I’m a Sole Family Caregiver. What Will My Husband Do If Something Bad Happens to Me?

It is lucky that some caregivers who don’t plan never experience emergencies. Others, though, find themselves scrambling to find family members, aides or facilities to provide the care they suddenly can’t provide. In rare, extreme cases, there may be dire consequences.

The worst-case scenario

You probably remember the shocking February 2025 headlines that maintenance workers had discovered the bodies of famed Hollywood actor Gene Hackman and his wife, musician Betsy Arakawa, in their Santa Fe home. The police investigation revealed that Arakawa had been caring for Hackman, who had advanced Alzheimer’s disease. When she died first from a viral pulmonary disease, he had apparently wandered inside their home in confusion without eating for about a week before succumbing to a heart condition. If she’d had an emergency plan in place for others to care for him in case she couldn’t, he might not have died in the tragic manner he did.

To decrease your stress about becoming unavailable to your husband, please make an emergency plan now, while you have the luxury of time to carefully research possible backup arrangements. That plan should have three components — social, medical, and legal — and you will find those components below.

Tapping the reliable people in your life

At the core of any emergency plan will be the identification of the people in caregivers’ lives — family, friends, neighbors, professionals — whom they can rely on in a pinch. They can think of those relationships as strong ropes that can buoy them and their care receivers in rough seas. The more relationships they have, the greater the likelihood of staying afloat in a storm by obtaining the help they need when they need it.

Identification isn’t enough, though. Caregivers need firm commitments from others about what they will be available, able and willing to do in an emergency. Then the caregiver must create a plan that coordinates these commitments. A family member might agree to provide day-to-day hands-on care. A local home care agency might be able to send round-the-clock aides for emergency respite. A neighbor might agree to pick up groceries and prescription medications. A fellow church member might decide to organize fellow congregants to deliver casseroles. These helpers will form a team to provide the necessary food, shelter, safety and comfort for the care receiver until the caregiver resumes her duties.

Finally, caregivers need to find backups for the backup caregivers. If a designated helper becomes ill, another family member or friend must be ready to pinch-hit. If a neighbor who makes deliveries needs to attend a funeral in another state, someone else must be ready to make them. If one home care agency fails to send aides, another one should be called. A good emergency plan should have layers of commitments that can be activated as needed.

More from Barry Jacobs

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In your question, you indicate that you are the “only caregiver.” Does that mean that no other family member is available, able and willing to participate to take care of your husband, or that you haven’t tried to recruit anyone else? If the former, you may find that some family members are willing to commit to help in an emergency, just not on an ongoing basis. Please ask them directly to find out.

Preparing instructions with the correct information

Your emergency team members will need information about the care recipient, especially if the care recipient is unable to provide it. The caregiver should create a set of regularly updated instructions — printed out and stored in an easy-to-find place in the home — that contains the following:

• The care receiver’s basic medical information, including diagnoses, medications, health care providers (with phone numbers), health insurance policy numbers, dietary restrictions, need for help with activities of daily living (such as bathing, grooming and toileting), signs of an imminent medical emergency and any other special instructions.
• The care receiver’s legal documents, including their advance directives (codifying what they do and don’t want in emergency medical procedures), power of attorney for medical decision-making (including a list of people in successive order who should make those decisions if the care receiver can’t), power of attorney for financial decision-making and their attorney’s name and phone number.
• A list of supplies for handling a natural disaster and where they can be found in the home, including a well-stocked first-aid kit, flashlights, batteries, a radio and other essential items.

Granted, this is a lot of preparation when you are immersed in the busy life of caregiving. You can tackle these things one at a time and not treat emergency preparation as an emergency itself. But please keep in mind that the more you plan, the better prepared you and others will be in frantic moments when it is harder to think clearly. Even if you never need these preparations — and hopefully, you won’t — you will have greater peace of mind having them ready.