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027: Taking on admin for family members
436 Plays5 years ago
This episode will help you understand why you may need to help others with their life admin and some of the legal and practical considerations you need to consider if you take on that role.
We consider some of the things you need to think about when you need to help someone else with their life admin, including:
- what the signs are or the events that may happen that trigger your need to assist someone with their life admin
- the types of life admin you may need to help with
- how to avoid family conflict and maintain family harmony.
Mia interviews Stephanie Rendell, a lawyer who works in elder care planning and talks about:
- what life admin you can do informally and when you need to put formal documents like Powers of Attorney in place
- things to consider when appointing a third-party financial administrator
- considerations for reimbursement and remuneration in Power of Attorney activities
- record keeping obligations if you take on someone’s Power of Attorney
- services that Elder Care Lawyers can provide including Substitute decision-makers, Caring agreements, Advanced Care Directives, Wills and Elder Care abuse.
Mia and Dinah talk about some of the practical things you can do to make it easier to manage and share the work of taking on someone else’s life admin including:
- Establishing a shared digital calendar for medical and other appointments
- Establishing a shared email address for bills and statements, to create transparency among family members
- Establishing shared password management systems
- Establishing shared To Do Lists to allocate and track tasks
- Setting up roster systems and
- Scheduling monthly teleconferences to discuss the situation and share the activities.
- Dinah talks about securing her favourite shopping list and meal planners to restore order to her fridge.
- Mia talks about how easy it was to nominate the days she wanted to take as purchased annual leave by using her shared calendar and the relief of having all the childcare over the school holidays for the year sorted.
- Dinah talks about how she has still failed to manage to establish a system for the digital photos from a recent long trip.
Podcast - The One You Feed
RESOURCESStephanie Rendell, Associate - Head Of Wills And Estates, RNG Lawyers
Episode 3 - Managing passwords and form filling data
Episode 4 - Mastering To Do Lists
SHAREPlease head to the Life Admin Life Hacks Facebook page to connect with listeners and share your thoughts, questions or suggestions.
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Transcript
Introduction to the Festival & Hosts
00:00:00
Speaker
Charlamagne to God here. I can't wait to see you at the Black Effect Podcast Festival coming to you live on Saturday, April 22nd at the Pullman Yards in Atlanta, hosted by myself in Jesalax. If you haven't gotten your tickets, what are you waiting for? The Black Effect is bringing some of the hottest podcasts live, like the 85 South Show. Horrible decisions and big facts for one day only, okay? For inspiring podcasters, we've got you covered. If you don't want to miss the Black Effect Podcast Festival, make sure to get your tickets today at blackeffect.com.
00:00:27
Speaker
Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.
Life Admin Techniques & Challenges
00:00:31
Speaker
This is Life Admin Life Hacks, a podcast that gives you techniques, tips and tools to tackle your life admin more efficiently, to save you time, your money and improve your household harmony.
00:00:43
Speaker
I'm Dinera Roberts, an operations manager, who because I used to be a tax accountant, often gets roped into sorting out someone else's tax affairs, even after they've passed on. I'm Mia Northrup, a researcher and writer, and I'm glad I like filling in forms, because as my parents get older, a lot more are going to be coming my way.
00:01:03
Speaker
This episode will help you understand why you may need to help someone with their life admin and the things you may need to help others with. Some of the legal and practical considerations when you're doing someone else's life admin, how to try and minimize disputes and distrust between family members, and how and why you might want to speak to an elder care lawyer. Hello and welcome to Life Admin Life Hacks. For various reasons, you may find yourself in the position of having to take on some or all of the admin for a family member.
00:01:32
Speaker
It might be a sibling, a parent, or an in-law, and it might be on a temporary or permanent basis depending on their circumstances.
00:01:40
Speaker
and Diana, we've both been speaking to family and friends about this situation. And this can be very sensitive and stressful territory because one, if you're taking on a life had been suddenly because someone's, you know, ill or it's been an accident or something, it's just stressful. But it can also raise tension in families because it's one of those invisible labors that can be taken for granted. I do think there's lots of parallels with the challenges that you sometimes find within
00:02:08
Speaker
life admin within your partner in terms of different people have different expectations. But I think when it's beyond just your immediate partnership, it can get way more stressful much quicker and it's much easier for relationships to break down over disputes around who should be doing what and how long and making our decisions. Yeah. And these things can similarly, they can kind of creep up
00:02:34
Speaker
You might be in a partnership where it's just you and a couple and as your lives get more complex and you have a family, the life admin gets more complex and you haven't addressed it. And similarly, with looking after admin for a parent or a sibling, it might start off as a little thing here and there, now and then.
