Autumn 2026·8 min read·Bruce Tollefson, Abloom Senior Living

Caring for your husband or wife at home

What is different when the person who needs care is your spouse, and where the help aimed at you is.

Who this is written for

Almost everything written about arranging care for an older adult is addressed to a son or a daughter. If you are the husband or the wife, you end up reading past yourself, looking for the paragraph that applies. This one is for you: the spouse who has been doing the lifting, the cooking, the pills, and the getting up at night, and who has started to wonder how much longer this can go on.

If you feel behind, what fell behind is the arrangement. No office in Minnesota calls to tell you the day your marriage turned into a care job, and nobody hands you a form when it does, so you worked it out on your own.

How many people are in this with you

The 2025 Caregiving in the US report from AARP and the National Alliance for Caregiving found that 15 percent of family caregivers are caring for a spouse or a partner, and that the share climbs with the caregiver's own age: 27 percent among caregivers between 65 and 74, and 48 percent among caregivers 75 and older. The same report found that 24 percent of caregivers put in 41 hours a week or more.

Numbers like these will not help you get through Tuesday. Caring for a husband or a wife is common, and Minnesota has programs built for the situation you are in.

What is different when it is your husband or your wife

An adult child drives home at the end of a hard afternoon, and you stay where you are. There is no shift change and no hour of the day when you are off duty.

Then there is the history. You have forty years of agreements about how the kitchen works, who handles the checkbook, and what counts as fussing. Taking over a task your wife has done since 1986 is a different act than a daughter stepping in, and she may hear it as a verdict on her when you meant it as help with a bathtub.

Money sits in one pot. A son weighing an agency is spending his parent's money. You are spending yours, and some of the same money has to last both of you. That makes every hour of paid help feel like a decision about the years ahead.

And asking for help can feel like an admission, as though hiring someone says the marriage could not carry it. Many couples hire help and their marriage goes on as before.

You do not have to settle any of this today. Most families arrange care in stages, and the first stage is usually small.

When the physical work gets ahead of you

Transfers are the common breaking point, and they are usually what forces the decision. If getting your wife out of the tub now includes a moment where you both hold still and hope, treat that as the point to get help instead of waiting for a fall. Being careful cannot do the work of a second set of hands, because a transfer is a question of weight and leverage. Two-person transfers are staffed that way at Abloom Senior Living for the same reason, as part of personal care at home.

Nights are the other one. Broken sleep over months does something to your judgment and your temper that you will probably notice last. If your husband is up three times and you are up four, it is the accumulation over weeks that does the damage. Overnight help can be scheduled for the hours that are actually hard, and at Abloom Senior Living an overnight is staffed as an awake shift; nobody sleeps in your house. You can read how those hours are set up on the page about overnight and around-the-clock care.

Memory loss changes what the work involves. AARP and the National Alliance for Caregiving report that nearly one in four caregivers are caring for someone 50 or older with a memory issue or a form of dementia, and that those caregivers are doing more of it. When your spouse is the one with the diagnosis, you also lose the person you would ordinarily talk it over with. Dementia care at home is scheduled around the hours of the day that go badly, and there is no need to set any of it up this week.

Help that is aimed at you

Most of the care system is organized around the person receiving the care. Two programs in Minnesota are set up for the caregiver.

The Minnesota Board on Aging makes caregiver consultants available around the state. A consultant is a trained professional who sits down with you one to one: what to do about the nights, how to get your wife to accept a shower from someone who is not you, how to hold onto your own health while you do this. The Board on Aging says the service is generally offered free or at low cost, though eligibility rules and availability vary by community. You reach one by calling Minnesota Aging Pathways at 800-333-2433, weekdays from 8:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.

The Metropolitan Area Agency on Aging covers the Twin Cities metro. Its list for family caregivers includes adult respite care, running from a few hours up to a short residential stay. It also includes caregiver consultants and coaches, caregiver education on stress and family dynamics, support groups that meet in person and by video, and a dementia care program that works with families by phone. Several of the groups it lists meet on this side of the metro, in Stillwater, Hugo, and Saint Paul.

On respite specifically: Abloom Senior Living does not provide respite care. If a stretch of time away is what you need, the Area Agency on Aging and Washington County are the right first call, and Minnesota Aging Pathways can tell you what is funded in your area. Our own journal has a list of caregiver support groups in Washington County if you want to start with a support group.

