No holes in their story - its genuinely the case that they've been surviving on negative income over the past 10 years, at least from typical sources (insurance, social security, etc). I couldn't go into too much detail due to the character limit, but I'll provide more info here.

As I mentioned in some other posts, my childhood was quite privileged before his disability. My parents flipped houses on the side, in addition to having an income level that would make other upper-middle class people jealous. At the time of his injury they owned two multilevel suburban houses, one of which was being rented out. They had a very fat retirement savings account, the pension would have been great, they had layers of life insurance and had a ton of money squared away. The disability situation did, quite honestly, screw my parents over thoroughly. That much I know for certain, living at home and seeing firsthand how these things were going. I wrote up much of my father's court / lawyer correspondence, as his disability prevents him from typing (or sitting for more than an hour for any reason).

In that sense, they've decreased their expenses from what was upper-middle class down to middle class, and have liquidated and lost a ton of assets in order to pursue these lawsuits. Now, all of their winnings are going to either lawyers or repayment to insurance companies. They were hoping to just be back up to having their mortgage paid off after the dust had settled. I agree though that they have a lower-middle or lower class income now and they need to decrease their expenses further. They have a house that is worth twice that compared to other seniors and three cars - excluding my sibling's car. I agree with the rest of your comment. If they sold their house for its worth, they could buy a smaller one without even getting a mortgage on it, and not be in this situation.

My sibling is, in fact, giving my parents all of their money. They are getting twice what I'll be getting, because they're younger and were in school longer than I was after the retroactive date (I get 3 years of support, they get 6 years). My sibling also took a far cheaper program than me, so their education was fully covered by the remaining education plan after I moved out. Its true though that they didn't pay rent that entire time however so my parents did support them financially in other ways. As far as actual tuition/school coverage though, my sibling and I are even with how much we've received from my parents. They're still holding down a retail job (which has even been hard for me to get) that they've had through school, and are not at all hurting financially.

However, mine would be the make-or-break for finishing off the mortgage (if my sibling gives the full amount), which is why they aren't very keen on even splitting it.