Financial planning for unemployed drug addict uncle

[Arete]

My wife has a 52 year old uncle who is unemployed, has applied for and been denied a disability benefit from Social Security (though it is in appeal, so perhaps someday he might start receiving benefits, but I think he said he initially applied four years ago so no one is holding their breath on this front), and is a drug addict. He currently lives with his mother, who has recently been placed in hospice care. Their current income is comprised of dividend income on a few stocks that she owns and her social security benefits. After she dies he gets to keep the house, which is paid off, and stock that is currently worth about $75,000 and which I estimate will pay about $4,300 in dividends per year.

My wife and I are not interested in having a financial relationship with him, so we will not give him any money or buy anything for him, but we are willing to try and help him get information on treatment programs, employment, etc. I should state up front that I fully expect that he will blow through the money and lose the house over his inability to pay the property taxes within a year or two. But, I also feel like it would be irresponsible of us not to try and give him some options to consider just in case he wants to get cleaned up and not be homeless.

Here's what I've considered so far:
Keeping the current stocks: As stated, they should provide about $4,300 in dividends per year based on the past four dividend payments for the two companies. This will mean he will have four months of the year with no income, and so he will need to carefully manage his money from the months that he does receive dividends. I doubt that will be easy for him.

Reinvest in some other income generating vehicle: I would need to spend some time trying to figure this one out since I'm not an investment guru and I've never had anything outside of mutual funds in a tax advantaged retirement account, but maybe there are other investments that would pay more per year in dividends or coupons. I'm not sure what sort of tax implications such a move would have, but I guess he'd be stuck with similar considerations with the current setup.

Buying a single life annuity: I got a few quotes online yesterday and it looks like he could get something like $4,300 per year with monthly payments. However, he loses his flexibility to sell stock to cover major expenses and I'm sure there would be withdrawal penalties on the annuity, if they were allowed at all. After his mom passes he will not have any immediate family, so there's no one to worry about leaving any assets to etc. He is diabetic and isn't in particularly good health, so I'm sure the mortality assumptions in the online annuity calculations are too optimistic. How much do companies adjust for the current health of a new annuitant? I suppose we could also try to guess at his future life expectancy and get a 10 year or 20 year payout instead of a life annuity to increase the monthly benefit.

Getting a job: This is obviously the ideal solution but I don't know if he could get or hold a job. He can't be trusted with money and he is quick to declare someone an "enemy" and cut off ties with them. If that someone is a coworker or a boss that would be the end of a job pretty quickly. He has avoided working while his disability application was being considered because he thought it would hurt his chances of being approved. I have no clue whether he's interested in trying to join the workforce at this point since he's been mostly unemployed (aside from the odd short-lived job here and there) for the last decade or so. To give some idea of how hard it would be for him to hold something down, he got assigned to work at the library as community service for some arrest (can't remember what for now) and ended up getting thrown back in jail because he stole a VCR and sold it.

Getting treatment: He claims that he is not currently using drugs and doesn't need to enter a treatment program, but when we were visiting recently he was smoking pot in the house and the neighbors say there's a car that comes by the house pretty regularly and he usually walks out to talk to the person inside before it drives off. In my opinion, any future contact with our family should be contingent on him going though a treatment program but he has already attended at least one unsuccessfully and refused to enter another treatment program a year or two ago.

Fortunately, he lives several states away, so we can limit our contact with him as necessary. I'm not planning to be too involved with him in the distant future, I just want to show him a few possible courses he could take on his way to being a self-sufficient person and leave him to make his own decisions.

[Redhead]

God bless you.

[oedipus rex]

this guy needs a wake up call. i have a friend who has a friend who knows a guy who may be able to help you out. tell saul rex sent you.

[oedipus rex]

sorry if you're serious, i don't think you can make plans for drug addicts unless they go to rehab.

[The Drunken Actuary]

Just write him a check and be done with him.

[Devastator]

Get him on intervention

[Inconceivable]

Yeah I think we know where this story is heading unfortunatelly. Nothing you can really do unless he wants to clean up his act. Tough spot.

[Kitara]

Other than the "specifics" (a house, something paying dividends), this sounds almost exactly like my situation - only with a sibling, instead of an uncle.

Sometimes, it's reassuring to hear that others go through something similar with their relatives!

I wish I had more advice to offer on the specifics - but perhaps you'll at least find encouragement knowing that others have similar experiences with family members!

[Loner]

What state is he in? Does he receive Medicaid? If it's NY, they have some programs that might get him a home health aide and a case manager to oversee his medical care.

[Arete]

He is in NC and already gets a lot of public assistance. He gets $200/mo in food stamps (that he doesn't currently contribute to the household expenses; I assume this is his main source of money for drugs) and I believe he is on Medicaid. In any case he has access to low cost or free health care at a community clinic, as well as low cost or free prescription medications for his various ailments.

He needs some dental work done so I tried finding out about various programs around the area and wrote him with some suggestions and he replied that he already knew about all of the dental care options in the area and filled in some specifics that I told him I was still trying to track down. That tells me that he is aware enough to try and take care of himself and navigate whatever is available to him so I've decided I don't need to waste a lot of time looking into that sort of thing for him.

I'm just trying to figure out what sort of suggestions I should make about securing a dependable source of income based on his available assets.