Mrs. Staffler calls her step-daughters to inform them that her husband, their father, has been admitted to the hospital following a massive stroke. As they gather in the hospital, it quickly becomes clear that the eldest daughter has been selected to give Mrs. Staffler some chilling and unexpected news. "You are not making decisions for our father; as his daughters, we will decide what needs to be done for him."
Feeling betrayed and offended, Mrs. Staffler rushes home to retrieve the health care power of attorney which appoints her as attorney-in-fact to make health care decisions. Armed with what she trusts is a clear statement of her authority, she returns to the hospital to find that the step-daughter has an attorney, and a caseworker from adult protective services awaiting her. In the ensuing battle, the stepdaughter is appointed guardian for her father by the probate court, and Mrs. Staffler is forced to hire an attorney to prevent the court from appointing a guardian for her.
Although she is successful in maintaining her freedom and independence, her legal expenses exceed fifteen thousand dollars. Moreover, although Mrs. Staffler assumed that she would have access to her husband's estate to care for her in the event of her husband's death, it is now apparent that the step daughters want their to inherit from their father's estate immediatelyupon his death.
Based upon real cases, the foregoing is just one example of the difficulties presented by late-life marriages. Now, a University of Michigan researcher is conducting one of the first known studies to focus on the challenges facing older remarried caregivers- a growing segment of the older U.S. population. "Caring for an aging spouse is extremely difficult under the best of circumstances," said researcher Carey Wexler Sherman. "When stepfamily tensions and conflicts are added to the mix, the stress can become overwhelming."
With funding from the national Alzheimer's Association, Sherman is conducting a study with the goal of documenting the type, level and quality of social support received from step-children and other social network members, and assessing how late-life remarriage affects the experience of caregiving. "Past research and current public policy relies heavily on the assumption that most older people who develop dementia are in long-term, intact marriages where the spouses - most often the wife-and adult children will provide most of their care," said Sherman, a research investigator at the U-M Institute for Social Research (ISR). "It's not clear exactly how late-life remarriage and stepfamily relationships affect the spouse's ability to get meaningful help in providing that care."
"Sometimes remarried partners and adult stepchildren come to consider each other 'family,' and sometimes they don't," she said. "Often you hear people talk about 'my father's wife' or 'my husband's children'-which can be a sign that a family hasn't really blended. Ambivalent feelings among family members may carry over in all kinds of ways when a stepparent needs help providing care for an aging parent."
An adult child of remarried parents herself, Sherman believes that her personal experience as well as her doctorate in family psychology and gerontology has helped to inform her approach to this difficult subject. "When my father needed care, I saw how challenging it can be to negotiate medical and care decisions when you are working within a stepfamily context. I was fortunate that my stepmom and I were able to become partners in that process," she said. "But among the older remarried women I've interviewed, there is often a feeling that they are not accepted by their adult stepchildren. Many also report that they either get little or no help from stepchildren, or that the stepchildren challenge the decisions or choices made by the caregiver."
In a prior qualitative study of late-life remarried caregivers, based on her doctorate dissertation, Sherman explored the financial tensions and conflicts between stepparents and adult stepchildren. In a paper forthcoming in the journal Family Relations, she noted that adult stepchildren often resisted the stepparent's financial role, even going so far as to "reclaim ownership" of family furniture, heirlooms and other objects when their biological parent and stepparent were away from home. "Commonly, old family and financial grievances get revisited when a parent becomes ill," Sherman said. "And the onset of dementia in the biological parent leaves the caregiving spouse and stepparent on the 'front line' to deal with any unresolved or contentious issues."
A properly drafted estate plan will virtually eliminate the problems associated with step-family intrusion. If you are concerned about this risk, you should consider a trust, a durable power of attorney, a power of attorney for health care, and modern sophisticated competency planning, all with consistent appointment of persons with authority to make decisions in your life. Most importantly, your trust should separately remove assets from control of a third-party or public guardian. Of course, if you have questions, please call our office at 877-816-8670, or your local elder law attorney.
More information regarding competency and guardianship planning is found at the Estate Planning Information Center.
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