Elder Care, Trusts & Family Property Issues

Elder Care

Elder mediation and facilitated family meetings provide opportunities for older adults, their families and care providers to come together to share their points of view and find mutually satisfying solutions for the care of the elder family members. 

Aging often is a difficult subject to address. As our loved ones start to experience the physical, emotional and financial changes associated with advancing years, postponing such conversations no longer may be an option.  Family members, called upon to make complex and difficult decisions about living arrangements, caregiving, medical options and other critical—and urgent—matters, often feel overwhelmed by the challenges of coordinating decision-making with those who wish to, or need to, be involved. 

Our mediators stress the importance of ensuring that, to the degree possible, the elder person has input in the decision-making process and that solutions are geared toward helping him or her retain his or her dignity and self-respect.

Key issues often include:

• Guardianship alternatives
• Caregiver respite
• Financial management
• Living arrangements
• Health & personal care decisions
• Medication administration & use
• Residency decisions
• End-of-life decisions
• Funeral & burial arrangements

Estate Planning

A facilitated family meeting for estate planning provides parents with an opportunity to engage in conflict prevention. It also creates a forum for talking with your loved ones about the legacy you hope to leave them—and for conversing about the delicate subject of what they will inherit when you die.

Whatever your intentions are when you plan the distribution of your estate, the reasoning behind your decisions may not be clearly understood by your loved ones when you’re no longer around to explain it to them.  Family dynamics, disappointment and perceptions of unfair treatment at a time of grieving can throw children and siblings into a destructive rivalry.  In some cases, the family squabbling can ignite into full-scale litigation, wasting estate assets, destroying family relationships and undermining all that you’d hoped to achieve through your careful estate planning.

Our mediators help family members openly discuss and address all the issues – financial, legal and emotional.  This fosters harmonious relationships for a family business or family-owned property, helps transfer the values of the parents to their children and provides a framework for estate planners to work with.

Issues frequently addressed in estate planning mediation include:

• Planning for children from a previous marriage
• Addressing special or other long-term needs of a dependant
• Managing the finances for the surviving parent
• Family business succession
• Unequal asset distribution
• Complex estates

Wills, Probate & Trusts          

Are you and your siblings arguing about the dispositions of your parents’ estate?

Are there continuous disagreements about what the deceased intended?

Is the fiduciary making decisions that you and the other beneficiaries believe to be inappropriate or improper?

The death of a loved one often brings family members closer together, but — paradoxically — it can lead to highly contentious disputes as well.  When beneficiaries receive a different or smaller share of the decedent’s property than they’d expected, the combination of grief, hurt and disappointment can stir up old family dynamics and create intense conflict.  All too often, this emotional mix leads to accusations of abuse, undue influence, fiduciary mismanagement and, eventually, to lengthy and costly litigation.

Mediation can be very effective in helping beneficiaries deal with intra-family conflicts over the settling of an estate.  It gives family members an opportunity to clear up misunderstandings and diffuse or eliminate ill feelings while working on creative solutions to the deceased’s testamentary distributions that will promote everyone’s interests.

Issues commonly addressed include:

• Will Contests/Probate Disputes:
• Validity of will
• Ambiguous language of will
• Lack of capacity of testator
• Exploitation and financial elder abuse
• Reliability of executor

Trust Mediation:

• Validity of trust
• Capacity of executor of trust
• Undue influence
• Breach of fiduciary duty
• Trust reformation
• A trustee’s responsiveness
• A trustee’s communication
• Administration of trust

Family Property

Old sibling rivalries, family competition, and other issues arising from dysfunctional family relationships can turn co-ownership of family property into a living nightmare.  Open conversation facilitated by a skilled mediator can help family members repair relationships, create stronger bonds and build a vision for future cooperation.

Issues commonly addressed include:

• Use of property
• How to share property
• Property maintenance (costs, sharing labor)
• Sale of property (decision to sell, timing of sale, sale price, sharing proceeds)