Forty questions to settle before the van arrives

The money questions, written down before the van arrives

Have this conversation once, properly, and write down what you agreed. Not because anyone is untrustworthy, but because in eighteen months nobody will remember it the same way, and a sibling who was not in the room will remember it differently again.

Write it on one page, dated, and send a copy to every sibling.

Two places to bring in someone qualified. If money is going to change hands regularly, ask the accountant who does your taxes what needs recording and how. If a property is being sold, transferred, or used as a contribution, that is a conversation with an attorney before anything happens, not after.

• What, if anything, does your parent contribute each month, and starting when?
• Who pays the increased utility bills, and how is that calculated?
• Who buys their groceries and personal items — one pot or separate?
• Who pays for adaptations to the house, and who owns them afterwards?
• If you reduce your hours at work, is that acknowledged, and how?
• Who pays for paid help, and who arranges it?
• What happens to your parent's own house — sold, rented, or left standing, and who pays its running costs?
• Which of you sits on which accounts, and what does the bank require on file before it will speak to you?
• What is the arrangement if this does not work and they move out in a year?
• Who tells the siblings, and how often, what the money is actually doing?

The space and access questions, walked room by room

Do this with a tape measure, in the actual house, before you commit. Twenty minutes of measuring prevents the most expensive kind of surprise.

Walk the route your parent will take a dozen times a day — front door to their room, their room to the bathroom, their room to the kettle. Walk it at night with the lights as they normally are.

If equipment is likely to come into the house, the person to ask about what fits and what needs changing is an occupational therapist, and the time to ask is before you paint anything. Ask their doctor's office how a home visit gets arranged in your area.

• Which room, and is it on the same floor as a bathroom?
• How many stairs, and is there anywhere to stop halfway?
• How wide are the doorways to their room and the bathroom, in inches?
• Where would equipment go, and does the room still work with it in place?
• Where does their post go, and where do they keep their own paperwork?
• Which of their furniture is coming, and what is going where the sofa is now?
• Where will they sit that is not their bedroom — is there a second room they can be in?
• Where does a visitor park, and where does a wheelchair or walker live by the front door?
• Is there a lock on the bathroom door, and does it open from the outside?
• Where will the binder, the medication and the calendar live so everyone can find them?

The time questions: map the week before you agree to it

Print a blank weekly grid, seven columns, morning-afternoon-evening. Fill in what already exists: your job, the school run, your partner's shifts, the standing commitments. Then add what moving your parent in creates: meals, appointments, laundry, the sitting-with, the driving.

Look at what is left. That is your actual life for the next few years, and it is much easier to look at now than to discover in October.

Then ask the questions that the grid makes obvious. Who covers Tuesday? What happens on a workday when there is an appointment at 11am? What happens at night, and how many times a week is that realistic? Which of these tasks could be done by someone who is not you — delivered, ordered online, paid for, or done by a sibling on a fixed slot?

Ask each helping sibling for a fixed recurring slot, not "let me know if you need anything." A named Thursday evening every fortnight is worth more than an open offer, and it is the only kind of help that shows up on a grid.

Put the grid on the kitchen wall. The version in your head is not shareable.

The house rules that stop the arguments in month three

These sound trivial written down. They are the actual content of most family friction, and settling them in advance costs nothing.

Agree them as a household — including your partner and any children old enough to be in the conversation — and put the agreed version somewhere everyone can see it. Revisit it at three months, deliberately, on a date you set now.

• The thermostat: what number, and who is allowed to change it?
• Television: whose choice, in which room, and how loud after nine?
• Visitors: do they need warning, and does anyone need warning about yours?
• Meals: eaten together, or separately, and who decides what is cooked?
• The kitchen: is it shared, and what is off-limits?
• Smoking, alcohol, and where
• Driving: is your parent still driving, whose car, and who is asking their doctor about it rather than arguing about it at the table?
• Keys and door codes: who has them, including any paid helper
• Privacy: does anyone knock, and is anyone allowed in the other's room?
• Money in the house: who handles cash, and where does it live?
• The dog or the cat, and who walks and feeds it
• What happens when you go away: agreed now, in principle, not negotiated in a crisis

The questions to ask your own household

The person most likely to be quietly overruled in this decision is the one you live with, followed by whichever child loses their bedroom. Ask them directly and separately, and ask before it is decided rather than after.

Ask your partner: what would make this workable for you, and what would make it unbearable? What are you giving up, and what would you want protected — a room, an evening, a weekend a month? What do you want to be able to say to me in six months without it becoming a fight, and how do we make that sayable now?

Ask your children: which room, what changes for you, what do you want kept private, and what do you actually want to be asked to help with? Children will often take on more than you expect if they are asked rather than assumed, and resent much less than you expect if they are told the plan.

Ask yourself one question and answer it honestly on paper: what is the condition under which we would revisit this arrangement? Write it down now. Deciding the trigger in advance turns an impossible future conversation into a scheduled one.

The first two weeks: the address and account changes

There is a burst of administration that arrives with the removal van. Do it as one list in the first fortnight, or it drags on for a year and post keeps arriving at an empty house.

Work through it in one sitting with the binder open and a pen. Tick and date each line as it is done, and note who you spoke to.

• Postal redirection from the old address, and the date it expires
• Bank and credit union: change of address, and ask what the bank needs on file before it will discuss the account with you
• Pension and benefit payers: address change, and ask each one what form they require
• Insurance policies: home, car, and any other — the address on file affects the policy
• The pharmacy: ask how a prescription record is transferred to a pharmacy near you, and what they need from the old one
• The doctor's office: ask what registering at a new practice involves in your area and what records get transferred
• Utilities and council tax at the old property, and who is now responsible
• Voter registration and driving licence address
• Subscriptions, deliveries and the newspaper
• Anyone who visits the old house — a cleaner, a gardener, a neighbour with a key
• Update the emergency sheet on the fridge with the new address and the new nearest hospital
• Photograph the new medication shelf, the boiler controls and the fuse box, and put the photographs in the binder

Questions