00:02:53
Speaker
then before you know it, you're suddenly managing all their finances and doing their grocery shopping and looking after all their medical stuff and you're like, how did this happen? This is taking up a lot of time, a lot of headspace and might actually be costing you money as well. I think that as families have got more complicated, then things get more complicated because often there can be lots of different relationships you have with
00:03:16
Speaker
the parents of your partner or even the parents of your ex-partner, which are still the grandparents of your children.
00:03:24
Speaker
And who's going to do what becomes really complicated. Yeah. So what you might need to attend to is things like day-to-day banking and paying bills. You might need to help with managing their investments or medical appointments. I know I talk to people who have to make the medical appointments and then they're down as a contact person in case their parent forgets to go. Sometimes they have to take them there, they have to chaperone them there.
00:03:49
Speaker
might need to help with grocery shopping, meals, cleaning, house and garden maintenance. The list can get quite big and you can get financial advisors and money managers to come and help with some of the management and administration of financial affairs. They've worked very much in consultation with you and a family and there's other people in the helping professions like social workers or elder law solicitors
00:04:11
Speaker
that can help but if that's feeling like overkill then hopefully this episode will provide you with some ideas about how you can tackle it efficiently yourself.
00:04:19
Speaker
I think it can get really complicated too when there's a big change in life circumstances, particularly when we're talking about a parent. And I certainly know a couple of my friends who've been through the process of helping a parent sell their home and then to move into, you know, either into a retirement village or aged care. And that's when there's a lot of life admin to take care of to sort out all of those transactions.
00:04:42
Speaker
And often the reason the person is going through that process is something else is going on in their life. So lots of things to help people with in those change of circumstances. Yeah. There are actually books about caring for aging parents when I was researching this, just like all the books there are about caring for babies. There's books like How to Care for Aging Parents, The Complete Elder Care Planner and A Bitter Sweet Season, Taking Care of Aging Parents and Ourselves.
00:05:09
Speaker
Actually, a lot of these book titles have things around caring for yourself or self-care as part of the mandate of the book because it takes a lot to look after someone else. Yeah, so I think that's where this old oxygen mask analogy really comes into play, that when you have to start to take care of someone else, it's really important that you get your own life admin in order and have really good systems
00:05:33
Speaker
et cetera, because you're going to start to take on even more admin burden. You really need to make sure that your own systems are as efficient as possible.
Signs & Communication for Life Admin
00:05:43
Speaker
Otherwise, everything can very quickly get out of control, not just for the person you're helping, but also for yourself and your own family.
00:05:50
Speaker
Yeah. And so there are some signs you need to consider when you thinking, do I need to take over? Do I need to offer some help here? You might notice that bills are going unpaid or they're being paid multiple times. You might be worried that your parent or sibling is getting taken in by scammers or they're getting sales calls for random things and they're actually buying things over the phone that they do not need. Or they might be forgetting to take their medicine. They might be beginning to eat or turning up at appointments.
00:06:20
Speaker
And obviously if they're ill, or there's been some massive amount of life event.
00:06:25
Speaker
are triggers to be able to offer some extra help. Speaking to some of my friends, this has happened too. Often it can be an event or like a diagnosis. So when someone gets diagnosed with a serious or terminal illness, or if they have a fall and break a hip, then all of a sudden things can mean that things have to change very quickly. And that's where you might need to step in to help out. Yeah. And it's interesting how that might
00:06:50
Speaker
you know, what that conversation looks like because some of the people I talked to, it wasn't like the parent said, oh, I really could do with your help with this. The child just had to either offer help or just had to start doing things. And in some situations, the parent actually gets very cross.
00:07:07
Speaker
that they do it. They see it as being babied. They see it as patronizing. It's one of those things that, you know, you want to make sure that your parents still has that sense of independence and that your suggestions or your assistance aren't at odds with their wishes or make them feel like they're doing things wrong, that they're feeling criticized or overprotected. So it's a really tricky dance to play to get that
00:07:32
Speaker
balance right of making sure that things are getting done without getting them upset about it. And I think it often can be a really tricky conversation, particularly if you're in a circumstance where you live in the same city as your parent, for example, you have a sibling who lives either in another city or potentially even another country. And you think it's time to step in because you're there and you're seeing these things happen.
00:07:59
Speaker
whereas they're living away and sometimes can be in denial or don't want to do anything about it. And so I do think that there's lots of really tricky family conversations to navigate when it comes to things like that. And it needs to be transparent what's going on.
00:08:16
Speaker
and secure it, you know, keeping people informed about what's happening so that you avert suspicion and avoid any family conflict.
