Tomcat98 said:
This was a fairly long process, and it took years to work all the bugs out.
1) Discussions about saving and spending. Didn't help.
2) Strongly encouraged them to place a chunk out of arm's reach for use only in case of emergency. The "emergency" came rather quickly, so that stash was depleted.
3) Spoon-fed them income on demand. Quickly became too time-consuming for me to vet the requests.
4) Gave them a credit card with a low limit. Paid the monthly bill from their funds (in my account). Still working, but requires an occasional lecture that goes something like "what the hell were you thinking?" and a few minutes of my time to reverse the charges.
Now, these steps were before they were in line for a significant inheritance. Since this person had medicaid benefits, they were at risk of losing those benefits if they had a significant change in income or assets. I was astounded at how rich those benefits were (free long-term care!), so I had to scramble *before* they recieved the inheritance.
I won't bore you with those details, since it sounds like it's too late to protect your relative from inherited assets (e.g., for purposes of medicaid benefits), but that was a non-trivial exercise.
As others have stated, an annuity or trust seems to make sense for your situation. Both will require willingness and cooperation from the relative, unless they are truly incapable of making their own decisions.
