Entry 08 of 08 · St. Louis

Elder law attorney, mediator, or Aging Ahead: St. Louis help when siblings disagree about Mom's care

Where families go when the meeting fails: the agency that already exists for this, a mediator, a lawyer, and a neutral referee.

You searched for an elder law attorney in St. Louis because your siblings disagree about Mom's care and the meeting did not fix it, or never happened. Before you pay for an hour of anyone's time, know that St. Louis has four kinds of help for a stuck family, and only one of them bills by the hour. This page names them in the order most families should try them: the agency that already exists for this, a mediator, an elder law attorney, and a neutral professional as referee. It also says plainly which problem each one solves, because a lawyer cannot make your brother return a call and a mediator cannot tell you what the power of attorney means.

First: the agency that already exists for this

Every address in the metro is inside one Area Agency on Aging, and the state says Missouri has 10 of them, covering every county, with a Senior Resource Line at 1-800-235-5503 that connects callers to their local agency after they enter a ZIP code. For Ballwin, Chesterfield, Eureka, Valley Park and the rest of St. Louis County, that agency is Aging Ahead, which describes itself as one of 10 Area Agencies on Aging in Missouri, providing supportive services in St. Louis, St. Charles, Franklin and Jefferson counties since 1973, including Meals on Wheels, senior centers, caregiving services, and community options consulting and case management, at (800) 243-6060. For an address inside the city limits, the St. Louis Area Agency on Aging serves older adults who live within the City of St. Louis, at (314) 612-5918.

Why call them before a lawyer? Because a community options consultant's job is families in this exact spot: which programs Mom might qualify for, said out loud, without a bill attached to the sentence. The federal program behind much of that help, the National Family Caregiver Support Program, serves family caregivers providing care to individuals 60 years of age and older. If you need a human at 2am, United Way 211 in Greater St. Louis connects callers to a trained resource specialist 24/7. Dial it. And if the fight is partly about whether Mom qualifies for anything, the National Council on Aging's BenefitsCheckUp is a free screening tool you can run tonight with her ZIP code.

Second: a mediator, when the people are the problem

If the facts are known and the siblings still cannot agree, the problem is not information. It is three people who cannot be in a room. The Missouri Bar's public site describes mediation as a non-binding process in which a neutral person assists the parties to communicate as they explore options for resolving their dispute. Non-binding is the point. Nobody loses. The mediator does not decide who was right about the 2011 car; she runs the meeting your family could not run itself and gets three signatures on a one-page plan. The Bar says qualified neutrals can also be found by consulting The Missouri Bar List of Dispute Resolution Neutrals, and to contact the Bar or your local bar association for more. A minister, a hospital social worker, or a counselor can fill the same chair, and the Family Caregiver Alliance recommends exactly that when communication is particularly contentious.

Third: an elder law attorney, when the paper is the problem

Call a lawyer when the question has a legal answer: what Mom's power of attorney allows, whether she had capacity to sign it, how a personal care agreement should be written so Medicaid will honor it later, what happens to the house, or whether a court needs to name someone because nobody holds any document at all. Missouri law defines the court-appointed roles as a guardian, who has the care and custody of the person, and a conservator, who has the care and custody of the estate, and that is as far as this site goes on the subject. The Missouri Bar's public site lists LawyerSearch, discounted and pro bono services, Missouri.FreeLegalAnswers.org, and a Legal Resources Line at 573.636.3635, and its legal topics page carries a Senior Citizens Handbook and a probate guide that covers guardians and conservators under Missouri law. Bring the receipts folder, the meeting notes, and whatever document exists. An hour with the paper in front of the lawyer costs less than three hours of the lawyer asking what the paper says.

Do not hire a lawyer to make a sibling behave. That is not what they do.

Fourth: a neutral professional as referee

Some families hire a professional to be the one person every sibling will listen to: a social worker, a nurse consultant, or a private care manager who assesses what Mom needs and reports to the whole family at once. This site does not rank or recommend any of them and has no data to. What it can say is what the chair is for. The referee turns "Mom is fine" and "Mom is not fine" into one written assessment that nobody in the family authored, and that alone can end an eighteen-month fight. Ask Aging Ahead's community options staff whether that kind of service exists for Mom's situation. If the family pays for it, it is a line on the ledger, split like any other.

What if my siblings won't return calls about Mom's care?

Then stop calling and start sending. One monthly summary, one inventory with their lines blank, one meeting date, sent the same day each month whether they answer or not. The notes record "no reply" without heat. A sibling who will not engage has made a decision, and the family can plan around a decision. What it cannot plan around is waiting. If the silence is from the sibling who holds Mom's power of attorney and money is moving that nobody can see, that is no longer a family problem, and the Missouri Adult Abuse and Neglect Hotline is 1-800-392-0210, seven days a week from 7:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m.. Most silences are not that. Know the difference.

While the family works through those four doors, the shift still has to be covered on Thursday. New Plan Care, the paid placement on this site, is an independently owned non-medical in-home care company in Chesterfield that serves Ballwin, Chesterfield, Eureka, Glencoe, Grover, Pacific, Valley Park and St. Louis. Call (314) 405-0887 and ask about a schedule. It is a line on the ledger, not a verdict on your siblings.

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