We have talked about her spending her savings on her assisted living. That's what she'll be doing.

But my husband and I have no money to take care of ourselves now. We can't even pay our rent next month. Even if we could find a cheaper place, we have no money to cover a deposit or first/last month's rent. We've blown through our paltry $3000 in savings trying to cover the extra utility bills, insurance on the new cars my mom bought, extra food, extra gas driving her to and from appointments, etc. We literally have nothing.

This is nothing new. We were scraping by in our old 2-bedroom apartment too. The only way we were making ends meet were by using my husband's excess student loan money to help cover our living expenses. But he graduated in October. Now, instead of sending us money, we're going to have to pay his (and my) student loans. He was supposed to get a better job after the MBA, but that's not happening. It's never happened. My H has been at his dead-end job for 15 years without a single promotion and nothing more than a pathetic COL raise once a year. I've been looking for work for years. I can't find anything since I've been out of the workforce for so long. Yesterday, I just got turned down for a minimum-wage job at a company I actually worked for for 5 years. I get turned down for everything I apply for. Apparently, a long period (5 years) of unemployment has made me permanently unemployable.

I'm just feeling very down and hopeless right now. I have no idea what to do.

Have you checked into Hospice? What would happen to your mom if you didn't take her home?

Hospice doesn't provide round the clock care. They provide supplementary care in your home or in the boarding facility or wherever she is living. They basically come to your house once a day and provide assistance with baths, bed changes, medication, etc. once a day for about an hour. That would still leave me responsible for my mom for 23 hours a day. She can barely transfer to a wheelchair. She can't sit up (they have been transporting her to her appointments in a van on a gurney). She can't go to the bathroom and needs to have her diaper changed often. She goes to the bathroom almost constantly. And even now, she still outweighs me by a good 40 lbs. (she was quite overweight to start with).

Good, so she will be comfortable


Whilst this is incredibly traumatic, it cannot possibly be a surprise. How could an extra $400 a month have covered all these costs as well as the increased rent. What arrangement did you come to with your mother about the overhead? And a car? She needs to give you more money. Explain the situation to her just as you have written it here.



Of course you are feeling down. Your mother is dying.

An on-line MBA was never going to get your DH a better job although it might help him to work more effectively at the one he has.

In the meantime, you need to get creative about finding work. This is the low hanging fruit for you. Network in your community to see what opportunities exist for someone with your background. Think creatively, part time maybe. For instance we are starting a charter school here and need some specific skills over the next few months. We are networking rather than advertising because this is a short term assignment. You need to let people know you are available.

I don't know how to do this in light of her current health issues. She is very out of it much of the time. And the thought of trying to talk to her about something serious like this in her current condition seems horrible to me. I'm not even sure if she'll understand, or necessarily stay awake long enough for me to do it. She falls asleep in the middle of saying something constantly and much of what she says often doesn't make sense anymore.

I really hope this doesn't prove to be true, since we went massively into debt in order for him to earn this degree and there is simply no way we will ever be able to pay back his student loans on his current salary.

Networking is a problem for me, since I don't know anyone where we live now. And I don't even know how I'm going to deal with taking care of my 5-year-old, deal with all this stuff with my mom, and work. It's overwhelming just to think about it.

And really, it does nothing to solve my basic problem. My H doesn't meet my need for FS and he never has. Meeting it myself, even if I'm able to pull that off, won't help my feelings for him. Dr. Harley seems to be of the opinion that it is the husband's job to financially support his family, and my H has never done that. After 20 years of this (many of them when I was working too just to make ends meet even though I wasn't enthusiastic about having to do so while raising 4 kids), my love for him has been significantly eroded.

I'm struggling with a lot of unmet needs. We never have SF (my H is impotent and has not been able to meet this need for years). I have a high need for RC, but we don't meet that enough since we have no money and not nearly enough UA time. Conversation is high on my list too, but my H and I have very different interests and I don't find much of our conversation particularly fulfilling.

I'm struggling with the fact that I'm not in love with my H. I want to be very much. But I don't know how to accomplish that if needs go chronically unmet and UA time isn't being met. And really, these aren't problems I can solve by myself. It takes two to make a good marriage.

I don't understand the health an social care arrangements in the USA. Could you explain to me who would be required to pay this money?

Over here, the ill/elderly person would be entitled to be admitted to a care facility, but they would have to use their assets to pay towards that. However, the family is not required to pay. The family cannot be made to pay. The patients assets would be used and when they ran out, or if they did not have any, the taxpayer would pay.

Is it so different over there? What happens if you put your mother in the facility, using her money to pay for it, and after some time your mother's assets run out? Are you made to pay? If you don't have the means to pay, or if there is no family to pay, what happens to the elderly person?

I don't know about CA but here in AR/OK when the money of the patient runs out the government takes all their monthly income (such as Social security) and the supplement the difference for the cost of a nursing home.

Writer do you have Power of Attorney over your Mom? I think you need to get that now. It should be a simple process in her current medical condition.

I don't know what to tell you about your future financial situation. Or your feelings for your dh. I would say to try to not overthink that at this moment. Because you are in extreme crisis dealing with your mom.

What are the rules in your state, writer?

It works pretty much the same way in the US. My mother has enough money to pay for care for a while. After that, Medicaid would take over the payments if she ran out of funds.