Legal Aspects of Elder Care
00:08:25
Speaker
But yeah, the conversation about the fact that you're having to do a whole bunch of tasks, you're taking on responsibility can feel really unfair and the expenses can really add up. So it is something that's one of those
00:08:37
Speaker
hard conversations, but very necessary so that you can have peace of mind that, you know, your family members being looked after properly, you might be able to save money for your family member or for yourself and certainly save time for yourself. And maintaining family harmony is really important. So it's worth having those conversations. We actually wanted to talk to an expert about this topic. So we interviewed a lawyer to understand the law and different approaches families can take to manage this situation.
00:09:07
Speaker
I'm talking with Stephanie Rendell who is an Associate Solicitor and Head of Wills and Estates at RNG Lawyers in Melbourne. Stephanie has a particular interest in elder law and she's experienced with seeking orders for administration, guardianship and powers of attorney. We thank you Stephanie for making time for Life Admin Life Hacks.
00:09:25
Speaker
Thank you for having me. Before we begin, I'll just state a disclaimer for listeners that what we're about to discuss doesn't constitute personal legal advice. You should seek your own professional legal advice when it comes to matters of elder law, administration orders and powers of attorney. So just to start off, I'm curious, Stephanie, how about how you decided to specialise in estate planning and elder law? What led you in this direction? Well, I think it probably started because I worked in a lifestyle do.
00:09:54
Speaker
in a law firm that has a broad area of practice. And I got a lot of exposure to different areas. And very quickly, this was one that piqued my interest because it was very important. It was about families. It was about family stories. And also it was an area where I really felt like I could make a practical and achievable difference to people. Yeah. I mean, this is a sort of sensitive time for families when
00:10:24
Speaker
it gets to a stage of parents' lives where they need a bit of support and care. And I can imagine, yes, you could see yourself having a really positive impact when they're at that stage. So many of our listeners are of an age where they've started to help or indeed have fully taken over admin for their parents. What kind of admin can an adult child do for a parent without needing a power of financial attorney or a power of medical attorney?
00:10:51
Speaker
Well, medical powers of attorney are now called medical treatment decision makers. Used to be a power attorney and I can tell people that those ones are still valid. Okay. Obviously there's lots of people out there who are making decisions about their parents' banking or helping them manage medication or chasing up prescriptions or going to the pharmacy, picking up, dropping off medicine for them. Are these things that you can just do without needing the powers of attorney or whatever that other thing is called? Yeah.
00:11:21
Speaker
Those formal documents, what they allow you to do is in situations where someone doesn't have capacity to give you instructions as to what they want you to do on your behalf. And so it also gives you a very important power, which is that you can do things that they might not want to do. They can express that they don't want to do something. I really think one of those is going into aged care, but you in your heart of hearts and from what you've consulted with,
00:11:50
Speaker
doctors and other financial people and legal advice think is in their best interest might be to do something different. Those documents allow you to make that happen even though the person might not necessarily want that because they might not be in a position to know what their best interests are at that point because they're a vulnerable state. What you can do though is you can certainly do informal arrangements for them like going to the bank and going to the chemist, provided that person has the ability
00:12:20
Speaker
at that point in time to consent to doing that. So most banks, and I'm probably chemists as well, would have a way that you could do that like by having someone as a signatory or by going with them. So sometimes just helping them get there is enough of a support and they can do it themselves once they're there with you there to give them some emotional and often like physical support to get there. So those sort of informal arrangements you can do, but those decisions that they don't necessarily want or
00:12:49
Speaker
big things that need like a contract or buying and selling assets, those things you can't do on someone's behalf without a formal document. With medical decisions though, it is a little bit different because with the new scheme, the medical treatment decision maker scheme, they actually have a default medical treatment decision maker list of people if you haven't formally appointed someone. So everyone, every adult has a medical treatment decision maker. It's just whether or not that's the person of choice for you.
00:13:19
Speaker
There's a default order, but if you want to change that order, because that order doesn't suit you, you need to have a treatment decision, make a document in order to change the order. Okay. And do you know what that order is? Is it sort of spouse and then? It is generally what you'd expect in terms of closest family, but they have to have an ongoing relationship with you. So an estranged spouse, although you might be legally married, probably wouldn't. The difficulty there would be whether or not a doctor in an emergency situation
00:13:49
Speaker
is going to be able to work out whether you're still in an active relationship or not, or whether you've separated if someone wanted to say you were still in a relationship when you weren't. But things like it goes down in order of children by age, for instance, which might not be the order that you'd want. So it has a list of people. But they're generally, in general terms, the sort of list that you'd expect in terms of
00:14:12
Speaker
what we commonly refer to as things like next of kin, but it's fixed. So if you wanted to change that or if you wanted to make it very clear to a doctor, particularly if you've got different situations, then the way to do it is to have it documented. Yeah, right. Okay, that makes sense. And so we were talking about some of the tasks that you can do. I know there were questions from listeners around the fact that they've set up direct debits for bills
00:14:38
Speaker
for their parents or they've gone into their online banking and set up regular automatic payments or transfers of money and all of those things you can reasonably do without having to have the power of financial attorney in place. Yes. And look, the one restriction on that though, as I would say, is that you can do those things provided that the person you're doing it for is able to give you the appropriate consent and that that consent is ongoing.
