A lawyer, a real estate agent and a journalist walk into a bar ...
Why you sometimes need professional help when caring for your parents
Welcome to Care-full, a practical guide to caring for aging parents. Here, you’ll find my tips about how to juggle your caring responsibilities, where to find support, how to navigate government bureaucracy, and how to keep parents safe at home or find the right care facility for them. And – perhaps, most importantly – you’ll realise that you’re not alone during what’s probably your biggest role (reversal) yet!
It’s Day 9 for Mum at the aged care home and we are all slowly getting used to it. Because she is living so much closer to us we are visiting nearly every day, and that means we are getting to know the staff, the other residents and learning how everything works.
I wouldn’t recommend moving your parents at the speed with which we’ve done it. In the space of three weeks, we have hired a broker to find a home; chosen a home; hired a financial adviser to help work out Mum’s finances; moved Mum; and put her apartment on the market.
Working at this pace is stressful - at least it has been for me - so you only want to put yourself through this if it’s an emergency of some kind.
Even when you’ve got all your ducks in a row, it can be a logistical nightmare.
If you are already caring for your parent or think it’s a responsibility you’ll be shouldering sometime in the future, here’s a potpourri of things to do in advance to make your life and theirs a little bit easier.
Centrelink
Chances are, your parents are already receiving a part or full aged pension from Centrelink, which now operates under the banner of Services Australia.
Suggest to your parents that you become their Centrelink nominee, which means you will be able to deal with Centrelink on their behalf, and manage their Centrelink business, such as reporting any changes in your parents’ assets and income. It’s pretty easy.
Centrelink online account help - Add a nominee
Taking on the role of nominee for your parents will be especially useful if they decide to move into an aged care home but struggle to understand the financial implications of such a move. Chances are they will need to liquidate their assets to pay for their room and fees – and Centrelink needs to know all about that.
People used to tell Centrelink about changes in their financial circumstances by mail, or in person. I’ve got memories of Mum filling in a Centrelink form once a quarter. But at some point, everything went online.
I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of older people didn’t realise it had changed and either failed to or simply didn’t know how to update their income and assets online.
It’s worth finding out what your parents can and can’t do to maintain their pension. For example, there are rules about how much money someone can give to their children – up to $10,000 each financial year, with a five-year rolling limit of $30,000, without it affecting pension payments. If the gift is more than these amounts, the excess is considered a “deprived asset” and is counted as if the pensioner still owned it for a period of five years, which could reduce or stop your parents’ pension.
Likewise, if you want to help your parents pay for a place in an aged care home, any money you give towards that will be considered their money and could affect their pension payments.
Who can get the aged pension?
The age for receiving the pension has been increasing gradually for some years. My parents, born in the 1930s, became eligible at 60 (Mum) and 65 (Dad). The most recent increase means people born on or after 1 January 1957 become eligible for the pension at age 67. You can read more about who is eligible here.
Australia’s aged pension is means tested. Here’s a rough guide to how that’s done but the key thing to know is that what people receive depends on 1. the value of their assets 2. their home ownership status (that is, whether or not they own your home) and 3. if they are in a relationship.
Your primary home is generally not included in the assets test but it can affect the amount of pension you receive because the asset limits are different for homeowners and non-homeowners.
What are the limits for a full pension?
If your parent has more money than the limit for a full pension, Centrelink reduces their pension. For couples, the limit is for partners’ assets combined, not for each person.
What are the limits for a part pension?
From 20 September 2025, people will lose their part pension when their assets are over the cut off point for their situation.
Again, for couples, the limit is for the combined assets.
Get a lawyer
I was distracted just now by the Cruel Sea’s 1994 song Better Get a Lawyer so I’m whacking it in here just for the heck of it.
You might not think you need a lawyer now, but you will eventually and it’s another thing you don’t want to do at the last minute when you need to make decisions for your parents but aren’t legally allowed to do so.
A lawyer your family has already used and trusts is best but if you are choosing a new one, make sure they are younger than you are! Over the past 12 months – just when I really needed them – my conveyancer and my lawyer have retired. When I say ‘my’, the Scotsman and I used the conveyancer when we moved to this part of Sydney and she was fantastic – a clever, efficient, no-nonsense woman who lived in our new suburb and didn’t charge like a wounded bull. I spoke to her last year about the possibility of Mum moving to aged care. Having gone through the process with her own mother, she gave me some great advice. But when I rang again a couple of weeks ago, I discovered she had retired.
Around the same time, I found out the lovely local solicitor we’d been dealing with for our wills, power of attorney and guardianship, had also retired and sold her business to a much larger firm that wanted to charge me $600 just to certify a copy of our power of attorney! They also made me jump through hoops to get the original document, which I needed to sell Mum’s apartment.
A good, empathetic solicitor can make a real difference when you are talking to your parents about you becoming their power of attorney or their guardian.
Find a real estate agent you can trust
Oxymoron? Google ‘Who are the least trusted professions’ and journalists pop up alongside bankers and real estate agents, so I’d better not throw stones.
If your parents own their home, they may never have to move from it. But if they do move, you will want a real estate agent you feel comfortable with.
Last year, I dealt with an agent from my mother’s area who I really liked. He did a lot of research on apartments in neighbouring suburbs, he made an impressive marketing pitch, he kept in contact, and he seemed like a nice guy. In fact, he is a nice guy. So, I engaged him this year as we rushed to get our finances ready for Mum’s move. But then he made a couple of serious errors, and I lost confidence in him.
I was dealing with so many other things that I couldn’t take the risk that something would go wrong with the sale of Mum’s apartment. It’s bad enough when it’s your own property at stake, but I was dealing with my elderly mother’s financial future.
So, we ditched him and had to start afresh, interviewing four agents last Saturday before making our final choice on Sunday night. Like I said, you do not want to do it this way!
More reading
How to talk money with your ageing parents before it’s too late
Future-proof: why you need to talk about end-of-life finances with your parents
What to expect when moving into an aged care home
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Wendy Frew is an Australian journalist, author and community broadcaster whose work has appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald, the Australian Financial Review and the BBC, and on 2SER and Radio Northern Beaches. She is the primary carer for her beautiful nonagenarian mother. She wishes she could fly like a Peregrine falcon.
Indeed. I listened to a podcast last week that was recorded in Vermont about a home older people live in together that isn't a nursing home. I don't think it's a widespread model in the US but it was so interesting to hear what the people who live there had to say about why it works for them
Its good and bad to find out that aging issues are the same around the world. At least if something works better in one geopolitical society, we can share and spread success while we rant about what is broken in common.