More New Year's Resolutions for Adult Children of Aging Parents

In my last blog I began a blog about what adult children should do when they visit their parents in January. These suggestions are a list of January resolutions. It’s not “go on a diet,” but what you should do after the social visit over the holidays with your parents, when you spotted red flags that made you worry about your aging mom or dad.

Here is the entire list of things you should do in a January visit to your parents after the holiday:
➢ Accompany the elderly person to the doctor, and talk to the doctor in person.
➢ Gather legal financial and insurance paperwork, and meet with professionals.
➢ Have all mail forwarded to yourself or another relative who will manage it.
➢ Contact and meet with old and present friends.
➢ If your older family members are in a facility, make contact with staff who care them, and the ombudsman.
➢ Meet with your elderly relative’s support network.
➢ Meet with a geriatric care manager in the area.



I covered the first two in my last blog Let’s look the next two resolutions.

Have all mail forwarded to yourself or another relative who will manage it.

Forward all the older person’s mail to yourself or another relative or sibling who will manage it. You need your parent’s O.K. about this. If they are mentally unclear, this should be verified by your visit to the Dr. mentioned in the last blog. If they are confused, it is a good idea to do this. If they are clear do your best to show them why this is in their interest. If you have problems, this might be a good time to contact a local geriatric care manager to help.
Mail can pile up with older people with limited vision and forgetfulness. The elderly can also be taken advantage of through mail contests, credit card offers, and even home loan offers, as we have seen in the present sub prime scandal. A relative should be sorting through the mail, and if that person has not also been paying the bills, he or she can start to do so, or forward bills to the person who is paying them.
Have the post office forward the older person’s mail to one of the long-distance care providers’ addresses. You need to go into the post office to get the form and fill out the paperwork for forwarding the mail.
Before you do, choose who will mange the mail for the older person. Scams that draw in older people are rife and many times arrive in the mail. You not only want to sort through the mail but also get your relative’s name and address removed from mailing lists. You can send a letter to:
Mail Preference Service
Direct Marketing Association
PO Box 9008
Farmindale, NY 11735
Be sure to list the name and address of your relative and request that their address be removed from any and all unrequested mailing lists. To help prevent your older family members from being vulnerable to mail-directed scams and financial abuse, go to www.fraudguides.com/consumer_optoutprescreen.asp to get off the list of insurance companies and creditors who send those pre-approved checks (a great source of identity theft). The largest organization that manages junk mail coming to homes is the Direct Mail Association. Here is the link to their web site, where they explain how you can be removed from the various lists: https://www.dmaconsumers.org/cgi/offmailing