The caregiving conversation that produces the most family conflict is the one that never officially happens.
In most families, caregiving roles get assigned by default rather than by design. One sibling is local, so they end up doing most of the visible work. Another is good with finances, so they handle the money. A third lives far away, so they do “less,” which is sometimes resented by the local sibling and sometimes used as a reason to feel left out by the distance sibling. Nobody quite agreed to the arrangement; everybody is partway resentful about it; the parent watches the family fragment and isn’t sure what to say.
This post is about doing it on purpose. A framework for explicitly dividing caregiving roles among siblings (or other family members), the patterns that work, the patterns that produce conflict, and how to keep the arrangement working as the parent’s needs change.
For the family-conflict layer, see Why Siblings Fight Over Inheritance and How to Avoid It.
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