TL;DR: What tax deductions, programs, monetary possibilities, etc are available for someone who's unemployed but with a full time job as an unpaid caregiver for a family member?
Mother-(Not-Quite-Yet-)In-law:
- 60's
- legally blind
- wears hearing aid due to hearing
- had kidney failure/transplant ~2 years back
- broke elbow ~1 year back
- Cancer diagnosis this year
- had been in too much pain to move
- already brittle bones made worse
- Currently under going Chemo and other treatment
- incurable, but manageable... complicated due to brittle bones and kidney transplant medications
My Fiance/Girlfriend has been the "primary caregiver" for her mom for years.
A few years back, while she was working 50-60 hours per week, she did dialysis and associated tasks related to Mom's failing kidney. After a kidney transplant, she's continued to help her with doctor's appointments, medications, physical therapy (First for broken bone, now for lack of movement due to pain in the now diagnosed cancer under treatment).
Fiance's been unemployed and going to school (local Community College) for almost 2 years now. She's had to scale back from full time school to one class per semester due to the around the clock care mom needs.
She spent ~2 weeks in the hospital last month and has stayed at moms house for ~4 weeks now - staying over night because mom has needed help with ev-er-y-thing.
Me: Fully employed, covering the bills, but not quite moving foward as fast as I'd like (Us BOTH needing new cars late last year + purchasing a "nice" shed last year for ~$5k is the main issue)
We live on family property. Our trailer is right next to mom's house. We aren't married, and probably won't be for awhile.
We live in Southern Delaware, USA.
Question:
Is there anything that can be done? Programs for care givers? Tax exemptions? Rebates? Monthly assistance?
She could probably qualify for stuff like Welfare and Food-stamps (Since "Single" and my income doesn't count), but don't really want to go down that route. She does have the free insurance (I'm new at my job, as a contractor-to-hire, so it'll probably be another year before I get hired on as a State Employee - which would include a pay raise and benefits)
Not sure how else to ask this, or what else to ask for... I know that you can amend past tax claims so we could possibly go back a few years for some extra rebates we didn't know about.
Let me know if this question needs to be retagged, as I'm not sure what else to put besides USA.
