Trapped in the Middle: Legal and Emotional Pressures of the Sandwich Generation

The silent struggle of caring for both aging parents and growing children simultaneously affects countless Americans, yet few are prepared for the legal complications that arise. In this eye-opening episode, elder law attorney Bob Mannor and certified dementia practitioner Savannah Meksto unpack the challenges of the "sandwich generation" and provide critical guidance for avoiding costly mistakes.

Most families wait until a crisis hits before addressing essential legal preparations, often discovering too late that decades-old documents are insufficient or outdated. As Bob explains, having the right "lifetime documents" in place—specifically separate powers of attorney for medical and financial matters—is crucial before cognitive decline begins. Without these protections, families may face court proceedings that remove decision-making from their hands entirely.

The conversation tackles common misconceptions, like assuming the oldest child should automatically serve as power of attorney or naming multiple children simultaneously to avoid playing favorites. Instead, Bob recommends selecting individuals based on trustworthiness, capability, and willingness to serve, while establishing a clear order of succession. When family disagreements inevitably arise, professional moderation can prevent escalation to courtroom battles where everyone loses.

Beyond legal considerations, Savannah highlights the emotional toll on caregivers caught between multiple responsibilities. Self-care becomes essential, as does recognizing when professional support services are needed. Manor Law Group's care navigation team helps families identify appropriate care options and government benefits that can ease financial burdens.

If you find yourself nodding along or feeling that knot in your stomach, know that you aren't alone. The sandwich generation experience is challenging, but with proper legal planning and emotional support, you can navigate this journey with confidence and protect those who depend on you. Reach out to Manor Law Group today to develop a comprehensive plan before crisis strikes.

Host: Attorney Bob Mannor

Cohost: Savannah Meksto

Executive Producer: Savannah Meksto

Chapters

• 0:00 Introducing the Sandwich Generation
• 3:14 Essential Legal Documents for Caregivers
• 9:30 Choosing the Right Power of Attorney
• 15:00 Handling Family Disagreements
• 19:42 The Emotional Toll and Self-Care
• 24:30 Care Navigation and Support Options

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

You're listening to Advice from your Advocates, a show where we provide elder law advice to professionals who work with the elderly and their families.

Speaker 2: 0:07

Welcome to Advice from your Advocates. I'm elder law attorney Bob Manor and I'm here with Savannah Mexico, a certified dementia practitioner. Today we're going to do a new series on something that so many of you are quietly dealing with being stuck in the middle. We call it the sandwich generation, and it can be very difficult when you're taking care of your parents and you're taking care of your kids.

Speaker 1: 0:28

Yeah, that's absolutely right, bob. It's a real challenge raising your own family while also stepping into a caregiving role for your parents. The emotional toll is real, but the legal landmines that is where I think people get blindsided. Today we're going to walk through the most common mistakes that families make and also how to protect yourself and your loved ones before a crisis hit.

Speaker 2: 0:50

And you know, that's a really good point, savannah, because we really do have to think about this when we talk about sandwich generation. The issue is that it's not always obvious, like it could be, that our parents are getting older. We're not necessarily caring for them, but we know that that's a possibility in the future and so we're trying to raise our kids. We know our parents are getting older. They need a little bit of help. Sometimes they're asking for, you know, help with making sure that their bills get paid, things like that. But the idea is it really is very important to try to make sure that you have the legal plan in place before a crisis takes hold, especially if there's any indication of dementia or Alzheimer's or anything like that which so many of us are facing, and it can get to the point where they might not be able to sign legal documents.

Speaker 1: 1:39

So I like how you mentioned that being a sandwich generation caregiver doesn't necessarily mean that your parent is living with you in the home, because I think that's a common misconception. You know, if you might think, oh well, they're not living with me, I wouldn't consider myself a caregiver, but really you kind of are.

