Money and caring for parents: who pays and who does the work

“I’m not blaming you for anything. I’m just saying that I transfer money for Mum’s care every month, and you’re with her because you’re at home anyway.”

She heard the sentence in a way her brother probably didn’t mean it. She didn’t hear “thank you for being with her”. She heard “you have time, and I work”. And in that moment every night she had got up for her mother flashed before her eyes, every holiday she hadn’t taken and every hour she had cut from her working day to catch the community nurse. None of these things had a price. Her brother’s amount did.

When a parent needs help, two currencies almost always appear in the family: time and money. One person pays, another does the work. On paper it seems fair. In reality, this is exactly where many of the most stubborn resentments between siblings take root. In this post I will try to show why — and how to talk about money in the family before it becomes a weapon.

Two currencies that can’t be exchanged

To economists it seems simple: an hour of care has a certain value, money has another, and if one person contributes one and someone else the other, you can work out whether the balance is fair. In families this doesn’t work, because money and time don’t mean the same thing to people.

In her book on the social meaning of money, the sociologist Viviana Zelizer showed that we never treat money as neutral. The same amount means something different depending on whether it is a wage, a gift, an inheritance or compensation. When a brother pays for his mother’s care, for him it often means love and responsibility expressed in the way he can manage. For the sister who is with their mother every day, the same amount can mean that her brother has bought his way out of caring — that he paid so that he wouldn’t have to be there.

Both of them have a point. And because each is measuring in their own currency, neither sees how much the other has given.

What doesn’t show up on the bill

The money you give for a parent is visible. You can add it up, show a bank statement, compare it. The costs borne by the person who provides care are mostly invisible — and often financial too, they just show up later.

In 2021 the American organisation AARP found that family carers spend, on average, around a quarter of their income out of their own pocket on caregiving. That figure doesn’t include what is lost indirectly: the hours someone cuts at work, the promotions they don’t go for, the savings they don’t build, and the pension that will be smaller as a result. Slovenian figures are different and the support system is different, but the pattern I see is similar: the person who cares also pays with their future.

On top of that, they pay with their health. A meta-analysis by Martin Pinquart and Silvia Sörensen showed that family carers, compared with people who are not caring, have more symptoms of depression and stress and somewhat poorer physical health. That isn’t money, but it is a cost — and it isn’t recorded on any family statement.

Why families don’t talk about money

In many families money is a subject nobody talks about directly. Parents never told their children how much they earned; children don’t tell their parents how much debt they have. When caring for a parent comes along, this silence suddenly becomes very tangled: who will pay for home help? Will Mum sell the flat? Should the person who provides the care get something for themselves?

Because nobody talks about it, people guess. And because they guess, they fill in the story themselves — usually to their own disadvantage. The sister thinks her brother pays because he can’t be bothered to deal with Mum. The brother thinks his sister expects Mum to leave her the flat for her care. Nobody asks.

Money in relationships between parents and children is often not just money. It is a way of expressing love, keeping control or avoiding closeness. I wrote more about this in Money as love and control: parents and adult children. When a parent is ill, these old patterns don’t stop — they often grow stronger.

A parent’s money belongs to the parent first

In conversations about who will pay, one person is easily forgotten: the parent. If Mum has a pension, savings or a flat, it is first of all her money and her decision, for as long as she is able to make it. In good faith, children can start treating it as a shared family purse — or as a future inheritance that needs protecting.

Both can push the parent into a position where they are no longer an adult but the subject of an arrangement. That is why it is good for the parent to be part of the conversation about money as far as possible. And to be asked what they want — not just what is practical.

On the other hand, it also happens that a parent uses money to keep the children close: “Whoever looks after me will get the house.” A promise like that can sound like gratitude, but it often works as pressure — and sows mistrust between siblings before anyone has inherited anything. If someone is holding you in a caring role with promises or threats, it helps to recognise when it has already become emotional blackmail. What happens between siblings later, once the inheritance is on the table, is the subject of Siblings and inheritance: when you argue over a watch but it’s about something else.

The family ledger

The family therapist Ivan Boszormenyi-Nagy described an invisible ledger running in every family — who gave what to whom and who owes whom. This ledger doesn’t record only money. It also records care, recognition, the time someone did or didn’t get, and the fairness someone did or didn’t experience.

When care for a parent is divided unequally and nobody acknowledges it, debt builds up in the ledger. The person who gives more eventually feels that someone owes them something — and that feeling is justified. Nagy warned that a person who has given for a long time without recognition can develop what he called destructive entitlement: the sense that they are now owed everything, even if it hurts others. That is how a sister who cared for her mother for ten years ends up demanding the whole flat — and the others are shocked, because they never saw how much she gave.