00:15:04
Speaker
So if you might've set up a whole lot of banking arrangements for them and it's working really well, but then your parents' condition deteriorates and they're no longer able to give you instructions anymore, that's the trigger for when you should stop doing those things without having a document to back you up. Even though, realistically, things like the bank are not going to know or not in many cases,
00:15:29
Speaker
because with online, they're not going to have a sense of that the situation's changed unless you physically go into the branch.
00:15:37
Speaker
from a legal perspective, you should only act until the point without a document that someone is able to give you that consent on an ongoing basis. Yeah, right. So you can protect yourself there. And I think for some cases, it's also a matter of having a shared understanding in the wider family of what's going on and that transparency of who set up what. So I guess that might be a trigger for getting that document
00:16:03
Speaker
But also the document and the discussion that would have to happen within a family to make that happen is really important so that people don't start accusing others of strange goings on when it comes to a parent's finance because that starts to get very sensitive. It can get very ugly very quickly as well. Yeah, I would really agree with that. I would say a lot of family disputes start from there being confusion as to what's going on, which builds with distrust.
00:16:31
Speaker
And then it gets, can spiral out of control. And that can be particularly in families where they might not be, the siblings might not be particularly close to start with, or it might be blended family situations where they are not as close. I'm not saying they don't get on, but they're not as close necessarily. And that lack of transparency starts to get this, this distrust going. And what I would say is getting a power of attorney drawn up is not a particularly difficult process.
00:17:00
Speaker
You can even, not that I recommend it, but you can do them yourselves without legal advice. It just need to download forms. That is an option.
When to Seek Professional Help?
00:17:09
Speaker
I personally think you should see a lawyer because then you can get the better benefit of those documents and not just the basic documents and really get them explained to you and what they mean. But it's not that difficult a process and we recommend everyone does them, not just old Australians. I myself have them. And people, when we talk about them, go straight to really doom and gloom situations.
00:17:32
Speaker
But they can be really minor things, including really practical, happy things. So an example would be if you decide to go on that trip of a lifetime that you've planned for and now you're retired, you're going to go overseas. You can have your power of attorney so that your children while you're back in Australia can be managing your assets, including your house if something was to go wrong to your house. And we have had some real world examples of that.
00:17:56
Speaker
of things going wrong. And then the person back here being able to deal with all of that without having to interrupt your holiday. So it's not necessarily that you've got dementia or that you're needing to move into a home, it can be really
00:18:12
Speaker
short-term minor things like day procedures or even happy things like holidays overseas. Yeah, that's a great reminder. And we did do a previous episode on wills and powers of attorney because, yeah, there's a lot of people out there who have children, who have assets, and they don't have these documents in place to provide directions in these different scenarios.
00:18:34
Speaker
So, Stephanie, at what stage should an adult child consider having a third party administrator to manage a parent's affairs? Well, by third party in this regard, I think you're talking about some of the professional companies and organizations out there and even professional people like solicitors or accountants who can take on the role of administrator or power of attorney. And in the case of the Office of the Public Advocate Guardian,
00:19:00
Speaker
for lifestyle matters. In those situations, generally those people, with the exception of the Office of the Public Advocate charge for their services, so that needs to be considered. They will often charge a combination of fees for time spent as well as commission on the amount of assets that are under management. That's something that you'll need to get disclosure of and find out about before you consider to see if that's desirable.
00:19:26
Speaker
Where they serve a really important role is for people who don't have a close family member, who can take on the role or a close friend, or alternatively in situations where there might be a dispute that's not going to be reconciled, or that they don't have a family member who's able to deal with the complexities of being someone's attorney or administrator.
00:19:52
Speaker
An example might be that you might be very close to an adult child, but that child might have, for whatever reason, perhaps their own family commitments or maybe something that stops them from being able to manage financial affairs, including perhaps even a criminal history or just those sorts of things.
00:20:09
Speaker
that they are not a suitable person to have that sort of responsibility for someone else's money. And I think it's interesting you read about Generation X being called the sandwich generation because we are of an age where we might still have very young children, you know, preschool, primary school aged children or teenagers living in the home. We still have dependents. And then we also might have parents who are becoming dependents. And so we're sandwiched in between looking after our own children and all their affairs.
00:20:39
Speaker
and starting to look after our parents and their affairs. And that can become incredibly overwhelming if you're managing
00:20:46
Speaker
your own life, other people's lives, you're working for some families, they aren't able to share the responsibility and the tasks involved. And so, yeah, that third party might be an important place to go to get some professional respite, I guess, to make sure that they're being looked after properly. And so how do you set up these arrangements? I'm thinking you're just making an appointment with a solicitor or an accountant.