Speaker 2: 1:57

Well, and so one of the things we notice is, you know, when it comes to families, obviously there's small families, there's big families. When it comes to families, obviously there's small families, there's big families. But you know, regardless of the size of the family, there's usually one or two kids that step up and are willing to help out. And sometimes it's simply geography. You know, if somebody lives in California, it's going to be really a lot more difficult for them to be day to day helpful for their parents, and so sometimes it's geography, sometimes it's just. You know, I don't want to discount the folks that can't provide that daily help, because we've all got kids and dogs and jobs and everything else, and so it can be very difficult, but what we do find is that it's often one or two of the kids that will be really involved and the other kids just kind of follow along, at least you know, unless hopefully, they follow along.

Speaker 1: 2:48

So and it's not, you know, necessarily the day to day activities of care. It could be making certain decisions, managing the finances, even helping find documents. Bob, why do you think that so many people who are in this stage of life wait until there's actually a crisis before they step in and realize, hey, this is a situation and I'm living in it and I'm kind of stressed. Why do you think that so many people wait until they get to that before they take a next step?

Speaker 2: 3:15

Well, you know, I think you're raising some really good issues here, because when it let's, let's dive a little bit into the legal you know part of it, the legal documents. It is so important to have updated legal documents if you're going to be trying to help your parents and a lot of us kind of think of this for whatever reason. Culturally, we seem to think that, you know, once we went to a lawyer 30 years ago, that should be sufficient and somewhere there's probably some documents, somewhere there's a will, somewhere there might be a power of attorney, things like that. And the reality is that's a bad thought process. We should not be saying, you know, if mom and dad say, oh, yeah, yeah, we did that, you know, 30 years ago, whatever, when you guys, because probably the will says you know it's when the kids were five years old and it also says that their aunt is going to be, you know, caring for them. So it's one of those things that does need to be updated. You and I we talk a lot about this, that there's the, what I call the lifetime documents, and then there's the you know what happens when I die? Most people focus on the what happens when I die, right, and that's actually not what we're talking about here. We really want to talk about what happens for the lifetime documents. I know and this is something I thought a lot about through the years I would have never wanted to go into a courtroom and have one of my parents declared incompetent. It's just something that I would never want to do. And so you don't need to if you have the proper legal documents in place. Okay, and so we're going to start with that.

Speaker 2: 4:51

When we talk about the sandwich generation, I'm having trouble saying sandwich, but when we talk about that, it is one of those things where it's important that the person who's willing and able and trustworthy to step up to help mom and dad have that legal authority to do so. It doesn't work when just mom says OK, well, you know, I'm appointing you. You can't just verbally say it. It doesn't work when we have some old legal document that hasn't been updated in years. In fact, you know some of these forms.

Speaker 2: 5:24

The law changes, in fact, as far as power of attorney, the law changed just in as of July 1st of 2024, they passed a new power of attorney law in Michigan, and so it is very important that we have these what I call lifetime documents. When I say that, let me mention when I call them lifetime documents, they expire when the person expires. So sometimes people will call me up and say, well, I'm mom's power of attorney and she died last week. Well, no, you're not mom's power of attorney anymore, because power of attorney is a lifetime document. It's giving somebody authority to help during someone's lifetime. It does not have any effect after death. But it is very important that we have those and that they are updated from time to time.

Speaker 1: 6:07

So that power of attorney, it's critical. It sounds like that folks get that in line as soon as you think that there could be any chance that you're in the sandwich generation, maybe before it starts. And we actually, you know, here at the firm we say that anyone over the age of 18 should actually have that power of attorney and some of those lifetime documents in place. Isn't that right?

Speaker 2: 6:27

Absolutely. I mean, the thing is, if you have somebody you love and trust, we should probably have them appointed to be able to step in in an emergency, and so there's actually two separate powers of attorney that need to be done one for medical and one for financial and they're completely separate documents. You cannot have one document that does both things. It has to be one for medical and one for financial, and pretty much if you're over 18 and something bad happens, you get in a car accident, you get into some trouble, whatever it is, it's nice to have somebody that you love and trust that would be able to step up and help you out.