Bringing someone into your house

Asking how few hours you can get away with is a fair question. You are paying out of the same pot you both have to live on. But counting hours is the wrong place to begin. Name the two or three parts of the day that go worst and cover those: the morning routine, the hour before dinner, the middle of the night. Our page on choosing hours at home walks through that. If you begin with a handful of hours and find later that you need more, that is a normal second step.

We care for people in their own homes under a comprehensive home care license from the Minnesota Department of Health, and we take private pay and long-term care insurance. We do not accept Minnesota waiver funding or Medical Assistance for in-home services, and we will say so in the first conversation, with a referral to someone who does.

What Minnesota requires of any agency you hire

Home care in Minnesota runs under Minn. Stat. 144A.4791, and four of its requirements affect what you sign.

Before anyone starts, the agency has to hand you a written statement of which license it holds and what it may and may not provide (subdivision 3). An agency providing comprehensive services has to send a registered nurse to your home for an in-person assessment within five days of starting, and reassess at least every 90 days (subdivision 8). The service plan has to be finalized within 14 days and signed by both the agency and you or your spouse, and it has to spell out the services, the fees, the frequency, and who will be doing the work (subdivision 9).

Subdivision 9 also requires the plan to include a contingency plan, which matters more for a spouse than for an adult child arranging care from across town. You are the person everything currently depends on. If you get the flu, or you need a knee replaced, the agency's plan has to already say what happens to your husband that week. Ask them to show you that part in writing, and ask the other questions on the list of questions to ask a home care provider while you have someone's attention. These requirements are the agency's responsibility, so you do not have to track them yourself. If the agency misses one, it has to correct it.

If home stops working anyway

Care at home has limits, and a spouse is often the last person to say so out loud, having promised at some point that it would never come to this.

Abloom Senior Living operates a five-resident customized living home in Woodbury, which means the same company can keep caring for your husband or wife if the house you live in stops being a workable place to do it. Some families find that easier than starting over with strangers. If you are weighing that question now, there is a page on when to consider a move. If you are not weighing it, you can leave the question alone for now.

A next step, when you want one

If you want to talk it through, you can ask for a visit at your own kitchen table, or come look at the Woodbury house. The in-home care request form is the quickest way to reach us. On a visit we talk through how your week actually goes. If what you need is something we do not do, or a funding route we do not take, we will say so and point you toward someone who does.

This article is general information from a care provider in Woodbury, Minnesota. It is not legal, financial, or medical advice. Program rules, eligibility, and statutes change, so confirm anything you plan to rely on with the agency or professional involved.

Frequently asked questions

What is a caregiver consultant, and does it cost anything?

A caregiver consultant is a trained professional who works one to one with the family member doing the care, on practical problems and on protecting your own health. The Minnesota Board on Aging makes them available around the state and says the service is generally offered free or at low cost, though eligibility rules and availability vary by community. Call Minnesota Aging Pathways at 800-333-2433 to find one near you or a virtual option.

Can Abloom Senior Living give me a weekend off?

Abloom Senior Living does not provide respite care, so a planned stretch of time away is not something we offer. The Metropolitan Area Agency on Aging lists adult respite care running from a few hours to a short residential stay, and Minnesota Aging Pathways at 800-333-2433 can tell you what is available and funded in Washington County.

Does a caregiver sleep over?

Not at Abloom Senior Living. There is no live-in care, and an overnight is staffed as an awake shift, which means the caregiver is up and working while your spouse sleeps. Families usually choose overnight hours when the nights have become the hardest part of the week.

Will a nurse come, or only a caregiver?

Under Minn. Stat. 144A.4791, an agency providing comprehensive services has to send a registered nurse to the home for an in-person assessment within five days of starting care, and reassess at least every 90 days. Beyond that, whether a nurse visits regularly depends on what your spouse needs and what the service plan says.

What happens if I get sick and cannot care for my wife?

That is what the contingency plan in your service plan is for. Minn. Stat. 144A.4791, subdivision 9, requires the plan to include one, so ask the agency to put in writing what happens if you are the one who ends up in the hospital. Spouses are often the backup for everything, which makes this the part most worth settling early.

Sources

All field notes Arrange a visit