Not Sure What to Say

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Burt_Macklin said:
I’m really trying to figure out why any honest person would make such a loan with money for their parents’ retirement. They are assuming all of the risk on themselves if the venture fails and if they make a good return they have to split the returns several different ways. Little to gain and everything to lose.
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Some find “other people’s money” and the opportunity to play with it intoxicating.
 
Dacinom said:
If it were my parents or anyone that I loved that needed care: I would offer to pay for groceries, their electric bill (directly) or any other kind of bills that I could pay directly. I would not hand money over to siblings or anyone for that matter, that had already mismanaged funds.

Perhaps by saying “I am happy to help dad, I will mail a check for $50 monthly to dad’s electric company and $50 monthly to dad’s insurance please give me the billing information” or whatever the amount that the sibling can afford. Even if the books were to be opened there is no way to guarantee that the siblings with power are not going to mismanage things again. It sounds as if they gave loans to personal business friends? What is to keep them from doing that again? Now they want siblings to hand over cash with no questions asked?

The siblings that mismanaged things should be apologetic, gracious, upfront about what happened and transparent. However from what you wrote it seems they are showing resistance to opening up the books. Perhaps the only way around this is for the other siblings to offer to pay dad’s bills directly. If the siblings in charge refuse this offer then there is reason to be suspicious because then they only want cash, not help for dad.

What a shame, this is so sad.
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Yes.
 
It seems that communication is already broken among the family members. The one managing the assets could have made the loans in good faith thinking it was a good investment, but may be caught in a bind because it was made to business associates. There are a lot of unanswered questions here. If the father is not destitute, I don’t think the siblings can be forced to pay anything toward his care. If the father still has assets, it would seem appropriate that the assets be sold to care for him as long as he isn’t displaced from his home if he is still in it.
I would suggest that the siblings consult a third party mediator. I know in Oregon some counties have these conflict/mediation resolution offices which may be used for all kinds of disputes. There are private practice mediators as well. Maybe the family can go to one of these places to try to problem solve and avoid anyone threatening legal action.
 
The last I heard is that the Majority Siblings are going to start with the Hates Conflict sibling and try to get a look at the books with as little drama or accusation as possible, based on not wanting to give a “yes” or “no” to this unexpected request without a lot more information than they have. They’re mostly hoping to get all of this settled without upsetting their father.
 
Xantippe said:
Some find “other people’s money” and the opportunity to play with it intoxicating.
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My sense is that the best guess by the rest of the family is that the Money Manager is honest and diligent but simply doesn’t want to have a committee of siblings in the peanut gallery giving instructions. A little bit late for that, probably. I hope s/he copes with that OK. Mind you, this is a family where asking for a no-questions-asked loan between siblings would not be out of the question, as there hasn’t been any abuse of that. That is not the most typical situation in the world. Outside mediation is not* at all *likely.
 
EasterJoy said:
The last I heard is that the Majority Siblings are going to start with the Hates Conflict sibling and try to get a look at the books with as little drama or accusation as possible, based on not wanting to give a “yes” or “no” to this unexpected request without a lot more information than they have. They’re mostly hoping to get all of this settled without upsetting their father.
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That’s entirely reasonable. I hope this gets sorted out with minimal fuss from here.
 
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