Speaker 1: 7:02

Absolutely, and as of right now. You know I'm not quite sandwich generation, but I know it's coming for me soon. I have my oldest daughter's 22. You know, my parents are in their 60s and so I am one who want to encourage my daughter and my parents to get the power of attorney. You know, and myself yeah, good point. So I think that it would be important to talk about some of these pitfalls, these legal landmines for sandwich generation caregivers. What would happen if, maybe, the parents don't have a power of attorney?

Speaker 2: 7:32

Well, so you know, if you're inclined, if you're here on this show and you're inclined to raise this issue, the big question is, you know, are your parents likely to follow your suggestion? Is there going to be any turmoil in the family where you know your brother thinks that he should be the power of attorney and you think you should be the power of attorney? We have to address those types of things, but the idea behind this is that it should be a question that you raise and so, like you say, you might not even be ready for it. You know parents in 60s, they're doing just fine, but at some point most of us are going to need some help and at some point most of us are going to need if we live long enough, we're going to need the assistance of someone we love and trust. And so it's better to raise these issues.

Speaker 2: 8:19

When everybody can be involved in the conversation, everybody can be involved in the conversation. So you know, I'm sure in a minute we're going to be talking about well, what if we're not all in agreement? What if we don't have the perfect family that everybody holds hands and agrees on everything? But the idea behind it is that is something that is worth raising the question if you're in even you know your situation, where you have, you know you have some kids, you got parents that are still perfectly, you know, able, and it's if they don't have any legal documents in place. It's probably a good idea to raise that issue Because if something bad happens, if there was a, you know I don't like to imagine terrible things happening, but you can imagine a stroke or even the onset of, you know, dementia or Alzheimer's, anything like that we might end up having to go into court, which is fine, it's just. It's so much. Most of the time we want to keep family decisions and family matters in the family and keep the government out of it is the idea behind this.

Speaker 1: 9:19

Absolutely. Now, speaking of you know legal and decisions. What happens if maybe the parents name the wrong person on the power of attorney?

Speaker 2: 9:29

Yeah, that's a great question. You know, I've been doing this for a while and so sometimes I try to get, I try to be not just the you know they talk about an attorney being a counselor, and so I try to be the counselor also and give folks advice on who they should choose, because occasionally I'll get folks in and usually it's, you know, it's the older folks that will say well, I have to name my oldest son, or something like that. Or I have to name my oldest child. Well, no, you really don't, you should name the person that is the most suitable. And so I have a couple of, you know, standards that we should think about when we're picking who we're going to name as our helper, as our advocate under power of attorney or health care advocate. And the first one is the most obvious, which is do we trust them? Are they, are they capable? Which is do we trust them, are they capable? And so you know. Then the next question if we say, well, all of my kids are trustworthily incapable, great, fantastic. I'm glad to hear that. Next is going to be who's willing? And I know that's a tough thing to say because you kind of hope all of your kids would be willing.

Speaker 2: 10:39

But in my experience that's not always true. It's you know, who is who's going to be the person that would step up, and it's not always the most obvious person. So sometimes people come in and say, well, my, you know, my, my, my daughter's an accountant, my son's a doctor or whatever Great. Are they going to have the time and willingness to step up to act on your behalf if called upon? And so occasionally the answer is yeah. Well, my daughter doesn't have those same credentials, but she lives next door. And so sometimes it's you know, who's willing, who's convenient. It's not always who's convenient. Sometimes we pick the person who does live in California, even though that's not as convenient. They might be the right person because they're capable and willing. And so you know it starts off with who's trustworthy, who's capable, and then the next question is who's willing to step up? Who do we think would actually do the work necessary?

Speaker 1: 11:33

And the power of attorney can be changed right. It's not like an end-all, be-all document, you know, unless I'm sure there's caveats where it is. List multiple people in there, not all together.

