
Connecticut Estate Planning Attorneys Blog