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Feeling hopeless
Honeymonster_2
Posts: 2 Newbie
I really don't know where to start with all this. Long story, lots of problems! So here goes ...
11 years ago I gave up a job which I had held for over 20 years to come and work for my 2 bothers in their steel fabrication business. I run the office. My husband up until 9 months ago worked here too until he went self employed in much the same line of work. Our parents are now elderly. Dad is 80 and has had his oesophagus removed a few years ago due to cancer and part of his bowel removed last year again due to cancer. He suffers from Parkinsons and has only one eye due to an accident many years ago and is just out of hospital about 10 days ago following a prostate operation and blood transfusion. He is always very tired with little energy and gets dizzy spells frequently throughout the day. My Mum is 79 and is in the process of a diagnosis for dementia which I believe she has had for probably about 2 years. She has had her CT scan and her meeting with the "memory clinic" and has now been referred on to a doctor for medication but is still waiting on this. She also had a leg ulcer for over a year and this has just healed. She has terrible feet and has trouble walking and I have to take her to the hospital every 3 weeks to see a podiatrist.
I am the oldest in the family and being the only girl all the care for our parents falls on me. This is where the problem lies. I am expected to be at work and on top of everything as well as providing care for our parents. My parents mean the world to me. I do the shopping, cleaning, most of the cooking (Mum can manage some days but everything runs late and gets burnt a lot of the time), washing, ironing, gardening, arranging appointments, taking them to the appointments. All this with no help from either brother or their wives. I am married with 3 teenage children and struggle to find time for each of them. My oldest girl would go in and make dinner or tea and hoover for them in between her shifts at work, but she works long hours and doesn't have a lot of free time during the day. My brothers' contribution to their care amounts to calling for a cup of tea once a week, usually about 10 at night and sitting talking about work until near midnight. What they don't understand, or maybe just don't want to know even though they have been told, is that if I don't go to the house to put my Mum to bed at night she is wandering about until 2 and 3 in the morning before she will get into bed. She seems to have lost all understanding of time. On Christmas day they were coming to me for dinner, they didn't arrive until nearly 4 pm! My Dad later told me he had found my Mum sleeping in the bathroom on a chair at 5 am that morning. This was when I realised she needed help with getting to bed. I just can't go every night to put her to bed, I would be worn out given that it takes about an hour and a half to make supper, undress her and get her into the bathroom to get washed. Some nights she could spend nearly an hour in the bathroom with the door locked and I just don't know what she is doing in there. On nights when I do go to get her to bed I am not coming home to my own house until 1 in the morning.
My brothers have become resentful of the time I am spending away from work to care for in particular our Mother. They think she doesn't need all the care that I say she does. When they go to see her I have all done for the day that needs doing. I can't give up work as we need the money. I prepare the wages at work and some weeks I take my wage in full and some weeks I don't take anything at all. Last week during a row over the phone while I was at our parents I was told not to pay myself a wage any more even though I had been in work the previous 2 days and was just back from a hospital appointment that day with my Mum and was getting dinner ready for them and was going into work as soon as I had that done that day. I am supposed to work 4 days in the office, Friday being my day off, but because I can't be in work for a full day I have to come in on a Friday and try and work up my hours that way. I have told them on quite a few occasions that I am finding everything very stressful and have broke down in tears each time as I am finding it all very overwhelming. They have told me I should take some time off (without pay) and they will get someone else in to run the office. Why should I have to do without a wage and care for our parents so that they can sit back and not help and continue to earn their money?
I came into the office at about 10 pm one night on my way home from our parents to check if there was anything urgent on my desk as I hadn't been able to come in that day at all and the heat was unbelievable! I made my way out into the workshop in the pitch dark (no light switch near the office door) and picked my way along the floor to the kitchen where the boiler for the heating is and turned on the light and seen that someone had altered the timing on the controls. So oil was being burned at night when there was no one there. This altering of the time clock had been going on for some time so I pinned a note up above the boiler saying that if anybody didn't understand the workings of a time clock they should leave it to those who did as money was being wasted. On the way back to the office in the dark I cut my leg on a sharp piece of steel which was sticking out and stumbled and almost fell on my face! About a week later I seen where someone had wrote on the corner of the notice that it was also a waste of money burning oil when there was no office staff to make use of it. I made enquiries discreetly as to who had wrote this and was told it was my 20 year old nephew. I said nothing until another week passed and there was no heat one day. The boiler had broken down and we had to get a local plumber in to repair it. Because we all knew him I didn't want him coming in and seeing that there was a bit of friction so I decided to get the culprit to take it down. I called him into the kitchen and closed the door and asked him to take the notice down as I had been told it was him who had wrote it. He got quite stroppy but took it down and threw it in the bin. After the plumber had been I brought the phone to my brother in the workshop, as there was a phone call for him and before he took it out of my hand he started shouting at me in front of everyone. "Why did I make his son take down the notice ... was I ashamed of it?" It quickly escalated into a roaring match from him and me in tears.