Speaker 2: 12:06

I'll come back on that issue for a second. But we list them one at a time. But we definitely want to put backups in there, one of the things I see frequently because you know, parents don't want to show favoritism, so they'll say I'm going to list all three of my kids. They all have this authority. Oh, that's a bad idea. Oh, this is really a bad idea. Do not. I highly recommend it's not.

Speaker 2: 12:30

First of all, under the medical power, the law in Michigan says you have to list one person at a time. You cannot have multiple people listed as the agent or the reporter, the person who's going to give the answers to the doctors as far as what your medical care would be, if you're not capable of making that decision yourself. So under the medical document, the patient advocate or healthcare power of attorney, you have to list an order of priority. Under the financial one, legally, you could list multiple people. It's a really bad idea to do that for a bunch of reasons. Number one is it's less likely the bank's going to accept it, because if it says that all three of my kids have equal authority, then if I were the attorney for the bank, I would advise the bank not to do anything unless all three of them sign off on every transaction, and that could be very inconvenient if you're incapacitated and somebody needs to pay your water bill this month to have you know you think about it. You know this isn't just big decisions like are we going to sell the house, this is little decisions, like you know, signing a check to pay the water bill. And so it's impractical for you to have multiple people on there, especially because, as you know, the bank or the financial company, they may not want to do anything unless they have unanimous consent.

Speaker 2: 13:52

Even if that's not what your document says, your document might say they each have equal authority and they can act independently. Say they each have equal authority and they can act independently. It's you know. Just it's a bad idea from that standpoint. Secondly, it's a bad idea to have three people in charge of a checkbook, right, unless you know if everybody's writing checks out of the checkbook. That's not. It's going to be harder to balance that checkbook. I really strongly recommend. I strongly recommend that if, when you do a financial power of attorney, that you pick one person and then you list backups and if that one person can't do it for a while, they can step aside and let one of the backups do it, but the idea is having multiple people as power of attorney is actually a can cause all kinds of troubles and conflict and things like that.

Speaker 1: 14:37

I can just imagine from. You know, I have three siblings and I know that even on good days we don't always get along and see eye to eye. So I can't even imagine, with adding the stress of like, oh my gosh, mom is sick and needs care, or you know, now there's a financial crisis and adding that stressor to things I already know we're not going to get along. So that's great advice, bob for sure.

Speaker 2: 14:59

Well, let's talk about that a little bit. I know that this is one of the issues that you had listed for us to talk about today, which is what if there's not a full family?

Speaker 1: 15:08

agreement. What if they disagree?

Speaker 2: 15:10

So here's my answer. I'm going to give you what I think is the best answer, which is let's sit around a table together and have a family conversation, and it's something that we do in our office, where you know me, or one of the other attorneys in the office can sort of be the moderator of that meeting. Because what often happens there's a couple different things that can happen when there is especially when there's the stress of a parent who needs help, a parent that is starting to have some memory issues or things like that, and the first thing that happens is everybody will give you advice. You're the person at the grocery store, you're a barber, you're a hairstylist, whatever. Everybody has their own story, and so it ends up where everybody has these ideas.

Speaker 2: 15:56

A lot of them are wrong. I'll be honest with you. A lot of the ideas are wrong. I often tell the story about being at my barber one day and this guy comes in and says well, boy, you know, I don't know what to do about my mom. I know that, you know she really can't live alone anymore. She's going to need some help. And the barber you know, I didn't say anything right away, but the barber said well, I'll tell you what to do. Just get all of our money out of the bank and hide it. Oh boy, that's a bad idea.

Speaker 2: 16:25

That's really the worst idea. First of all, if you try to hide the money and then apply for government benefits to pay for care, that's called a felony, isn't?

Speaker 1: 16:34

that fraud yeah felony.

