"Quarterly update". Maybe this can go to a semi-annual or annual interval.
John Hancock and I have settled into a routine. It's a customer-hostile, cumbersome, and error-prone routine, but it's a routine. I forward the care facility's bills via fax-- no acknowledgment from Hancock, just a transmission log. Six weeks later Hancock snail-mails me a check, which Dad's brokerage will accept-- endorsed for deposit only, again via snail mail.
For some reason Hancock is sending me the policy's max limit of $240/day instead of the care facility's $214/day. This has happened for several months in a row now, and it's clearly labeled, so it's deliberate. I guess Hancock figures we have additional expenses or else they haven't caught a clerical error. I'm afraid to ask. We'll see if Hancock's inflation rider kicks in another 5% as scheduled for January. Of course the care facility may kick in an inflation rider of their own in March, when Dad will have been there for a year, and their inflation rider will probably be bigger than Hancock's. But hopefully I never have to speak to Hancock again.
Yes, I'm trashing Hancock on a public discussion board. If you're a Hancock employee and you want equal time, please post here or contact me. I'd love to discuss the procedures.
However once more I'm thankful that Dad bought the policy in late 1992, before the insurance companies had really figured out how expensive LTC would be. It's not a lottery to aspire to win, but it could pay more than 25:1 over his premiums.
Dad's doing fine in the care facility, and he's happy there. His Alzheimer's symptoms have stabilized with their care. He's coping with the myeloma symptoms and is waiting for chemotherapy. (
http://www.early-retirement.org/forums/f38/multiple-myeloma-questions-58350.html and
http://www.early-retirement.org/for...-of-waldenstr-ms-macroglobulinemia-58633.html ) He's sleeping more than he should (anemia and Vicodin for the pain), and he's weak, and he's losing weight, and these are all bad signs, but this is all in the category of "as well as can be expected". I guess the good news is that if Alzheimer's gives him the urge to wander then he won't go far. I haven't heard of a chemo start date yet but the oncologist might be waiting on medications or arranging the first session around the holidays or straightening out some other medical issue. The billing has gone fine and my brother will let me know when the chemo starts. Considering that the only other options are palliative, there aren't really any other options.
Our lawyer has finally managed to prep & file the petitions. I've learned that guardianship/conservatorship petitions are considered a low-margin service that all lawyers promptly drop to the bottom of their "To Do" list. However our lawyer's filing was also full of "typographical errors". Those errors were pointed out by my brother and me when she drafted them, but somehow they still made it to the final version. It's almost as if she never bothered to correct the typos that we pointed out to her.
We've also experienced a number of other lawyer "lack of contact" [-]excuses[/-] problems that would be amusing if we hadn't already sunk so much time & effort into this particular member of the bar. Maybe she's actually saving us a lot of money by not bothering to respond to our phone calls & e-mails. I guess more "good" news is that she's agreed not to bill us for whatever it was she wasn't doing in August & September. I haven't seen a bill since June but it'll be interesting to compare her timesheet to my logs. Let's just say that if you're looking for a Colorado lawyer, I can suggest who not to call. My brother and I have discussed filing complaints and pushing for legal censorship and other punitive reprisal options, but the reality is that we just want to pay a reasonable bill and move on with our lives.
Last month we got a call from the probate court's interviewer. He's a retired civil servant who gets paid $100 to interview the parties to the petition and report back to the probate judge. It's his job to get you babbling away on the phone, but even so he was quite enjoyable to talk with and he explained a lot of the process. He also commented on how good my Dad is at bluffing by affably socializing without actually contributing hard info to a conversation. If he'd run into Dad at a coffee shop and struck up a chat, he never would have realized that Dad was so far into Alzheimer's. Dad wants my brother and me to take over guardianship/conservatorship (not that he's considered competent to make that decision) so the hearing should go quickly.
Over the 30-minute interview I learned what to expect from the court appearance, what questions the judge might ask, and how the court oversees the conservators. He mentioned a state association of guardians who would help families file their petitions without any lawyers at all, and who also help guardians with support groups & counseling. (I'll have to see if Hawaii has a conservator support group.) He even asked why I thought I was qualified to be a conservator-- that went way beyond the petition's documentation into a discussion of early retirement, investing experience, blogging, and publishing the book. He said that when you petition for conservatorship it is not a time to be humble. He said that the court has no problems with conservators reimbursing themselves for expenses incurred for their ward's benefit. (This means I can continue to reimburse myself if I have to make a credit-card charge.) They're more concerned that every penny of spending is accounted for and that no fraud or neglect is occurring. He asked a few questions about how Dad's bills are being paid now, and he seemed happy with the answers.
By this point it was clear that our lawyer was not effectively communicating, so I flung caution to the winds and shared a couple concerns with the interviewer. My father thinks I'm his old college roommate, so if I had to appear in a courtroom and was addressed as his son in his presence then it would cause quite a bit of confusion. The court has flexibility with uncontested petitions, and the interviewer said that he'd log our concerns and request that my "appearance" be done by phone.
Last week the lawyer's paralegal called to announce that we're on the court calendar for 19 Dec. I'll be able to phone in (voice only, no Skype required). Assuming everything goes well, I should have my conservator's appointment letter shortly afterward.
The next step will be contacting Dad's bank manager with the appointment letter so that we can move his checking account (paying 0.05% interest) into a CD ladder. I'll set up an EFT link to his Fidelity brokerage account so that we can move money as needed. (The bank CDs might be better than the brokerage.) Finally, Dad has a minimum-balance Vanguard account in their S&P500 index so I'll ask Fidelity to transfer those shares in-kind and then shut down the Vanguard account. I don't need to use his credit cards (which have already expired) so I'll just keep the company's new cards in our files until they decide to close his account.
When 2012 arrives I'll do some more tax-efficient rebalancing to get rid of more stocks (and equity mutual funds with high expenses) to raise Dad's cash allocation. (He's about 70% equities now, and that needs to drop to about 25% or less. Earlier this year he was over 85%.) Last year his tax return only took a couple hours and this year, since I don't have to search for his tax files, it should be even faster.
This has been a hellacious learning curve but it's starting to flatten. I'm reading "A Bittersweet Season" by Jane Gross so I have a new appreciation for "bad".
I'm thankful that Dad lived such a low-key lifestyle for the last 20 years. (I know that he enjoyed its simplicity and freedom.) For most of that time he was easily banking half his pension check and all of his Social Security. He lived in a bare-bones 2BR apartment in a small Western town and drove a 12-year-old Explorer. He bought few toys, owned minimal material possessions, and his closets were mostly empty. His hobbies were investments, reading, and hiking the western national parks. He substantially bolstered his net worth. His spending steadily declined during his ER and his consistent savings left him financially sound for the rest of his life. Ty Bernicke claims that elder spending drops as we hit our 70s, and that's been the case with my Dad too. Between his insurance and his modest assets, I'm pretty sure that he won't run out of money.
As I indicated earlier in this thread, I most certainly advocate getting the assistance of an attorney that has been trained in eldercare law. This means an attorney that understands Medicare, Medicaid, LTC insurance, estate planning, and advance directives. There are also shisters out there that claim to be able to help you "get around" the five year look-back provision for Medicaid. Don't buy into this. Your Department of Social Services (DSS) have experts that know exactly how and where to look to see if you have transferred mom or dad's assets to a trust, a corporation, or offshore. If you think no one will notice a little fraud here and there, I can tell you stories of two families that have made improper filings with the state and they are now working it out with the states attorney. By the way, they were denied admission to our NH for the same reason. Medicaid is a federal program but application and administration is done through a state agency such as DSS.
