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Family conflict brewing. It’s already rearing its head in the form of aggressive emails. One sister wants control of mom’s money and property. But she wasn’t the one mom appointed to be the durable power of attorney when the time came.

Now mom has dementia, and the time is here for someone to take over the finances. In fact, the daughter mom appointed (we’ll call her Phoebe) has been handling the money for two years now. What’s wrong?

Another daughter (we’ll call her Linda) looks as if she just wants to make mom’s care cost as little as possible so she can inherit more when mom dies. Shocking? No. We see it, unfortunately, fairly often. Linda wants to control that checkbook badly. She’s demanding to “help” Phoebe manage things.

Here’s the heart of the conflict: Phoebe is the properly appointed power of attorney, and mom chose her for mom’s own reasons. This was 15 years ago, and mom was completely competent at that time. Linda doesn’t like the idea, because Linda wants Phoebe to sell a house mom owns and keep the rental house mom also owns. The rental is worth a lot more than the other house. Several hundred thousand dollars more, even in today’s market.

Phoebe wants to sell the rental house, and keep mom’s home. Why? Because yet another sister is living in mom’s home and goes to see mom daily, and attends to her needs in assisted living, takes her out, and goes to the doctor with her. Mom needs that kind of care, as she has dementia. That sister, we’ll call Teresa.

What can Phoebe do? We suggested a family meeting with neutral mediators (ourselves), to see what Linda is willing to work out, and to see what Teresa can offer in the way of solutions.

Phoebe asked if Linda could “take her to court” if she disagreed with the way she was handling the funds mom has and the property. Answer: unless Phoebe is abusing her role as the agent for finances for mom, there is no way Linda would have a winning case against Phoebe. Disagreement with the agent is not enough.

Mediation could give the family the best chance of working out a solution which everyone could accept. Why can’t they do it without a mediator? Complicated situation, lots of issues no one talks about, and mom is going downhill fast lately. The sisters don’t get along. A mediator could help them get the matter settled among them.
Carolyn L. Rosenblatt, R.N., Attorney at Law, Mediator,
AgingParents.com.

To learn more about how to resolve disagreements like this one, see The Boomer’s Guide to Aging Parents, How to Handle Family Conflicts About Elders, available at http:/www.AgingParents.com/familyconflict, in print, ebook, or audiobook.

The thing about this kind of mediation practice is that, invariably, emotions are high. The dispute may not be about money, but sometimes it is. Money is emotional for lots of people. We find that families in dispute about their parents or other loved ones often fall back into patterns of behavior they have been in with each other since childhood. As immature as it seems, the players can’t seem to break the patterns. Some have observed that siblings even assume the same places around a table at mediation that they had at the family dinner table growing up. Talk about being stuck!

We find that for mediation to be successful for anyone, whether an elder is in the mix or not, one must be willing to give up one’s position, or to be able to view a problem from someone else’s point of view. Why this is so difficult seems to be rooted in the emotional attachment siblings, or others have to their Positions. (I’m right, I know I’m right, and I don’t care what you say!)

So, if one wants to mediate a dispute and has any hope of success, one has to come into the mediation willing to have some flexibility about the problem at hand. If one expects all the changing to be done by the person(s) on the other side of the dispute, it is a sure-fire way to fail at mediation.

Mediators work with participants to try to help them see things from each other’s point of view, but no one can force a person to compromise. A mediation is helped by participants who work at making “a deal”, whether it’s about money or about control, or a place to live, or whatever. Siblings fighting about their elders have a choice about whether to make their best effort to work it out, or to spend their time trying to make each other wrong. Likewise with the elders themselves. Some are just plain difficult, and compromise is not something they want to explore.

People have many reasons for holding onto their positions in family conflicts. Sometimes there are old resentments dating back to childhood. One mother who said she didn’t trust her son to manage her money wouldn’t give a reason until pressed. Her son was a responsible businessman, and likely could have done the job. He managed his own money responsibly, as reported by all and agreed to by the mom. As it turned out, he had gotten black oil on a favorite embroidered towel she had when he was a little boy, and that was her basis for not trusting him.

She was not about to give up her position. She had a very difficult time in her life, and though she made agreements at mediation, she spent a lot of time afterwards, we were told, undermining that to which she had agreed.

She’s a good example of a person who wasn’t likely to succeed at growing old gracefully. She also wasted thousands of dollars on attorneys, courts and got minimal value out of mediation. However, most of the time, mediation does work. People make agreements, they figure the way out of the mess. And sometimes it doesn’t, about 20% of the time. These are some of the reasons why it sometimes doesn’t work.

To learn more about how to handle family disputes, see How to Handle Family Conflicts About Elders, Vol. 7, The Boomer’s Guide to Aging Parents, available at http://www.AgingParents.com/familyconflict.

Elder mediation has finally gotten a little respect. National Public Radio did a piece on it, and it seems that people are finally learning about this. What is it? Elder mediation is a method of resolving conflicts about elders, their families and those who are responsible for them. Mediation, in general, is vaguely familiar to many people, because sometimes, it’s in the news. A Federal mediator is on the scene to deal with the labor dispute about Federal employees. A local mediator is trying to negotiate a crisis in a city. But in everyday life, especially family life, it may not be a familiar way of trying to get through a dispute.

Mediation, in general is a very effective way to help people who are stuck in their differences, filled with emotional disagreement, or unable to think past their own opposing positions learn to find a way out. A mediator is a guide, a facilitator, and a neutral person regarding the dispute. The mediator usually sets up a meeting, in which the people who are in a conflict agree to come together to try to resolve the conflict. It can take place anywhere. It’s totally voluntary. Courts are not involved, and no record of what happens is kept, except for a written agreement or settlement, if one is reached. The best news is that mediation is effective in resolving disputes about 80-85% of the time, regardless of the kind of dispute. Those are much better odds than people have when they sue each other or go to court.

When it comes to families, their long patterns of relating to each other can get in the way of dealing with an aging parent, and many kinds of conflicts come up. We’re elder mediators at AgingParents.com. We see legal disputes about whether the elder is competent, fights about who should take care of Mom, siblings at war over how money should be spent, and many other family fights. We’ll share some of what we do in this blog. We hope to generate more interest in using elder mediation to break through the logjam families get into when they get stuck in conflict, creating such stress for everyone. We’re in the stress-relief business!

Tell us about the family disputes or other conflicts that are affecting you.
Carolyn Rosenblatt, R.N., B.S.N., Attorney, Mediator, AgingParents.com.