00:21:12
Speaker
and have a chat and work out the fees and how they work. But the Office of the Public Advocate, how would you get them involved? When would you go to them? Okay, so with these sort of organisations, you're right, with the professional ones, you normally seek them out and ask if they're prepared to take on the role. If the person who is wanting to have the role had for them is still at that point able to make decisions, then it can normally be done by way of a power of attorney appointing that person for the future.
00:21:42
Speaker
if we're in a situation where someone's already lost that capacity and we're talking about appointing someone on their behalf, then normally that's done by going to VCAP to get an order, but you would have sought out that person first or that organisation first to confirm that they are suitable and they're willing to take on the role most of the time. With the Office of the Public Advocate, it is a little bit different. They
00:22:05
Speaker
You don't normally seek them out and ask to be appointed. They normally are appointed by VCAT if VCAT thinks that a guardian is necessary and there's no one to take on the role. And just for listeners who aren't familiar with VCAT, what does VCAT stand for? So VCAT is the Victorian Civil and Administration Tribunal. It is very similar to a court. It is the tribunal that is given the authority to deal with powers of attorney issues.
00:22:32
Speaker
appointment of a financial administrator, which is someone to look after your financial affairs and legal affairs if you're unable to do so for yourself, an appointment of guardians, which is someone to look after your lifestyle and to a certain degree, medical treatment decisions if you're unable to do so for yourself. They only appoint those last two in the case of they decide that someone needs it and they need someone appointed now. And that could be a person or an individual. And normally when you apply to them,
00:23:01
Speaker
you can nominate whether you want to be that person or whether you want to suggest someone or whether you want VCAT to suggest someone. And the default, if you don't want to appoint someone or if VCAT thinks that the people nominated are not suitable, is they have a panel of organizations and individuals that they can appoint in those situations. And for financial matters, they are a professional appointment. And for guardianship, it's the Office of the Public Advocate. And that's a subsidized
00:23:30
Speaker
position, so there's no fees to the individual for that. Right. Okay. Thanks for explaining that. And I guess for our listeners who aren't living in Victoria, you would have your state equivalent of VCAT and for people listening from overseas as well, there'd be some kind of administrative body that's going to be able to handle that. Yeah. And I will specify that even within Australia, this law that I'm talking about is very state specific. So I'm talking from a Victorian perspective. When I've gone to conferences about elder law across Australia,
00:24:00
Speaker
The acts are quite different. The terminology is quite different. And so please see someone local to your state, not just Australian, but someone actually within your state.
00:24:11
Speaker
Excellent. Thanks for pointing that out. Be nice if some of these things were national, but fine. I'm sure every state's got its reason why it needs a little variation. I'm also curious about whether there is government financial allowances or any kind of financial help for people who are caring for an elderly relative, because for a lot of people, it takes up a significant pound of time. It might mean they need to wind back.
00:24:37
Speaker
their own working hours, their own paid work or work within their home to care for an elderly parent. Is there financial help available? Well, there is to a degree. So if you qualify for a carer's pension, which not everyone who's looking after an elderly person would, then there is a carer's pension. I'm not particularly able to give people advice about the eligibility requirements. They should seek out a financial advisor for that. But what I can say
00:25:07
Speaker
is that the power of attorney or an administrator is entitled to get their fair compensation for out of pocket. So that's a starting point. So if you are incurring costs on behalf of that person within reason, you're entitled to be reimbursed, provided that it is justifiably part of that role. So a good example would be seeking out accounting advice to find out how to best to manage the, to handle the tax affairs of the person you're managing.
00:25:36
Speaker
You shouldn't be paying for that because you're doing that in that role. But on top of that, what families can do is when they're planning this, and this is one thing that would be a good reason for go see a lawyer when you're preparing these documents, you can foreshadow that the amount of time it's going to spend to manage your affairs and factor into your power of attorney document some sort of remuneration provision for the person who's going to be doing it.
00:26:04
Speaker
If that clause is not there, they can't then later take it for themselves. So it really needs to be there from the start, but you could negotiate something. It might be that there's a fee for any amount of time. It might be like an annual payment. It might be, yes, some sort of a gift or monthly allowance in recognition for the fact that there is going to be a time cost. And if we could just circle back to something we talked about earlier, mega power of attorney is not for everyone.
00:26:34
Speaker
It's not the same as managing your own money. You need to be able to have pretty sophisticated understanding of money and be able to, at a very minimum, keep a ledger, keep records because you have to be able to justify every dollar you've spent. And the better records you have, the better that is. So it really suits someone who is organized.
