The Family Care Meeting: What to Ask Your Siblings

Set It Up So It Cannot Become an Argument

Send the agenda in writing at least a week ahead, with the thirty questions attached. Nobody should arrive and discover what the meeting is about. The person who calls the meeting is not thereby in charge of the outcome, and saying so in the invitation removes half the defensiveness before anyone sits down.

Set a time limit — ninety minutes — and stick to it. Meetings without an end time drift into old ground. If it needs a second meeting, book the second meeting.

Decide beforehand whether your parent is present. There is no universal right answer. If they are, plan which parts they are in for and ask them first in every section. If they are not, agree how they will be told what was decided, by whom, and when.

One person takes notes and is not the person leading. Video call is fine; the record matters more than the room. Agree at the start that nothing is decided until it is written down with a name and a date next to it.

• Send the agenda and the questions a week ahead
• Ninety minutes, with an end time everyone has agreed
• Decide in advance whether your parent attends, and for which parts
• One person leads, a different person writes
• Nothing counts as a decision until it has a name and a date beside it

Questions About What Is Actually Happening Now

Start with facts, because this is the section where the gap between siblings is widest and least acknowledged. The one who visits weekly and the one who calls monthly genuinely have different pictures, and neither is lying.

Go round the table and let each person answer the first question without interruption. What do you see when you visit, and how often are you there. Write the frequencies down. They are often a surprise to at least one person present.

The hours question is the one that changes the temperature of the room. Ask everyone to estimate their hours a week honestly, including phone calls, admin and worrying about it at work. Write the numbers on the page where everyone can see them. It is much harder to argue with a column of numbers than with a feeling that you are doing everything.

• What do you see when you visit, and how often are you there?
• What has changed in the last three months that we all agree on?
• Who currently does the shopping, the bills, the appointments and the phone calls?
• How many hours a week is that for each of us, honestly?
• What does our parent say they want, in their own words?
• What do we not know, and who is going to find out?
• What would fall apart tomorrow if one of us stopped?

Questions About Who Does What

The aim is not equal effort. It is covered tasks and a named owner for each one. Equal is impossible when one sibling lives four hours away and another has small children at home, and pretending otherwise is what makes these meetings fail.

Start with the tasks that can be done from anywhere: insurance calls, appointment booking, prescription ordering, bill checking, keeping the folder up to date. These are real work and they are invisible, which is why the distant sibling should own several of them.

Name one point of contact for doctors and agencies. Not two. Professionals will use whichever name they have and the other person will find out second-hand, which is where a great deal of family friction comes from.

End this section with a commitment each: one line, one name, one date this month.

• Which tasks can be done from another city, and who takes those?
• Who is the single point of contact for doctors and agencies?
• Who holds the folder, and how do the rest of us see what is in it?
• What is the backup when the main person is ill or away?
• How often do we meet again, and who calls the meeting?
• How do we share updates between meetings — one group message, one shared page, or a weekly call?
• What counts as urgent enough to call everybody, and who decides?
• What does each of us commit to this month, in one line, with a date?

Questions About Money

Money is the section families skip, and skipping it is why the resentment arrives eighteen months later. Keep it administrative: what is spent, whose money, who keeps the receipts, who can see the record.

Agree that somebody keeps a simple ledger of what is spent on your parent's care and who paid it. Not because anyone is suspected of anything, but because a written record protects the person doing the spending, who is usually the person doing everything else as well.

The question about time versus money is worth asking out loud. One sibling can often contribute cash and not hours, and another the reverse. That trade is entirely reasonable and much easier once it has been named rather than silently resented.

Anything you cannot resolve, write down as a question for a professional and name who will ask it.

• What is being spent on our parent's care each month, and who sees the figures?
• Whose money is paying for what at the moment?
• Who keeps the receipts, and where?
• How do we handle the sibling who can give time but not money, or money but not time?
• Do we want a written record of what each person contributes, and who writes it?
• Who reviews the bank and card statements, and how often?
• Which money questions do we need to put to a professional, and who books that?

Questions Nobody Wants to Ask

Put these at the end, when the practical work is done and the room has warmed up. They take twenty minutes and they prevent the worst arguments, which are always the ones held in a hospital corridor under time pressure.

The most important is the one about your parent's own wishes. Has anyone actually asked them, in words, and did anyone write the answer down with a date. Very often the honest answer is no, and identifying that is worth the whole meeting.

Ask about the decision rules too. Which decisions must be unanimous and which does the main carer make alone. Deciding that in a calm room is straightforward. Deciding it at midnight is not.

The final question is the one that lets people say the thing they came to say. Go round the table. Let each person answer without a reply.

• What would have to happen before we would consider a move?
• Who would decide if our parent could not, and has that been written down anywhere?
• Have we asked our parent what they want, and who wrote the answer down?
• What is each of us most worried about here?
• Which decisions must be unanimous, and which does the main carer make alone?
• How do we handle it when two of us disagree in front of our parent?
• What do we do if one of us stops replying?
• What is the one thing you came here wanting to say?

The Record: One Page, Sent Within a Day

The meeting is worth nothing without the page. Memory is not a record, and in six months every sibling will remember a version that suits them.

One page, four columns: decision, owner, date due, done. Plus a header with the date, who was present, and the date of the next meeting. Anything discussed but not decided goes in a short list at the bottom marked "open", so it comes back next time rather than disappearing.

Send it within twenty-four hours to everyone, including anyone who could not attend. Ask for corrections within three days and say that silence counts as agreement. Then it is the record, and the argument about what was agreed cannot happen.

Keep every page in one place, newest at the front. After three meetings you have something genuinely valuable: a written history of who agreed to what, which is the single most effective answer to a sibling who says nobody told them.

• Four columns: decision, owner, date due, done
• Header: date, who was present, date of the next meeting
• Open items listed at the bottom so they return next time
• Sent within 24 hours to everyone, including absentees
• Corrections within three days; after that it stands

Questions