Parents and Adult Children Have Different Views on Elder Care

What parents expect and what their adult children expect differ in old age care.

A new study of the expectations of different generations when it comes to their wants for old-age care is revealed in a Money article “Here’s What Your Aging Parents Say They Want You to Do for Them.”

The results of the study is disturbing as it shows that parents and their adult children have different expectations of the children’s roles in the parents’ elder years.

Some of the different expectations are:

• 90% of parents do not want their children to support them financially, but nearly a third of children expect to do so and are willing to.
• Most parents expect their children to act as their executors, but many children have no idea they are expected to fulfill that role.
• More parents expect that one of their adult children will be a caregiver for them than there are adult children who believe they will have to do so.
• Similarly, more parents think their adult children will help them handle financial decisions than there are children who think they will be asked to do so.

All of the above are potential sources of conflict between parents and adult children.

An elder law attorney can work on the communications within the family and perhaps resolve conflicts before they get started.

Reference: Money (June 28, 2016) “Here’s What Your Aging Parents Say They Want You to Do for Them.”