How Far Would a Daughter Go to Save Her Aging Parents From Self-Neglect?

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How Far Would a Daughter Go to Save Her Aging Parents From Self-Neglect?

Millions of adult children face agonizing decisions when their parents can no longer care for themselves

By Clare Ansberry, WSJ

July 4, 2026 11:04 am ET

Nonie Heystek’s dad and stepmother were showing signs of dementia and self-neglect. They lived on their own, nearly 1,000 miles from family. They didn’t want to move and refused in-home help.

She made frequent trips to visit them and could see their world crumbling. Bills weren’t paid. Meals on Wheels deliveries sat uneaten in the refrigerator. Mice roamed their once-meticulous home.

In a desperate effort to get the couple out, Nonie devised a plan involving a fake letter from the water company and a friend impersonating a utility worker. The ruse worked, but she regrets having to resort to such lengths.

“I am conflicted,” she says. “But something had to change.”

How far is too far when it comes to keeping an aging parent safe? No one is comfortable with deception, especially involving loved ones. But what if it avoids a health crisis or a legal battle that would pit child against parent? Are there exceptions when dementia is involved?

These and other worrying questions face the 23.6 million people in the U.S. caring for aging parents.

Each family is different and decisions are deeply personal, says Rani Snyder, president of The John A. Hartford Foundation, an eldercare philanthropy. While she doesn’t advise deception, she says “there is no perfect way” to handle difficult situations. One thing families can do, she says, is talk early, often and openly about priorities.

It seems basic, but many people don’t. Only 19% of adults have talked in detail with loved ones about care preferences, and nearly half haven’t discussed them at all, according to a survey of 1,000 people by Talker Research for LogicMark, a health-monitoring technology company.

Nonie first raised the issue when she and her two younger siblings left Minnesota years ago. “If you fail to make a plan, you’re planning to fail,” she remembers telling her dad, Hank Heystek, and stepmother, Marjorie.

They wanted to stay in their house on a lake for the rest of their lives. Her dad was outgoing and friendly, chatting with neighbors. Marjorie was more of a recluse.

About six years ago, Hank became uncharacteristically forgetful and talked about his “fuzzy brain.” His own mother had had dementia. Nonie urged them to move closer to family or consider senior living. Exchanges often grew heated.

When Covid hit, Hank and Marjorie became increasingly isolated. “I would call and they would say they were just fine. I would visit and see all the ways in which it was not fine,” Nonie said.

By 2024, Nonie was traveling from Pennsylvania to Minnesota every other week. She paid bills, arranged Meals on Wheels and a driver to take her dad to the grocery store. She consulted with her dad’s doctor and social workers. She invited a home-care provider to meet her parents.

Her dad told the woman they didn’t need help.

“I was angry,” Nonie says. “I told them, ‘You can get this and do that. I will help you.’ They didn’t. They were expecting me to do everything and I did it as long as I possibly could.”

Meanwhile, Nonie’s partner in Pittsburgh was in the late stages of Alzheimer’s. Her college-age daughter needed her attention, too.

Nonie, who had power of attorney for her parents and lived closest to them, kept her siblings informed. They visited and helped when Nonie couldn’t.

In late 2024, her dad called in the middle of the night in pain. She told him to call 911, but he didn’t know how and had refused medical-alert systems. She called a neighbor, who took him to the hospital for emergency hernia surgery. Thinking the crisis would make them open to moving, Nonie found a nearby senior living apartment.

Her dad said no.

She recalls thinking, “Oh my God. I can’t do this anymore.”

Nonie came up with a plan. She leased a two-bedroom, assisted-living apartment nearby. She typed a letter, ostensibly from the water authority. It said service was being shut off to repair a broken main and advised residents to seek temporary shelter. Nonie made a card reading, “NOTICE: TEMPORARY WATER SHUT OFF” for the couple’s doorknob. She enlisted Jamie Freel, a friend who was a former actor, to help.

Nonie told her siblings, mom, her dad’s neighbors, doctors, and staff at the senior-living community about her plan. “I wanted everyone to know what I was doing and why,” she says. Nearly everyone was supportive.

A nurse supervisor said she shouldn’t lie. Nonie could have gone to court but chose not to.

Shortly after, while visiting Hank and Marjorie, she retrieved their mail, including the purported water-company letter. She read it aloud. Then Nonie called the number listed and put the phone on speaker.

Freel answered, explained the problem and told the couple they would need to leave the house. He asked if Hank and Marjorie had questions. They didn’t.

“I think he just needed to hear a voice of authority telling him what had to happen,” Freel said of Nonie’s dad. Freel said he had no qualms about playing the role. He had listened to Nonie talk about her parents’ deteriorating conditions and was a volunteer hospice worker, familiar with dementia.

Nonie packed Hank and Marjorie’s bags and dog. She told them they could stay at “her apartment,” referring to the apartment in the senior-care community. She stayed with them for a month. During that time, she says, they never asked to return.

“They forgot they had a home,” says Nonie.

Denise Brown, whose Caregiving Years Training Academy certifies caregiving consultants, says Nonie’s monthlong stay demonstrated her desire to make sure her parents were all right. Nonie, she says, also accomplished something Brown couldn’t.

Brown’s mom was in rehab after a serious illness and wanted to return home. Brown said she wasn’t safe at home and had to move into senior living. Years later, she remembers the look on her mother’s face.

“I broke my mom’s heart,” says Brown. “She (Nonie) figured out a way to keep them safe without breaking their heart.”

Nonie believes her parents would have moved on their own if they had physical limitations, rather than dementia.

Jason Resendez, president of the National Alliance for Caregiving, sees more caregivers dealing with conflicting emotions surrounding dementia.

“At some point, it is really outside the ability of someone with dementia to determine what is safe and to ensure their own physical safety. That is entrusted to a family caregiver,” says Resendez. Doing so may involve deception and that is not necessarily wrong. One study, he notes, found that about 96% of residential-care staff use some form of deceit with people with dementia.

Nonie’s dad, stepmom and partner died within seven months of each other. Now 64, Nonie doesn’t want her daughter to go through what she did.

“It’s up to us in our 50s and 60s to really understand that we won’t be independent forever and to start making plans now,” she says.