Speaker 2: 16:40

We don't really generally like felonies, so I did I try not to get into other people's conversations, but in that case I did, you know, speak up and say you know, that's probably not a good idea and you know, here's my credentials. So one of the things is that is something that we can do in our office. We can have a family meeting, and I'd much rather have a family meeting and have everybody sit around a table. We got this big round table in the office. Everybody sit around the table and kind of have their say, and so that we can, you know, get clarity, because I think a lot of the family disputes are about communication and miscommunication and people having ideas that might be not accurate.

Speaker 2: 17:14

And so, because the alternative is, you end up in court and everybody is going into court, and in my experience, here's what happens. You know, people go watch TV and they see these courtroom dramas and somebody always wins and somebody. You know that's not the way it really works in court. Most of the time, if the family is arguing, the judge is pissed, probably going to say none of you, none of you are going to have the authority, we're going to appoint some stranger, you know, financial professional to be in charge of the money and everybody loses because now not only does the family not have the say on you know how, how money is spent or where mom or dad's going to live, or you know things like that, but also now we got to pay that financial professional and that's eaten up part of the you know part of the money that could go for protecting mom and dad.

Speaker 2: 18:07

So you know, it's so much better to have to sit down, have everybody kind of say their piece, and sometimes that can be very difficult without a moderator. If it's just you know family sitting down can, it can deteriorate. But I have done this going on 30 years now and I can see when things are starting to go south and then I can try to really, you know, settle things down a little bit, because as soon as it starts getting into the anger and the resentment and whatever it is, you know it's hard to have those rational decisions. And because my expectation is, everybody's actually probably wants what's best for mom and dad, you know, or mom or dad, whatever it is. But it's easy to get caught up in the emotion of things, and so that is a service that we do offer people is. I'd much rather have that sit down with the whole family than having to, you know, have a dispute about it later on.

Speaker 1: 19:04

Yeah, that's fantastic and a lot of those thoughts and myths that they carried into this emotion can be dispelled because there's an expert right there in the room who can answer to some of those things. Not only is it the emotional stuff, but some of those legal misconceptions. Let's just put the kibosh and all work together, you know, to move forward and make things better.

Speaker 2: 19:24

Exactly, right, exactly.

Speaker 1: 19:26

So if you're just tuning in, you're listening to advice from your advocates, and today we're talking about sandwich generation, caregiving and just the legal and now the emotional toll that can have on someone who is put into that position or might be put into that position soon.

Speaker 1: 19:42

So for people who are in the sandwich generation, they're caring for a parent, they're also caring for their own children. Not only are they probably feeling guilt maybe they had to miss something a parent-teacher conference or a t-ball game Maybe they feel bad that mom's been here in this care center and I haven't been able to visit this week, oh my gosh. And you just sort of feel torn in a few different directions and you also probably don't have a lot of time to care for yourself. You might be just exhausted, you might be resenting the situation as a whole. Of course you don't resent your parent or your children, but just the fact that you're stuck in the middle and just managing all of this. It can be really overwhelming. Bob, what are some things that people can do to sort of help that emotional chaos that's happening as a generation?

Speaker 2: 20:28

caregiver. Yeah well, first of all, you know, I think it's important to acknowledge the family members that are, you know, actively helping out mom and dad and realizing how difficult that is and hopefully giving them an opportunity to do some self-care. And it could be that it's not the kids, it could be it's the spouse, and so now we need to recognize and a lot of times if it's a married couple and they'll say I'm fine, I'm fine, you know, I've taken care of my spouse for this many years, I can do it. Now it is incredibly challenging and sometimes, especially if there's dementia or something like that, it's a 24-hour job and because the person might not be sleeping at night, they might be awake at 3 am and so it can be incredibly challenging. So one of the things I always encourage is number one make sure that they have, whoever the caregivers are, that they have time for self-care, that they have time to recuperate. But the second thing is that we consider and do our best to figure out ways to get some help, get some outside care. You know, I think so many of us just assume oh well, you know, it's family, we got to take care of family, you know it's.