00:26:58
Speaker
someone who knows how to maybe run a spreadsheet or have some sort of basic software and can keep good records that can be produced easily upon request. Okay. Well, that's great advice as well. And hopefully, you know, the listenership to this podcast are all about optimizing their life admin. And I imagine a lot of people listening are wearing the hat of the organized family member who is taking on this task, but that's good to hear.
00:27:25
Speaker
And that's good to note as well about the reimbursement that might be available to people because I'm thinking of friends who have parents interstate and they spend a lot of time flying back and forth, helping things set up or moving house or making various arrangements for a parent and all of that time in the costs and the time in the travel, it does add up.
00:27:47
Speaker
And, you know, it can feel unfair if they're taking on this extra expense and it's not being reimbursed and their siblings, you know, there's not much discussion about the fact that this is actually costing them money. OK, thank you for that. And I would say, though, if you are going to reimburse yourself, just that is one thing to keep very transparent amongst the family, because that is one thing that can have false perceptions very easily.
00:28:12
Speaker
that people think that you're taking money for yourself. You're not, you're taking it as a legitimate reimbursement, but that is something to keep very transparent so that people can see that, look, I'm incurring costs and I'm just getting my fair reimbursement. And if you're open about those things, I think it would stop a lot of disputes where it looks like you're getting this big financial gain and taking mum or dad's money.
00:28:38
Speaker
Yeah, you don't want to be seen to be taking advantage of a situation. But at the same time, you don't want to be feeling resentful the fact that you are incurring these costs.
00:28:48
Speaker
Okay. And I guess my final question for you is really about what an elder law lawyer, what services they can provide. We've talked a lot about some of these documents. Tell me a little bit more about the services that you offer and the best way to engage an elder care lawyer. Well, there are really two sides of elder law. The first is I loosely call elder care planning.
00:29:10
Speaker
And the second is elder abuse matters. Elder abuse matters. I don't deal with anywhere near as much, which I'm very thankful for, but I do have a decent amount of caseload in that area. And in that respect, we're looking at where something's gone wrong.
00:29:27
Speaker
We're trying to get someone out of a situation that's not safe for them. We're trying to get money paid back that was taken in false pretenses or even property that was taken under false pretenses where someone's had their been taken advantage of or they're unfortunately in an unsafe situation. And it might be unsafe because there being some sort of act of violence often it's to do with neglect and the person that's in the caring role being inept.
00:29:54
Speaker
for whatever reason to provide the necessary care. So we can give services in that regard in terms of acting in court matters. Often that's a VCAT matter involved in those types of cases.
00:30:05
Speaker
Sometimes it's about referring them onto different law firms that can assist in regards to criminal aspects as well because our firm doesn't particularly do that. But most of my practice is in what I call elder care planning. I have a genuine belief that if you have a good elder care plan, it does prevent or at least reduce the risk
00:30:26
Speaker
of a lot of elder abuse situations. And elder care planning is a combination of thinking about what we call substitute decision makers, which is what we've been loosely describing today as powers of attorney most commonly, but also medical treatment decision makers. And also another document we haven't got to today, which is an advanced care directive. It's also about talking about how that interacts with your will and estate planning.
00:30:50
Speaker
But another aspect is to do with how you actually are living now. So a lot of families come to arrangements that might involve sharing accommodation with some care and coming to contractual arrangements about that. And that can also help with what you were talking about earlier, about the person in the caring role getting some sort of compensation or remuneration or
00:31:16
Speaker
assistance is that could be built into a carers agreement that we could negotiate where they might get allocated respite for instance, they might get sort of some entitlements that are almost like employee entitlements or it might be a much more informal arrangement but every family is different and we can talk to them about coming up with a plan that deals with them how they live now and that plans for the future if they were to become vulnerable or need
00:31:46
Speaker
higher care needs, and then also how that interacts with their estate plan and what they want to happen after they've passed away. Okay. Fantastic. Thank you for explaining that. And just to set people's expectations, how long does that normally take? Is that an initial phone call? Everyone comes through a meeting. There's a drafting process. There's another meeting. How long does it usually take?
00:32:08
Speaker
Well, it depends on how sophisticated what the family wants to achieve. We obviously have to be careful as lawyers about who is our client and who we actually see on an ongoing basis.
00:32:20
Speaker
That said, we do recommend involving the family, so it might be appropriate for family to attend maybe one or two of the consultations or even for us to prepare a letter on the parent's behalf that might be used as the basis for a family discussion we may or may not be involved in. But in terms of the actual clients that we deal with, if we're helping them come up with a plan, most of the time we do so by having a couple of appointments. But if they're looking at a more complicated situation and
00:32:48
Speaker
The general one of this is where people are going to buy an asset together intergenerationally. So they're going to pull their resources and buy a residence that everyone's going to live in. That's the more complicated situation and that does take a little bit more time.
