This man is a "clear and present danger" to himself and others, as is fully conveyed in his use of a car, which in his hands, could be a lethal weapon. If the family really wishes to create a safety net for this irascable irresponsible malignant old man whose role as a father was predominantly biologic, the family should caucus, and turning to appropriate professionals, consider involuntary committment for observation. He may be suffering from Alzheimer's or there may other confounding issues, such as substance abuse in addition/parallel.

The process of committment is not easy and varies radically from state to state. It is best embarked upon ONLY with the family's full consent. If, indeed, he is found to be suffering from endemic health issues, the platform is set for guardianship and thus full control. This chap belongs in either a nursing home or a psychiatric institution, not on the street. Home care will NOT address his spiralling decline. If not, he will be released to return home, hating his family in the process, and functioning as a continuing menace until he runs his car off the road and rolls it. Hopefully, no one else will be injured. The family needs to wash their hands of him, if he is "free to return".... there are problems that sometimes cannot be addressed.

My late, unlamented mother, a brilliant woman who practiced as a physcian and healthcare administrator, lapsed into behavior similar to what has been described by LW. She drove her Mercedes at high speeds on the wrong side of the road - backwards - on high mountain roads. She loaded my late father's rifle with multiple rounds to "protect" her property and presumably vast art collection. She fired home health aides we hired with abandon, and with her physician's license, prescribed for her personal use a bizarre array of pharmocopia. She was also a raging alchoholic whose beverage of choice was vodka and jug wine blended into one glass. As an economy measure, she bought both in caselots.

My brother and I had this woman involuntarily committed to a state mental institution where, after six weeks, she was deemed to be suffering from a degenerative brain disease (Alzheimer's) and the State stood up with us when we, perforce, obtained guardianship and power of attorney. By the time we went to court, we had procured a second opinion from Mayo's, and the court hearing lasted all of fifteen minutes and rendered my mother as a focus for guardianship. . She lived for nineteen years in increasingly stringent facilities, the costs paid for by her Federal pension and income from investments. I became her guardian, managing her affairs and paying her bills until the day she finally forgot to breathe.

The emotional issues raised by this venal man's behavior is more challenging, actually, to deal with. There is a profound desire to maintain a "myth" that his behavior was "not that bad" in an effort to hold onto some fragment of a concept of benificent fathering. It is time for the family, as individuals and collectively, to abandon those myths by speaking candidly, by releasing the anger that this man's vicious behavior elicits, and by accepting that Dad was a schmuck of the first order. My personal road of recovery with my parents, both of whom were physically and sexually violent to my brother and me in our youth, has taken me through a rigorous therapeutic journey. My brother did not "make it' and ended his life by his own hand, after thirty years of spiralling depression. I have discovered that the best revenge is not to have revenge at all, but to create and sustain the most emotionally healthy life I know how to create. In doing so, my parents and their venal behavior become the markings of very, very sad folks for whom I can now have compassion. I leave forgiveness to a power and authority greater than my own, and am willing to settle for compassion as my measure of peace for now.

having a rotton father who chooses, in the face of any logic, to remain rotton to the core, is so countervailing to common culture that it is difficult to talk about. It is certainly not "the Brady Bunch".... and for that reason, I suggest to LW that it is particularly important for the family to band together to talk and talk and talk about their individual experiences until there is a complete mosaic with most pieces intact of this man's behavior. The stories of one will validate the stories of another, and will break the venal grip that this man seems to have on the hearts of people who have lost a father decades ago.

As for the writer(s) who suggest that the concern of the family may be fiscal, I would suggest to you that the overwhelming issues of emotional battering that this family has sustained far outweigh any craven interest in whatever paltry bucks this chap may have stored away. In truth, my suggestion about committment and post-guardianship care hold true whether this man can afford a $15,000/month nursing home or needs to be placed in a public institution. Money is the last of it, and frankly, people as nasty as this chap is generally find ways to piffle away vast quantities of money anyway.

This is not easy, and I commend LW for the effort to see things as they are.

Ric