Speaker 2: 21:46

There's lots of reasons why professional caregivers exist and hire in a company that could come in and help out, or even considering moving into an assisted living or memory care things like that. It's people feel very guilty about even saying those things out loud, but the reality is you know you're going to the person that you care for, that it's mom or dad or your spouse or whatever. They're going to be better off with you in this world than if you stress yourself out to the point where you get sick or die, and so it's very important that you take care of yourself, and one of the things we do at Manor Law Group is that we help people find ways to pay for that care, because one of the biggest objections is well, I don't know how we're going to pay for this. Well, there's resources out there. There's government benefits that we can help people qualify for.

Speaker 1: 22:33

Yeah, absolutely, and I love that. Not only do we help people figure out how they're going to pay for that, but we also connect them with other resources we can advocate for families who just aren't sure what direction to go, because I think you know, if I'm picturing myself as a sandwich generation caregiver my grandfather had dementia and I was one of his caregivers, so I think it's a little bit easier for me than other folks, because I do know some of those firsthand struggles and a lot of the confusion that my grandmother and aunts and uncles were going through at this time was just what do we even do? Where do we start? How do we navigate all of this? There's so many things that he needs, there's so many options and it's a lot. It's a lot for anyone on a good day, but when you're stressed already, my goodness, that's so much, and so we can help with that, bob, and I think it would be great if you just sort of explained a little bit about what our care navigation team can do for folks.

Speaker 2: 23:23

Yeah, exactly I like that. You used the word navigate, because that's what we call our team, is care navigation, and so it's a little different. Most people wouldn't think you'd have care navigators in a law firm, but we found that it is actually very helpful for a couple different reasons. Number one is it is just a maze of trying to figure out what's the best options. Do we bring care into the house? Do we, you know? Do we look at independent living, assisted living, memory care? Do we look at? You know? There's a program called PACE or a program called WAVER. Trying to figure all that out in of itself can be incredibly challenging, but then there goes to the other element too, which is even just advocating for better care. So we have social workers on staff at our office and they are there to help people navigate this whole process.

Speaker 1: 24:16

Wonderful. So we're wrapping up the end of this conversation and we could go on and on, and in fact we're going to, because our next few episodes are going to be on this same sandwich generation subject and there's a lot to talk about. But today, if you're listening to this and you're nodding your head or you're just feeling that knot in your stomach, just know that you are not alone. The sandwich generation is real and it's exhausting, but you don't have to do it without a plan. The earlier you get that support legally, emotionally, the more control you have later. So I would really love for you to just contact our firm. You can call us if you do need help, 1-800-990-6030. And I hope that you join us next time.

Speaker 1: 24:55

Thanks again for listening to Advice from your Advocates on 103.9 the Fox. If you want to learn more again, head to our website, manorlawgroupcom, or call us at 1-800-990-6030. We've got your back because you've got everyone else's. Did you know the average stay in a nursing home costs over $10,000 a month? Planning for long-term care can be overwhelming, but it's crucial to protect your family's future.

Speaker 2: 25:19

Hi, I'm Bob Manor. I'm a board certified elder law attorney and certified dementia practitioner. At Manor Law Group, we specialize in helping families plan for dementia care, state planning and protecting their assets from the rising costs of long-term care. We can guide you through creating a plan that ensures that your loved ones receive the care that they need without losing everything that they've worked so hard for.

Speaker 1: 25:41

At Manor Law Group, we believe in giving you peace of mind for the future. From wills and trusts to Medicaid planning, we're here to make sure your family is protected. At Manor Law Group, we're more than just a law firm we're advocates. From wills and trusts to Medicaid planning, we're here to make sure your family is protected.

Speaker 2: 25:58

Give us a call today and let us help you plan with confidence.

Speaker 1: 26:01

Call Manor Law Group at 1-800-990-030 or visit us online at manorlawgroupcom. 800-990-6030 or. Manorlawgroupcom. Manor Law Group your advocates for life's most important decisions. Thanks for listening.