00:33:04
Speaker
And in that situation, we have to be very clear that we can only act for one side of the transaction. So we recommend the other side of the transaction has their own legal advice. That doesn't mean we can't all work together and it has to be a fierce negotiation. It's not like that at all. We come from one perspective and you need someone to act from the other perspective.
00:33:23
Speaker
Yep, great.
Practical Tools & Sharing Admin Tasks
00:33:24
Speaker
Oh, Stephanie, this has been incredibly helpful, very enlightening, lots to think about, but also you've made it feel very approachable and clear about, you know, the steps that would be needed to take to make sure that you're covered or that you can start these conversations in your family if this is something that's happening for you right now. So thank you so much for your time and your expertise today. It's been wonderful having you on.
00:33:48
Speaker
Thank you so much for having me. This is a topic I'm very passionate about, and I always welcome inquiries about it. We will have a link to RNG lawyers and Stephanie's profile in the show notes, so if people want to follow up and get some personal advice, it'll be easy to do so. Thanks, Stephanie. Thank you. So, Mia, that was a really interesting interview that you did. What was your key takeaway?
00:34:10
Speaker
Well, it's good to know that medical powers attorney aren't called medical powers of attorney anymore. That's interesting to know. And also, you know, I think her points around getting the paperwork, the legal paperwork in place so that to facilitate that transparency in a family and to make sure that you are covered for your expenses
00:34:31
Speaker
is really kind of crucial. And I think working with a solicitor to help formalize some of that and mediate some of those conversations is possibly a really good way for some families to go if they're not the kind of family that can talk about that stuff openly and calmly. I think I'd be tapping into a lawyer's help for those kinds of setups.
00:34:53
Speaker
And interesting, you know, she talked about the kinds of things that you can do, like bill paying and what you can do without having the power of attorney in place and what you can do. Yeah, that to me is pretty crucial. What stuck out for you as a highlight? I do think it was the concept of actually even being an elder care lawyer and thinking about, well, as soon as things start to get tricky, rather than your family have a big bust up and break up about it or get into conflict,
00:35:23
Speaker
If things are starting to get tricky to go and see someone who deals with this kind of things all the time because they're going to have had so much experience and what might seem quite expensive actually in the scheme of maintaining a harmonious family could be a really valuable exercise to point you in the right direction. Yeah.
00:35:44
Speaker
So some of the practical things you can do if you are the person in your family who is taking on some of these tasks and hopefully it's shared and we can talk about some of the ways it's shared. Using some of the things that we've referred to in previous episodes is going to make your load a lot lighter. So setting up a shared calendar so you can see when appointments are when so the whole family you know whoever needs to see when appointments are can see when appointments are when
00:36:09
Speaker
you know, different tasks need to happen. A shared email address where all of the admin paperwork gets sent to. Again, so it's visible to the whole family. Multiple people have access to it. Having a password reminder. So you might want to automate a lot of the billing. So it's paid off automatically through direct debits. But still, you know, the statements will come, the bills will come. Setting up password reminders so you can log into utilities accounts or banks accounts.
00:36:37
Speaker
to manage things will be really useful. And also shared to-do lists so that you can understand what needs to be done. Whoever's sharing these tasks all have a single point of truth about what needs to be done for that parent. And Diana, did you have a friend who is managing this from long distance?
00:36:58
Speaker
Yeah, so I've actually got a few different examples of people where they have managed to share the load quite effectively. One in particular I know that I work with. They've got lots of siblings who are all caring for someone and actually have heard of this a few times.
00:37:12
Speaker
where they've got a roster system in terms of who's doing what on a rotating basis. And another friend who has a monthly teleconference with all the family members, they diarise it in, schedule it in just to talk about exactly what's going on and who's doing what just to make sure that there isn't that resentment that one person is doing more than the other.
00:37:34
Speaker
It reminded me a lot of a book we've talked about in the past on the podcast called Drop the Ball. And although that wasn't related to this kind of caring for a family member, it was the idea of when one partner's working away, there's still lots of contribution you can make to the life admin load. So thinking about, okay, well, maybe you don't live in the same city, but you could still take care of financial affairs and other things digitally.
00:37:58
Speaker
You can still ring and book doctor's appointments. You don't need to be in the same city if you have access to a shared calendar. So sitting down with your family and really thinking about who can contribute what so that it doesn't feel a bit fairer, I think is a really important thing to do. Yeah.
00:38:13
Speaker
And you know, this can be quite a sad situation when you have a parent who, you know, they might be having just getting old and doddery. They might have dementia. There might be an illness. So it can be, it can be quite a sad, isolating thing. You don't want to feel alone. You want to be able to feel supported and that people are offering their help. So tapping into some of these ways and sharing the loan, I think is really important so that you can, you're not suffering as well as having to do the task itself.