This leads to something very practical: a debt in the family ledger isn’t settled with money alone. A great deal is often settled simply by someone saying out loud: “I see how much you do. Thank you.” Where that recognition is missing, resentment builds up that no amount of money can cover later.

The conversation everyone puts off

Because money is so loaded, families often bring it up only in a crisis — when a bill has to be paid or when someone is already angry. That is when the conversation is hardest. It is much better to talk about money while it is not yet urgent.

This is how the beginning might sound (composed, not a real person):

“I’d like us to talk about how we share the costs for Mum. Not because I think anyone is giving too little.”
“I can’t give money anyway, you know that.”
“I know. But you’re with her almost every day. I never counted that, and I should have.”
A pause. “I didn’t know you even saw it.”
“I do. Maybe part of what I pay could go to you. So you don’t have to cut your hours at work even more.”
“I don’t know if that would feel right to me.”
“OK, then let’s agree on what would.”

Nothing revolutionary happened in this conversation. But the brother said for the first time that he sees his sister’s work. And the sister heard for the first time that her care counts in a currency her brother understands, too.

Exercise: one shared sheet

If tension about money is building up in your family around caring for a parent, a simple exercise can help. Do it on your own first, and then — if it feels safe — suggest it to the others.

1. On one sheet, write down every contribution by every family member over the last three months — in two columns: time and money. Including the parent’s. Including the ones that don’t seem important to you.
2. Don’t add anything up or convert anything. The aim isn’t to find out who gave more, but for everyone to see everything. Keep hours and euros each in their own column.
3. Next to each contribution, ask yourself: has it ever been acknowledged out loud? If not, write down who should hear it.
4. Write down one thing you need — not as a reproach but as a request. “I would need …” or “I’d like us to agree on …”.
5. Choose a moment when there is no crisis, and bring the sheet to a family conversation. Start by acknowledging someone else, not with your own demand.

If this conversation shows that you as the carer have been overloaded for a while, you can read about how that shows itself, and why it is so hard to admit, in Why it is the most responsible and reliable people who burn out.

An agreement about money is a good one when it is clear and when everyone knows it. The picture below sums up a path that often proves useful in the families I meet.

Where this view isn’t enough

I don’t want this post to sound as if every money dispute in a family can be resolved with a good conversation and a sheet of paper. It can’t.

Sometimes there simply isn’t enough money. When none of the siblings has money to spare and the parent’s pension doesn’t cover the care needed, the problem isn’t family fairness but the fact that the family can’t manage on its own. Then it doesn’t help for siblings to argue about who should give more. What helps is turning to the centre for social work, where they can tell you what help your parent is entitled to and what the obligations of relatives are, and to your parent’s GP and the community nursing service, who know which forms of home help are available. The rules depend on circumstances, so it is best to ask directly.

Sometimes it is exploitation. If you suspect that someone — including someone in the family — is using your parent’s savings or pension for themselves without their knowledge or consent, this is no longer a matter for a family agreement. Contact the centre for social work, and in an emergency the police on 113 (in Slovenia).

And sometimes a fair division is impossible. Some siblings will never give as much as others — neither time nor money. Researchers who studied siblings caring for parents noticed that people soften inequity in two ways: some try to change the division, others change how they see it. When the first doesn’t work, the task is less about forcing others and more about setting boundaries to your own giving, so that it doesn’t wear you out. What happens when a brother or sister stays on the sidelines I describe in When your brother or sister won’t help care for your parents.

What therapy can bring

Money disputes between siblings are rarely only about money. Underneath them there are often old questions: who was valued in the family, who always had to give way, who was allowed to take and who had to give. In relational family therapy, in which I am training, we uncover these layers slowly — not to establish who is right, but so that you can agree on the present without paying for the past over and over again.

Sometimes one sibling comes, sometimes several. Both make sense. My sessions take place in person in Ljubljana, and I also work in English. To look at how patterns of giving and taking formed in your family across generations, a longer session, A Look into the Past, can also be useful. You will also find a short overview of what caring for an ageing parent involves in the knowledge base.

The guilt you feel along the way — because you’re angry with your brother, because you’d like something for yourself, because you’re thinking about money while Mum is ill — is mostly guilt that doesn’t help you. I described how to tell it apart from the kind that tells you something in Healthy guilt and toxic guilt: how to tell them apart.

What to remember

• When caring for parents, two currencies — time and money — meet in the family, and they can’t simply be exchanged.
• The carer’s costs are mostly invisible: lost hours, lower income and pension, health.
• A parent’s money is the parent’s first; they should be part of the agreement as far as possible.
• A debt in the family ledger is often settled with recognition, not only with money.
• A conversation about money is easiest before it is urgent. For rights and obligations, ask the centre for social work, and with larger assets get legal advice too.