I prepared accounts last month for submission to HMRC and when my younger brother asked to see them he compared what he had taken from the business and what my other brother had taken. He then realised that he had taken less than a third of what our other brother took. I have known this has been going on for a long time and I really think he is being fleeced. He said he had a problem getting any money from the business as our older brother always has the cheque book for the bank it is never left in the office. We used to bank with a different bank but our older brother decided to open an account at another bank and now very little money goes into the original bank, which is the only one my younger brother can access. When I told him this he left the office and phoned my brother and told him I had said I thought he was being fleeced. I then got a phone call from a very cross brother wanting to know if I had said this! I just feel as if I have been stabbed in the back by my younger brother. I only told him as I felt he needed to know what was going on. My brothers received a visit from HMRC last week wanting to know why PAYE was not up to date. Again I got a phone call to our parents house demanding to know why. When I pointed out that I couldn't do the PAYE as I did not have the cheque books to see what each employee was paid for the past few weeks I was told he would give them to me the following day to allow me to do it. Now a full week later I am still waiting on them despite reminding him that I am still not able to complete the returns.
What a mess! I just don't know where to turn. I am not sleeping at night as everything is just playing over and over in my head and I feel I have nowhere to turn.
11 years ago I gave up a job which I had held for over 20 years to come and work for my 2 bothers in their steel fabrication business. I run the office. My husband up until 9 months ago worked here too until he went self employed in much the same line of work. Our parents are now elderly. Dad is 80 and has had his oesophagus removed a few years ago due to cancer and part of his bowel removed last year again due to cancer. He suffers from Parkinsons and has only one eye due to an accident many years ago and is just out of hospital about 10 days ago following a prostate operation and blood transfusion. He is always very tired with little energy and gets dizzy spells frequently throughout the day. My Mum is 79 and is in the process of a diagnosis for dementia which I believe she has had for probably about 2 years. She has had her CT scan and her meeting with the "memory clinic" and has now been referred on to a doctor for medication but is still waiting on this. She also had a leg ulcer for over a year and this has just healed. She has terrible feet and has trouble walking and I have to take her to the hospital every 3 weeks to see a podiatrist.
I am the oldest in the family and being the only girl all the care for our parents falls on me. This is where the problem lies. I am expected to be at work and on top of everything as well as providing care for our parents. My parents mean the world to me. I do the shopping, cleaning, most of the cooking (Mum can manage some days but everything runs late and gets burnt a lot of the time), washing, ironing, gardening, arranging appointments, taking them to the appointments. All this with no help from either brother or their wives. I am married with 3 teenage children and struggle to find time for each of them. My oldest girl would go in and make dinner or tea and hoover for them in between her shifts at work, but she works long hours and doesn't have a lot of free time during the day. My brothers' contribution to their care amounts to calling for a cup of tea once a week, usually about 10 at night and sitting talking about work until near midnight. What they don't understand, or maybe just don't want to know even though they have been told, is that if I don't go to the house to put my Mum to bed at night she is wandering about until 2 and 3 in the morning before she will get into bed. She seems to have lost all understanding of time. On Christmas day they were coming to me for dinner, they didn't arrive until nearly 4 pm! My Dad later told me he had found my Mum sleeping in the bathroom on a chair at 5 am that morning. This was when I realised she needed help with getting to bed. I just can't go every night to put her to bed, I would be worn out given that it takes about an hour and a half to make supper, undress her and get her into the bathroom to get washed. Some nights she could spend nearly an hour in the bathroom with the door locked and I just don't know what she is doing in there. On nights when I do go to get her to bed I am not coming home to my own house until 1 in the morning.