Our problem is my husband and I don't have enough money to make it without my mom's contribution to our household income. We moved into our current rental because there was no way we could all live in our old 2-bedroom apartment. My mom agreed to contribute $400 to our household expenses when we moved into the bigger place. The problem is, our expenses went up way more than $400 when we moved here. We were going in the hole every month trying to cover all of the extra costs. Now we have no savings (we literally have $250 in the bank right now) and there's no way we can afford to continue living here if my mom doesn't live with us and contribute to the finances. And because we've drained our bank account trying to cover the additional costs above the $400 a month she was contributing, we can't afford to move to a cheaper place either.

Our monthly rent is $1850 right now. That's about 70% of my husband's take-home pay. Even when my mom was contributing money towards the rent, we were spending 50% of our income on rent alone. We live in an extremely HCOL area. And moving right now isn't an option. There simply isn't anywhere we could move to anyway that would be cheaper and still within commuting distance of my H's work. And nothing he does seems to result in any job offers that would allow us to relocate or stay in our current area and earn more money.

No. Not sure how to go about that. Would I need to consult a lawyer?

From that it seems that you do not have to factor in your mother's care costs. They will be paid for by her until her money runs out, and she will still be cared for after that.

Would you agree that it would probably be best for her to move permanently to a care facility? It sounds to me as if you are dreading caring for her at home, and as if you really don't want to do this - which is fine, if that's how you feel. There is no onus on you to do more than you want to do up to and beyond breaking point, which it sounds as if you've already reached. Do you feel that caring for her in your home is your job because you are her daughter, and do you worry that people will feel badly about you if you do not look after her, or do you really want to do this yourself?

If you can accept that your mother's care costs will be paid for by her, then that leaves the problem of your living in an apartment that you cannot afford.

There is no solution to that other than moving, unless you can afford to take in lodgers to cover the rent - which does not seem feasible in an apartment.

It's that simple. You have to move. You cannot afford to live there so you will have to move.

I'm not opposed to moving. But we have no money to move. We only have $250. We would have to give at least a 30-day notice on our current place. Our rent is due before then, so we would have to come up with the $1850 for rent for the month of December. We don't have it. My H's income isn't going to cover it. Then, we would have to come up with at the very least a security deposit on a new place and 1st months rent. I don't know where to get the money to do that. And, believe it or not, $1850/month is on the low end for rent in our area, and pretty much any area that would be within commutable distance to my H's work. We might be able to find something a little cheaper if we go smaller, but I don't know if it will be cheap enough. Rents have been going up fast in So-Cal for the past two years.

If you are prepared to look after your mother in your home, then get power of attorney over her assets. Then you can use as much as you need to pay your rent, and the rest for her personal care. It's only fair that she should cover the costs involved in having her at home.

Obtain power of attorney anyway, because decisions will have to be made about her income and assets right now, and she is in no position to make them, and her mental faculties will only get worse.

If you take her back home to care for her, you need to make plans for when she dies and you no longer have her income. You won't be able to stay in that apartment. You need to plan ahead in a way that you haven't really done so far. By that I mean: when you agreed (with great reluctance) to move in together with her, you should have insisted on a proper contribution from her, or you should have done so once you realised that $400 would not cover your costs.

What happens if you stay there and do not pay the rent?

It was our goal to care for her ourselves, at least as long as possible. It's only been 5 weeks since her diagnosis, so we certainly thought it would be possible for her to stay home longer than this. The oncologist originally gave her about a year to live. He didn't say she would spend a year confined to bed, incontinent, and unable to meet any of her own needs. Her decline happened suddenly and unexpectedly and we really don't know why. I don't even know if her life expectancy has changed, though judging by her condition, I assume it will be less than a year at this point. I've asked the doctors, but I don't seem to be getting much in the way of straight-forward answers.

It isn't that I don't want to care for her at home. I just don't know if I can do it. My H is gone 12 hours a day for work (9 hours of work and 3 hours of commuting). My DS21 has been here helping, for the past few months, but he's leaving on Monday to start a new job in Colorado. That still leaves DS19 to help, but he has ADHD, a behavior disorder, and is more of a burden than a help. I also have DD5 to care for. It's a little overwhelming to think about caring for my mom at home under these circumstances when she can no longer walk or really meet any of her own needs. She is almost completely dependent at this point.

I do feel bad for feeling like I can't properly care for her at home. I don't really care what anyone else thinks. But she is my mom and she has no other family to help out.

When we moved in together, we never could have imagined she would be diagnosed with a terminal illness less than six months later. We weren't prepared for that, it's true. I mean, we knew she'd get older and we'd have to deal with health issues eventually, but we had no idea it would be so soon. My mom is only 65.

We did talk to her about increasing the $400. But she didn't want to touch any of her savings in the bank. She was trying to live off only the $700/month she received in SS. Impossible, I know. Which lead to us having to contribute way more to the household expenses than we could possibly afford. Which brings us to our current situation, where we have no money left and can no longer pay the bills.

But few people would have the ability to care for a seriously ill person at home. That is why we have hospitals and care homes. Do you think that having her cared for in a good quality care home, with frequent visits from you, would be a bad thing? Do you think it's wrong to come to that decision? I'm not talking talking about leaving her alone in an apartment, after all.

We get evicted? I don't know how long that would take, but I'm assuming that would be the end result.

And after an eviction, along with our bankruptcy last year, we'd probably never find another apartment. It was hard enough finding one after a bankruptcy only.