The first 30 days after a parent moves to care — a practical guide

By the time the paperwork at the assisted-living facility is signed, the adult child handling the move is running on adrenaline and four hours of sleep. The instinct in that moment is to fix everything immediately — sell the house this week, empty the closets this weekend, settle the trust by Tuesday.

That instinct is wrong. The first 30 days have an order. Doing the wrong thing first creates problems that take six months to unwind. Here's the sequence that works.

Week 1 — Stabilize, don't decide

Your parent has just experienced one of the most disorienting transitions of their life. Your job in week one is to make sure they are safe, comfortable, and oriented in the new environment. Real estate decisions can wait.

What to do:

- **Visit daily.** Even if Mom or Dad is non-responsive or seems "fine." The first week of dementia transitions is when sundowning, falls, and medication errors spike. - **Set up mail forwarding** from the home address to your address (USPS does this online in 10 minutes). Keep mail flowing to you while you sort what's important and what's junk. - **Secure the home.** Change the smart-lock codes or rekey, set up an interior camera if it makes you sleep better, set the thermostat to a low default. Don't worry about anything else inside yet. - **Find the important papers.** Will, trust, durable power of attorney, healthcare directive, insurance policies, deed to the house. Put them in one folder. If you can't find them, contact your parent's attorney.

What NOT to do this week:

- Don't make decisions about selling the house. You can't see clearly yet. - Don't throw anything away. Anything. - Don't have the "what do we do with the stuff" sibling meeting. Everyone is too raw. - Don't talk to a realtor about listing. (Talk to one about the timeline, sure — but no listing decisions.)

Week 2 — Information gathering

By week two the immediate crisis has stabilized. Now you start gathering the information you'll need to make good decisions.

What to do:

- **Get the financial picture.** Bank accounts, retirement accounts, social security, pension, life insurance. Use the durable power of attorney (if you have one) to call each institution and confirm balances. - **Get the legal picture.** Schedule a 30-minute meeting with your parent's estate attorney (or an attorney, if there isn't one yet) to clarify: is there a trust? Is the house in the trust? What is the probate exposure? Who are the beneficiaries? - **Get the property picture.** Have a realtor (yes — Roger or someone else you trust) walk the home with you. The goal is NOT to list. The goal is to understand: what's it worth as-is, what could it be worth with reasonable preparation, what are the structural issues, what's the realistic timeline. You will use this information for decisions in week three and beyond. - **Get the care-cost picture.** What does the facility cost monthly? How long can your parent afford it from current assets before the house needs to be sold to cover ongoing costs? Most families discover the timeline is 18 months to 5 years, depending on the situation.

What NOT to do this week:

- Don't start cleaning out yet. The information you gather this week often changes the cleanout plan dramatically. - Don't accept any "we buy houses" letters or postcards. They will start arriving. Ignore them.

Week 3 — The sibling meeting

Now you have enough information to have the conversation with the rest of the family. Have it in person if possible, by video if not. Allow 90 minutes minimum.

The agenda:

1. **Where is Mom/Dad, how are they doing, what do they need.** Open with this. Real estate is downstream of care. 2. **What are the financial and legal facts.** Walk siblings through what you learned in week two. Bring documents. 3. **What is the realistic timeline.** When does the house need to be sold to keep the care plan viable? Six months? Two years? Ten years? This frames everything else. 4. **What does each sibling want from the contents of the home.** Walk through, in order: papers, photographs, jewelry, specific furniture, sentimental items. Write down what each person claims. 5. **What is the consensus on the house itself.** Sell soon? Hold? Rent? Keep for one specific child's use? Surface disagreements but don't force a decision today.

The most important rule of the sibling meeting: **nobody decides anything they don't want to decide.** If anyone needs more time, they get more time. The price of forcing a decision is family damage that lasts decades.

Week 4 — The first concrete decisions

By week four, the family has aligned (or hasn't — and that's its own decision). Now you make the first concrete moves.

If the family has aligned on selling the home:

- **Decide on a target listing window.** "Sometime in the next six months" is fine. Specificity comes later. - **Identify which sibling or which professional will project-manage** the cleanout, repairs, and listing. This is a real job; whoever takes it on gets either a thank-you note or a percentage of proceeds (depending on family norms). - **Get a real cleanout estimate.** Have an estate-sale company walk the home. Have a hauling company quote what's left. Have a contractor scope the repairs. - **Continue not throwing anything away** without family review.

If the family hasn't aligned:

- **Schedule the next conversation in 30 days.** Pressure rarely produces good family outcomes. - **In the meantime, do nothing irreversible.** Maintain the home, keep the insurance current, pay the property tax. Time is cheap. Family damage is expensive.

The one thing almost everyone forgets

Take photographs of the house BEFORE you start emptying it. Every room. Every wall. Every closet. Take 200 photos. You will want them in five years when you are trying to remember how the kitchen looked, what was on the bedroom dresser, where Dad kept his keys.

The house your parent lived in for fifty years will only exist in photographs after you sell it. Take the photographs.

Where Roger fits

When the family is ready to talk about the house, that's the conversation Roger handles. Walkthrough, cleanup coordination, contractor scheduling, listing prep, marketing, sale, close. One call. One person. No fee for the coordination work — it's included in the listing engagement.

If you're anywhere in the first 30 days and want to talk through what comes next, reach out. No pressure, no listing pitch — just a conversation about the timeline and what to do this week.