Personal Insights & Organization Tips
00:38:41
Speaker
Okay, so hopefully that's given you some ideas about how to approach and improve your processes when it comes to taking care of admin for others. Diana, let's switch gears now. Do you have a life admin high of the week?
00:38:54
Speaker
I do actually, I think I've talked about in the podcast before how I, the one sort of non-digital lists that I have are my meal planner and my shopping list, which I keep on my fridge. And I had some specific favorite ones that I'd bought from Kiki K. They were no longer in stock and I was so sad, but then I'm glad that they found them online, had them delivered, and I feel like order has once been restored to my fridge.
00:39:20
Speaker
So what, there's no Kiki K meal planners in the shop or just the design that you liked? The design and size that I liked. Oh, right.
00:39:29
Speaker
which I now found out I can get it online. I was almost tempted to buy five of each, but I resisted. So very happy to be back on the fridge. Have a life admin hire of the week, Mia. I do. I decided to take the opportunity to take some extra leave through purchasing leave through my workplace. So you can opt to have more than the standard four weeks by salary sacrificing essentially and
00:39:58
Speaker
purchasing extra leave. You can take it up to four extra weeks. Not that I could afford to do that, but I did want to take two extra weeks basically to cover off school holidays so that my husband and I can share each of the term breaks and then have a chunk of time over the summer. What you had to do to facilitate this is fill in a massive form and you had to nominate all your dates that you're going to take on holiday in advance. But because I had the shared calendar set up,
00:40:26
Speaker
I could quickly just sort of scan when the holidays were. I knew what other events and activities were already in the calendar that I had to work around. So it looked like it took me 10 minutes. And I now know exactly in 2020 when I'm going on holiday and how long for and what the school holiday planning will look like, which is just giving me a massive sense of relief actually, knowing that the holidays are covered. Cause last year it was a bit of juggle town and you know, we were doing the micromanaging of
00:40:54
Speaker
who's being aware on what day and have we got holiday programs or play dates or just a paint so sorted. I can't believe that school holidays sorted for a whole year like that's like next level. I feel like we learnt from one holiday to the next.
00:41:11
Speaker
I don't know if I believe that data. You're pretty, you're pretty organized with your holidays. But what about a life admin low? So we recently went on this big trip that I know I talked a lot about earlier in the season and I was really inspired before the trip. I downloaded an app that I was going to try.
00:41:28
Speaker
to try and manage the digital photos from our trip. But what happened was I had downloaded the app but I hadn't really investigated it enough. And now my daughter has a phone so she took photos on the trip. So now it's actually more complicated because now we've got three people who took photos.
00:41:49
Speaker
So, it definitely was a complete disaster. So, I feel like I failed on my aspirations to at least get the photos from that trip sorted. In fact, now I've just made my job even bigger. Oh man, I'm just more and more leaning to the idea of just never taking a photo ever again. Just pretending that don't exist.
00:42:10
Speaker
So Mia, do you have a power tool for us this week? I want to talk about the One You Feed podcast. This is a podcast I probably started listening to about two years ago, and it's about psychology and philosophy and habits and motivation and well-being and mindfulness. And it's an interview format.
00:42:27
Speaker
Each week, the guy who I've been listening to for two years, and I can't remember his name, he'll interview someone, usually an author talking about their new book, but recent episodes have been about living skillfully. He interviewed Gretchen Rubin for that.
00:42:43
Speaker
here to be the Zen master about responsibility and finding purpose in life. There's talks of resilience and psychological flexibility and habit formation and just really fascinating, genuine conversations. I don't think I've listened to one app where I haven't walked away feeling like I've really learned something quite profound. So you might want to check that out if you're looking for a new podcast.
00:43:04
Speaker
Well, that sounds great. I'm going to add that to my list. So that wraps us up for today. We hope this episode has given you some tips on how to optimize your approach for managing life admin for someone else. Our top tips are have the conversation in your family about roles and responsibility and reimbursement. Don't let resentment and stress build.
00:43:24
Speaker
Use the life admin tools you've developed like shared calendars to-do lists and password manager to create transparency and share tasks and share the mental load. And make sure you get the right legal structures in place both for transparency and coverage.
00:43:40
Speaker
If you'd like to join us on our life admin journey, please head to our Facebook page, life admin life hacks to follow us and share your thoughts on what we're doing and feel free to post any comments or certainly post suggestions that we might be able to use. We hope to see you there. Thanks for listening. Show notes for this episode are available at life admin lifehacks.com. If you're a fan, please subscribe and share the love and tell a friend or review us in your podcasting app.
00:44:11
Speaker
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