Blog

The Stress of Financially Supporting Your Mom and Dad in the Orlando, Florida Area 

There was a very good article in the AARP Magazine regarding Love and Money. The article dealt with how to defuse the emotional and financial tensions that can arise when money strains your family relationships. In the article, it explains how one woman was almost ruined when she cared for her parents. She said that her love was limitless, but her bank account was not. She talked about how her parents had modest incomes, yet they managed to put their three daughters through college and sock away a decent sized retirement fund. However, her parents invested in their younger daughter’s business, a daycare center. The business failed after a year. Her parents lost everything. 

At first, her father was able to pay with his pension. Her parents were both in their seventies and received social security. They lived frugally. However, their debt started to pile up. The bank threatened to foreclose on the house they had for many decades. 

The younger sister with the failed business had heavy debt from the failed business. Her middle sister was a school nurse with three children and a husband who was unemployed. The person telling the story was the lone person in the family with decent credit. Her parents were forced to sell their house. She and her husband paid $50,000.00 for the down payment for a smaller house. This strained her and her husband’s finances. Then her parent’s car died. Her and her husband gave her parents their car and then they leased a car. They began to struggle financially. She was resentful of her one sister’s kids having the newest electronics and the other sister going on vacation, yet they contributed nothing to her parents. 

She was going broke helping her parents and shouldering the burden for financial problems created by her parents and sister. She loved her family, yet there was resentment. Then her parents’ HVAC unit stopped working and they needed a new one. Her father asked if she could pay for it. She said she was trying to scrape up the money. One of her friends talked about a financial therapist. She went to the financial therapist. The therapist told her to look at what she gave her parents as gifts and she may never recoup her money from the house. Her financial therapist helped her look more realistically at financial matters. She liked the power of swooping in to take care of everything. That same pride kept her from discussing with her siblings that she was struggling. However, she finally did. The sister with the failed business was tasked with guilt. She began to help the parents with chores. They made the situation more equitable. Then she told her father. He swallowed his pride and got help from a fund at the company where he formally worked. This article may be helpful if you are the shouldering the financial burden. 

If you have more questions regarding a Marital and Family Law matter, you may call Ann Marie Giordano Gilden at Ann Marie Giordano Gilden, P.A. at 407-732-7620 and set an initial consultation. You may also visit my website at: https//:www.AnnMarieGildenLaw.com

This article is for information only and does not form and attorney client relationship.