Ohhh boy, here we go...gotta have the TALK with the Folks

[FirstLight]

my dad was blessed to be born into the era where you could work a job for 35 years, build up savings etc and have something to leave your family.

The folks are in their later 80s now and getting more frail each day, dad is losing more brain skills and memory too. I'm afraid he's missing payments on bills because he's not able to keep track of things.

So in the late 90s-2000s he made a Family trust...ALL properties, savings, stocks, etc were to be held with he and mom at the top and then my sister and I would be activated upon one of their demise. My sister has always been the "responsible one" (read:controlling) and was trying to "handle" some things for them last year after a wildfire decimated one of our family properties... well turns out all she REALLY wanted was the insurance etc.

Earlier this year she got into it with my dad and even threatened him with a lawyer. Then she cut everyone off and is no longer even checking on them via phone, so Im left to do the adulting and caretaking for the family.

I finally found the realtor that was working with the family. (She was so worried about my parents and said it was obvious my sister was all about the $$$ - She even said she was SO glad she was out of the picture because she was so hard to deal with, pushy and rude, etc. )
So she gave me the lead to who had the files and I have also reached out to a family lawyer to work on either re-writing the Family Trust or suspending it for a time. I am also going to need limited Power of Atty to just handle the property cleanup and sale, as well as rewriting home insurance policy on the other house... I also want to set up some auto-pay for basic bills so my dad doesnt lose something important in his piles of paper! I intend to go over there at least once a week and show him what's happening and go over his bank statement, etc... But I dont want to take away his sense of self agency...

So I am going down to have lunch with the folks tomorrow, and going to jsut tell my dad I dont WANT access to his bank acct, he can still make the decisions and write the checks if he wants to. But someone needs to do the "mental heavy lifting" and HELP so that he doesnt get railroaded. My biggest fear is that my sister is gonna burst back onto the scene, try and prove my parents mentally unfit and throw them in a home and proceed to take everything. (she wanted to sell their house out from under them and put them away LAST year during Covid...it was bullshit)

This is just the beginning of a very long haul, and I have never had to deal with these kinds of things before...oh goody! ADULTING!
Any advice or good vibes are appreciated...