My brothers have become resentful of the time I am spending away from work to care for in particular our Mother. They think she doesn't need all the care that I say she does. When they go to see her I have all done for the day that needs doing. I can't give up work as we need the money. I prepare the wages at work and some weeks I take my wage in full and some weeks I don't take anything at all. Last week during a row over the phone while I was at our parents I was told not to pay myself a wage any more even though I had been in work the previous 2 days and was just back from a hospital appointment that day with my Mum and was getting dinner ready for them and was going into work as soon as I had that done that day. I am supposed to work 4 days in the office, Friday being my day off, but because I can't be in work for a full day I have to come in on a Friday and try and work up my hours that way. I have told them on quite a few occasions that I am finding everything very stressful and have broke down in tears each time as I am finding it all very overwhelming. They have told me I should take some time off (without pay) and they will get someone else in to run the office. Why should I have to do without a wage and care for our parents so that they can sit back and not help and continue to earn their money?
I came into the office at about 10 pm one night on my way home from our parents to check if there was anything urgent on my desk as I hadn't been able to come in that day at all and the heat was unbelievable! I made my way out into the workshop in the pitch dark (no light switch near the office door) and picked my way along the floor to the kitchen where the boiler for the heating is and turned on the light and seen that someone had altered the timing on the controls. So oil was being burned at night when there was no one there. This altering of the time clock had been going on for some time so I pinned a note up above the boiler saying that if anybody didn't understand the workings of a time clock they should leave it to those who did as money was being wasted. On the way back to the office in the dark I cut my leg on a sharp piece of steel which was sticking out and stumbled and almost fell on my face! About a week later I seen where someone had wrote on the corner of the notice that it was also a waste of money burning oil when there was no office staff to make use of it. I made enquiries discreetly as to who had wrote this and was told it was my 20 year old nephew. I said nothing until another week passed and there was no heat one day. The boiler had broken down and we had to get a local plumber in to repair it. Because we all knew him I didn't want him coming in and seeing that there was a bit of friction so I decided to get the culprit to take it down. I called him into the kitchen and closed the door and asked him to take the notice down as I had been told it was him who had wrote it. He got quite stroppy but took it down and threw it in the bin. After the plumber had been I brought the phone to my brother in the workshop, as there was a phone call for him and before he took it out of my hand he started shouting at me in front of everyone. "Why did I make his son take down the notice ... was I ashamed of it?" It quickly escalated into a roaring match from him and me in tears.
I prepared accounts last month for submission to HMRC and when my younger brother asked to see them he compared what he had taken from the business and what my other brother had taken. He then realised that he had taken less than a third of what our other brother took. I have known this has been going on for a long time and I really think he is being fleeced. He said he had a problem getting any money from the business as our older brother always has the cheque book for the bank it is never left in the office. We used to bank with a different bank but our older brother decided to open an account at another bank and now very little money goes into the original bank, which is the only one my younger brother can access. When I told him this he left the office and phoned my brother and told him I had said I thought he was being fleeced. I then got a phone call from a very cross brother wanting to know if I had said this! I just feel as if I have been stabbed in the back by my younger brother. I only told him as I felt he needed to know what was going on. My brothers received a visit from HMRC last week wanting to know why PAYE was not up to date. Again I got a phone call to our parents house demanding to know why. When I pointed out that I couldn't do the PAYE as I did not have the cheque books to see what each employee was paid for the past few weeks I was told he would give them to me the following day to allow me to do it. Now a full week later I am still waiting on them despite reminding him that I am still not able to complete the returns.
What a mess! I just don't know where to turn. I am not sleeping at night as everything is just playing over and over in my head and I feel I have nowhere to turn.
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Comments
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This is way too much for anyone to cope with, so you do have my sympathies.
Basically you need to get your parents' care needs assessed so that you can look at home care packages to assist them.
https://www.carersuk.org/help-and-advice/practical-support/getting-care-and-support/needs-assessment
This will set out what each of them need, so none of your brothers will be able to argue with the findings of the assessment.
You can then discuss the costs and how this will be financed.“All shall be well, and all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well.”0 -
First of all , edit your post with paragraphs to make it easier to read. Secondly on this forum i would just stick to family problems with your parents. Post the stuff about your HMRC problems somewhere else on the forum - possibly small business or tax."if the state cannot find within itself a place for those who peacefully refuse to worship at its temples, then it’s the state that’s become extreme".Revd Dr Giles Fraser on Radio 4 20170
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It's time to bail out.
B4lls to the lot of them.
They won't change, ever .... and you don't need this cr4p.
