Photo by Aaron Goodman
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Love Is (Not) All You Need
By Mary A. Fischer, March & April 2010
To provide for loved ones who need long-term care, too many older Americans are resorting to extreme measures. It doesn't have to be this way
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In 2004 Roberta H. and her husband, Alex, both 64, were living a
contented life in a small town in western Massachusetts. Married for
39 years, with two grown sons, they had saved for years and were
looking forward to traveling in a year or two, once they retired from
their respective jobs—Alex was a college English professor, and
Roberta was director of communications for a consortium of local
colleges.
Then disaster struck. Alex was diagnosed with early-stage dementia and
took early retirement from his job. Determined to care for her husband
at home, Roberta paid a variety of people—at a cost of about
$1,000 a month—to take him for walks, drive him to the YMCA, and
prepare his lunch. She filled in the gaps by telephoning him several
times a day.
As his dementia worsened, though, Alex needed full-time care, so
Roberta found an adult-daycare center that could take care of him
while she worked. For 18 months Roberta dropped off Alex in the
mornings and picked him up after work, a routine that worked well
until he had a medical emergency—painful urine retention—that landed
him in the hospital. Medicare paid for Alex's stay, but after
three days the hospital released him, even though he could barely
walk. "It was such a stressful time," says Roberta,
"and I had no time to figure out where Alex should go to get the
therapy he needed."
"I felt terribly guilty about getting a divorce, but I felt I had
no choice."
A flurry of phone calls later, she found a skilled nursing home that
didn't have a waiting list, but there was a catch: Medicare would
cover a total of only 100 days of skilled care and rehab. After the
coverage ended, Roberta began drawing on the couple's savings,
paying the nursing home $7,500 a month, plus miscellaneous expenses.
Eight months and $75,000 later, the stock market crashed and cut the
value of the couple's savings in half.
"I was so scared," Roberta recalls. "Not only was my
husband disappearing, but our savings were, too. All I could think
was, if something happened to me, there'd be nothing left and
I'd be out on the street." At the urging of a financial
counselor, she made an appointment with a respected elder-law attorney
in the area. When he laid out her options, only
one—divorce—allowed her to get care for her husband and
hang on to their remaining savings. By divorcing Alex, the love of her
life, he would become indigent, thus becoming eligible for Medicaid.
"I felt terribly depressed and guilty," says Roberta,
"but I felt I had no choice." She received the final divorce
papers on August 15, 2008, the day before the couple's 44th
wedding anniversary.
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