Skip to content
Benefits Beyond Work

Changes at Home

Caring for Someone You Love

Taking on caregiving responsibilities can affect more than the person receiving care. Healthcare, protection, time away from work, household income, and longer-term financial needs can begin to intersect for the person receiving care and the people supporting them.

Talk With a Financial Relationship Manager™Explore Insurance Solutions

What's changing

Here's what typically shifts.

Caring for a parent, spouse, partner, child, or another loved one can change responsibilities across an entire household. The first step is understanding what resources and benefits already exist before assuming something new is needed.

Who does it affect?

Who else could this change affect?

Caregiving rarely affects one person alone. Responsibilities, coverage, and income can shift for several people at once.

  • The person receiving care, whose coverage and needs come first.
  • A spouse or partner, whose own coverage and responsibilities may change.
  • Adult children, who often take on coordination or caregiving duties.
  • Caregivers, whose work, income, and benefits may be affected.
  • Dependents and household income earners who rely on that income.

What to consider

Start with what already exists.

Sometimes the most important first step isn't adding something new. It's understanding what is already available.

  • Existing healthcare coverage for the person receiving care.
  • Medicare coverage and any coverage that interacts with it, where applicable.
  • Workplace benefits available to the person receiving care, including disability, critical illness, cancer/specified-disease, and hospital indemnity coverage where applicable.
  • Existing personal insurance already in force, including life insurance for the caregiver or the person receiving care.
  • Long-term-care coverage or another applicable benefit, where it exists.
  • Caregiver workplace resources, including any leave, benefits, or support programs offered.
  • Household financial information and where it is kept.
  • Beneficiary information across insurance policies and financial accounts.

A life change doesn’t always mean you need new insurance.

What to consider next

Questions worth asking.

  • Existing Healthcare

    What healthcare coverage and benefits does the person receiving care already have?

  • Medicare

    Is Medicare relevant to the person receiving care, and what existing coverage may interact with it?

  • Long-Term Care

    Does existing long-term-care coverage or another applicable benefit exist for the person receiving care?

  • Critical Illness & Related Coverage

    Where a serious diagnosis is involved, does critical illness, cancer/specified-disease, or hospital indemnity coverage already exist for the person receiving care, subject to the applicable policy?

  • Workplace Benefits

    Could either the person receiving care or the caregiver have workplace benefits or resources that may help?

  • Income & Time Away From Work

    Could caregiving responsibilities affect the caregiver's ability to work, or the household's income?

  • Life Insurance & Income Protection

    Does the caregiver or the person receiving care have workplace or personal life insurance, and would an illness, disability, or death create additional financial consequences for household income?

  • Household Responsibilities

    Who is now responsible for financial, insurance, healthcare, or other important household matters?

Relevant solutions

Given what's changing, here's where we can help.

Healthcare and legacy considerations usually come first. Medicare matters when it applies to the person receiving care, and retirement considerations can surface when caregiving affects retirement timing or retirement income.

These are the areas that may deserve attention given what’s changing. You are not expected to work out which coverage applies to you from this list.

Get help from a Financial Relationship Manager

Caregiving affects two households at once.

A Financial Relationship Manager can help you understand what the person you care for already has, what your own benefits provide, and what deserves attention for both households.

A Financial Relationship Manager helps you understand what is changing and what may need attention — so you don't have to figure that out on your own first.

A Financial Relationship Manager is a relationship steward and coordinator. The role does not by itself make someone an investment adviser, financial planner, attorney, tax adviser, or estate-planning professional. When a need calls for one of those disciplines, the role is to help you get to the right professional — not to substitute for one.

Talk With a Financial Relationship Manager™

Life Change checklist

Caregiving Checklist

Organize the coverage, care, household, and professional questions connected to caregiving.

0 of 8 reviewed

Related life changes

Changes that often arrive together.

Go deeper on this

More detail, if you want it.

Additional education specific to this change, for visitors who prefer to keep reading before talking with anyone.

Medicare education

Caring for someone can create questions for the whole household.

Tell us what's changing and we'll help you understand what already exists and what may need attention.

Talk With a Financial Relationship Manager™Explore Insurance Solutions