"Caring for parents is a labor of love. Inheritances are not a right. Everything wrong with this term begins with the underlying premise that we should expect a financial inheritance from our parents."
Days not long gone, an inheritance was not about greed or lack of caring for parents, it was the norm. What has changed in this short a period? When you were a child, how many older relatives were even thinking of a retirement/care facility?
Insurance has morphed from a safety net employed by few, to a near requirement to access care. Adding an addition onto your house for the elderly may have been an added expense, but nothing even close to elder care costs. Most having bought only a 1/4 acre lot, this is prevented by zoning, from the git-go. Families are now spread out over different states, preventing any sharing of care for an elderly parent. Is what we have now better than what went before? I don't think so. Is there a way back? What lies ahead, this way? Looks like the euthanasia facilities from "Soylent Green" are not far off. Wouldn't surprise me if the current situation is deliberately being allowed to reach a fever pitch, so it can be suggested as "the solution". Huge expense, nursing shortage, what ever are we to do? How many elderly suicides are efforts to relieve the children of burdensome expenses, right now?
Whirlwind
Inheritance is a right as decreed by law. If you have a will and die it goes to whom you directed. If you have no will then you die intestate and the STATE decides where and how the proceeds if any are dispursed.
grieker
I guess I don't have to worry about this. My brothers, sisters, and I took care of both of my parents through their illnesses until their deaths. We did it because we didn't want either one of them to go to a nursing home. It was not easy and it took a lot out of all of us but we wouldn't have done it any other way. As for an inheritance, that was never even an issue until the attorney called me after my father died. He said it was now time to take care of the estate. We never even thought about it because we were just too busy taking care of two dying parents.
