If you have parents or grandparents who are in their declining years, you may begin to feel overwhelmed by the magnitude of changes that are taking place in their lives. It is truly a time of entering the unknown, because none of you has likely experienced this before in the roles you now occupy.
Their independence begins slipping away as simple tasks — shopping, driving, preparing meals — suddenly become unmanageable because of increasing forgetfulness or a broken hip from a fall.
The task of paying bills turns into a nightmare even if there are sufficient funds — somewhere. Who understands your mother’s accounting system? What happened to your father’s veterans benefit checks? Why has the Social Security Administration decided that your grandmother has passed away? Managing finances is all the more difficult when your grandmother lives on the West Coast and you live on the East Coast.
While you are treading water with all this, new complications spring up — the medical tests have come back positive; the caregiver has quit. Floundering in the unknown, it can help to have a guide. Someone who has been through it before, both personally and professionally.
After caring for my much-loved grandmother through her declining years, I became a licensed California professional fiduciary, a national certified guardian and earned certifications in professional fiduciary management for conservators and trustees.
As head of Santa Barbara Estate Services, I streamlined all the necessary aspects of professional fiduciary services, executor and trustee assistance, and elder preparedness into an intelligent, quantifiable system that is sensitively customized to the needs of families.
My experience and empathy enables you and your loved ones to enjoy the remaining time they have together, even as the landscape changes dramatically around them.
— Lindsay Leonard is the owner of Santa Barbara Estate Services.