Walk .... and with that behind you, have a cup of tea and concentrate on all the other stuff in your life.0 -
I'd get another job before HMRC come knocking on your door about tax evasion. Or the Police about embezzlement, or somebody else about breaches of employment law.I could dream to wide extremes, I could do or die: I could yawn and be withdrawn and watch the world go by.Yup you are officially Rock n Roll
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Oh hun, I wish I could give you a hug, This is way too much for one person to deal with. I agree with Serendipitious you need to get your parents assess to see if they qualify for care - I'd hope that with your mum going through the diagnosis at the moment that the help will be given.
Honestly, your brother sounds useless... well both of them. Can you get everyone together brothers and wives and your family and just lay it all out? You need to decide together who does what as you cannot carry this load on your own.
Oh and I would be seriously thinking about another job away from the family! Only downside is I imagine an employer would be a lot harder to get time off from.Swagbuckling since Aug 2016 - Earnings so far.. £55.0 -
You might not want to burden your husband with all of your worries, as he has his own business to worry about. But he needs to know as your 'nearest & dearest' that you are really going through it. Try to find a time (not easy I would have thought) when you are both not too tired & broach the subject with him.
He may be too wrapped up in his own worries, or he might have practical solutions or at least be able to sympathise as he knows the company well. If you get little response, at least you will have confided in him & he may come back to you with some ideas and/or emotional support when he has had some time to think about it.
would've . . . could've . . . should've . . .
A.A.A.S. (Associate of the Acronym Abolition Society)
There's definitely no 'a' in 'definitely'.0 -
Sorry I didn't get to edit any of the above, I had to leave the office to collect my daughter from the bus stop.
I have discussed care with my parents but they don't want help from care givers as they believe they don't need it and are managing the best themselves!
If I were to leave my job and start a new one I wouldn't be able to continue caring for my parents the way I am now. My job is only 1 mile from their home so I can drop in and out throughout the day to keep an eye on things.
I should also say I have not had a pay rise in the 11 years I have been there, in fact I am worse off as I get a fixed amount each week regardless of the increase in personal allowances. My husband was promised a pay rise when he worked there and didn't get it although one brother blamed the other for it being overlooked! He finally had enough of the situation and left but I think a lot of the problems I am experiencing are as a direct result of him leaving his job and in essence setting up as self employed in a similar line of work.
I have asked for help with caring for both parents and I was told by my older brother that his wife would see if she could help, she doesn't work. I'm still waiting for the help. Their daughter finished her nursing degree and came home in early November and was applying for jobs. She was at home until about 10 days ago when she started her first job. All the time she was at home doing nothing she could have helped. My Mum still gave her an envelope of money when she was going back to start her new job. So angry with the lot of them, they are always there if they thought they could get a pound!0 -
I think you need to be very clear with them that if they won't accept any help other than yours, you cannot do any more than you have been doing, and will in future be doing a good deal less.Honeymonster wrote: »I have discussed care with my parents but they don't want help from care givers as they believe they don't need it and are managing the best themselves!
For example, if you DON'T go and help your mum to bed, she won't go. Point this out to Dad. At the very least if someone came in to do SOME of what you do, there would be less for you to do.
And yes, look for another job.
I'm sorry, but it looks as if it's going to get messy ...Signature removed for peace of mind0 -
They believe they are managing best by themselves because you are doing a lot of the work.
If you stopped doing the work, they wouldn't be doing so well
You are stressed, and a bit overwhlemed with office politics. Can you get a part time job somewhere else?
And really, you need to evaluate what exactly you want to spend time doing, because I doubt you'd stop doing things for your parents out of guilt, or obligation.
Decide what things you are ready to let go of, and then let go of them.
You are not superwoman, you don't need to sort out everyones lives or business, only your own.Non me fac calcitrare tuum culi0 -
You do have choices and have to make some because you cannot continue like this. You will have a breakdown and be no use to anyone far least yourself, you have to look after yourself first to be in a good physical and emotional state before caring for others. Anyone can see you are speading yourself far too thinly and noone in the family is getting quality time with you.
Your brothers, particularly the older one sound a disgrace, over your employment and complete disregard for the pressure you are under as sole carer. Your husband has moved on from the company and its time you did too. I am sorry to be blunt but if you actually sat down and wrote down the positives it would be a very short list.
What would I do,
get a new job, something with flexible hours if needs be
look to moving parents into granny annex or similar if at all possible, even building something at home if feasable
Explain to parents that they are going to have to accept help from others and sit down with family and insist all contribute to care by way of a rota and that invcludes brothers and their families aswell.
I hate to say it but I think they are taking complete advantage of you and do not accept them reducing you to tears, get assertive and take control of this situation.0
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