Yes. That happened. Primo got a bill for something with his mom.
Not an overdue bill. Not a second or third or fourth request.
A first-time bill.
Doris died almost exactly 51 weeks ago.
Do you think the hospital could have gotten their crap together by now? Or Medicare? Maybe the hospital sent the claim to Medicare and it took Medicare this long to make a decision.
People. We have an estate to settle. WE WANT TO BE DONE.
Primo cannot close the estate until the bills are paid. Honestly.
Thank you again Sly for giving Primo the honor of being the executor of this estate.
Readers, heed this. Primo did not think it would be this much work to settle the estate. He is super conscientious and responsible (hello adult children of alcoholics! super responsible people who will take care of everyone around them so they make fabulous customer service employees for a business with angry, hostile customers) and did not want lawyer fees to eat up the estate, even though none of it went to him.
It is a ton of work. If you are an executor, make sure
1. that you can be paid the fee
2. that you dump it off on a lawyer if possible because do you really want to spend hundreds of hours dealing with crap that your parents should have dealt with?
Primo and I were at my mom's last week and we talked about all of this stuff with her. My mom, who is a very healthy 73 years old and who has a good 20 years in her yet (I hope), has already written a financial POA for me, a medical POA for my sister, and has been throwing out old stuff in her house, things like sewing patterns from the 1970s that she is not going to use again. She even finally gave away my dad's clothes - he died 18 years ago.
We talked about what she wanted when she can't take care of herself anymore. She didn't get angry or insulted. She didn't refuse to talk about it.
I hope you guys have parents like my mom, who are rational, and who care about minimizing the mess they might leave behind, and not parents like Sly and Doris, who clearly did not give a sh@t about how much work they were causing for Primo.
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Yes, make plans. Let people know what they are. My mother had already moved to a complex with staged living from very independent to total nursing care. Estate was simple. Mother-in-law had LTC policy that paid for home care. Small house with very little in the way of unnecessary items. Not quite as easy as my mother's estate but still good. But whatever you do, downsize and organize. This does not mean you have to sell your house. It means get rid of all the stuff you don't need to live your life and make sure you have information or your assets and liabilities.
ReplyDeleteYou're so right. My MIL kept saying she'd let the 'next people' take care of things. Except that it was us! Ended up having an auction for 80 years' and three generations' worth of stuff.
ReplyDeleteRe hospital bill
ReplyDeleteThis has happened to us with at least two estates. The hospital may well be attempting to "balance bill" the estate. That's a no-no, but they try to anyway. I don't remember the details, but when we wrote back questioning the bill and used the magic words "balance billing," guess what, never heard from them again!