Stop Spending My Inheritance

Stop Spending My Inheritance
By BOB MORRIS

NEW YORK was aghast last week at the dark drama surrounding Brooke Astor, the 104-year-old philan­thropist and socialite. Her grandson is taking his fa­ther, her only son, to court for not providing for her needs and for cutting back on her care. Her son is shocked by the charges. But what is the real story? Has her son been with­holding necessary care and looking af­ter his interests instead? Or does it all boil down to a disagreement about the kind of care a woman with Alzheimer's disease truly needs?

As gothic as it all is, there is some­thing more familiar in all of this than many of us care to discuss. When caring for an aging parent, irreproachable selflessness doesn't al­ways come easily.
My own father died recently, and much as I hate to ad­mit it, there were plenty of moments during the last year when I was consumed with an invisible ledger in my brain: my inheritance versus his health costs. Fifteen hundred dol­lars a week on this. Six thousand a month on that. It could all add up to leaving nothing.

Not that I tried to staunch the flow. But even thinking about it was an ugly thing.
And according to lawyers and health care workers who care for the elderly, such dilemmas are becoming more and more common. The final years of life are often weighted with escalating health costs that can either drain an inheritance from adult children (most with far fewer assets than an Astor heir), or threaten to sink them financially.

"And wealthy people are living longer than anyone," said Daniel Fitz-Patrick, the chief executive of Citi­bank Trust. "So Inheritances are de­creasing significantly."

For many families, finances are a taboo topic. Parents often don't tell children about their assets, leaving them won­dering how much there is for daily maintenance and health care. Children, on the other hand, don't inquire about the estate for fear of appearing greedy.

• But not knowing can lead to worry, re­sentment and guilt. And when multiple family members are making decisions, the re-. suit can be toxic.

"When siblings fight it is usually over par­ents needing more or less care," said Theodore R. Wagner, a lawyer who helped Mrs. Astor close her Vincent Astor Foundation. "Some feel guilty because they can't help but wonder if it's worth spending so much on luxurious residences and amenities when a parent is so mentally compromised."

* Ed Johnson is the executive director of Atria 86th Street, a pleasant Upper West Side retirement residence with medical support services. "All too frequently when chil­dren come to tour our facility," he said, "one child wants to spend the money, while the other doesn't. It can become a terrible situa­tion for everyone." Especially when resi­dential costs start at nearly $4,000 a month.

Annette McClusky, the president of Auro­ra Nurses Professional Registry in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., is often at odds with her three siblings about their mother's care. "After my mother's heart surgery, one of my sisters didn't think she needed to be in rehab," she said. "Another time, I felt she needed a walker and my sister didn't. Ev­erything is always an issue." She sometimes pays for her mother's needs without asking her siblings to share in the costs because she can afford it.
"You just do what you have to do," she said.

Most children do want to provide for the comfort of parents regardless of costs. Da­vid Goldfarb, a Manhattan lawyer who spe­cializes in the elderly (and is representing Mrs. Astor's grandson) said it is usually the parents who do not want to spend too much money on health care because they want to leave mpney to their children.

But other children can't help begrudging the dwindling of the estate.

"Some children do feel ambivalent about parents living longer when they're not that functional," said Roberta Satow, the author (of "Doing the Right Thing: Taking Care of Your Elderly Parents Even if They Didn't Take Care of You." "And then you may not be wanting to spend so much."

But money, she says, is never about money. It's about other things.

Usually anger and guilt. In her own case, Dr. Satow constantly confronts her own an­ger at having to deal with the needs of a 95-year-old mother she did not find all that lov­ing while growing up.
"And when there are conflicts in child­hood," she said, "they can emerge in all kinds of ways when the roles are reversed and the children are in control as caregiv-ers."

We all have feelings about our parents that we are not proud of, said Barbara Silverstone, an author of "You and Your Aging Parent." When disability kicks in, what's bad in a relationship becomes worse" she said, adding that many siblings feel guilty for havin g the schocking but not untypical responce of feeling resentful of a sick old parent.

"If you can face feelings of resentment, accept them but don't act on them, then you can mix them with love and compassion and move on."

I guess so. But memories of my selfishness toward my father still haunt me.
For his 83rd birthday present, he had re­quested a pair of backless shoes that would make his life a little easier. We had flown down to Palm Beach so that he could see friends, and I was serving as his driver, travel agent, valet, aide-de-camp and bud­dy. Leaving him in our rental car, I went into a store and found the shoes he had in mind. But they were so expensive that I put them down and bought him a shirt and some pajamas instead.

Now that he's gone, I wonder why I did that. Maybe I was angry at having to be away from my busy life in New York. May­be I was angry at him for becoming depend­ent when he'd always been a gleeful get-about guy.

If I had to do it again, I would buy my fa­ther those shoes then and there. As it turned out, I bought a similar pair for him when we got back to New York, at half the price.
"Perfect," he said.
Well, not quite.