Wondering How You’ll Keep Family Peace While Liquidating Your Parents’ Estate? Author of “The Boomer Burden” Offers Tips to Reduce the Stress

Whenever a close friend of ours visits his parents, a wonderful couple we have also come to know and love, he inevitably returns with a bit of concerned grumbling about the on-going battle they always have over his efforts purge his parents’ garage of what he sees as a lifetime accumulation of junk.

The punch line is always the same: his father defends this “quasi warehouse” as a collection of treasures, while our friend half-joking threatens that upon their death, he’ll return to clean house with a backhoe!

Happily, I’ve just come upon a fantastic solution to end this family stalemate:

Prior to his next visit, I plan to gift him with a fantastic book, which he, his brother and his parents can read together before jointly working out a plan for the inevitable future.

The book is called “The Boomer Burden – Dealing with Your Parents’ Lifetime Accumulation of Stuff,” by Julie Hall, who is known professionally as The Estate Lady®. Next to infirmity or death, estate settlement is the most stressful challenge a Boomer will go through with their parents, she says, “and often leaves everyone involved feeling upset, resentful and frustrated.”

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Love, Romance May Still Flourish in the Nursing Home, But Can An Advance Directive Give Residents the Right to a Sex Life?

I just read a thought-provoking article which begins, “She was 82. He was 95. They had dementia. They fell in love. And then they started having sex…”

Written by Slate’s Melinda Henneberger, it’s a modern day Romeo and Juliet tragedy titled “An Affair to Remember,” which is somewhat of an ironic title, since it deals with Alzheimer’s and loss. In the article, we read that perhaps a document which doesn’t yet exist — a sexual power of attorney — might have eased the pain all around.

I agree, and I’m all for it. But as it doesn’t yet exist, I’m suggesting that at minimum, Dororthy and Bob could have been protected by an Advance Directive, especially if when issuing it, each had had a frank discussion about their wishes with their Power of Attorney-designee. But that would have involved having some REALLY frank discussions…something few of us might be up to talking about with our parents — or our children.

When Dorothy Met Bob…

This is the true story of Dorothy and Bob (not their real names) who met in their assisted living community. As backstory we learn that: Read more