Am I obligated to warn others of BPD mom's inevitable meltdowns?

[Guest guest]

Hi--I'm new to this community, so I'll skip the acronyms, but I had a question.

My mom has BPD, and it's led to her becoming pretty low-functioning over the

years--unable to hold a job, in and out of a series of rent-free living

situations on friends' properties (sometimes in their homes) that always end

with a major meltdown when she re-casts them in her head as enemies to have an

external target to blame for her own depression, starts an argument about a

" sin " that was never committed and, sometimes, goes really far and gets violent.

The same behavior has meant that she's been continuously unemployed for almost 2

years, and is now considering welfare. I'm actually kind of happy that this is

happening--at least now that she's getting facetime with a social worker,

there's a chance that she'll get some kind of treatment for her disorder and her

alcoholism, or at the very least have to learn to make herself accountable for

the situation her erratic behaviors have gotten her into.

However, the idea of getting food stamps and subsidized housing is so stressful

for my mom that her knee jerk reaction the day after she visited the social

worker was to....go out and buy a $500,000 business. It's a bed and breakfast in

the remote norther michigan town I went to high school in, run by a sweet

80-year-old couple that I worked for occasionally as a teenager who's been

trying to move the property for some time. They want it to remain a bed and

breakfast even though they've received offers from people wanting to turn it

into a group home, so they offered my mom a deal I almost can't believe--they'll

stay to help her run it, are asking only a $500 deposit until she secures

financing, which she says she can do by borrowing against her 401(k).

I've had a lot of therapy over the years to deal with her illness, and I know

that I can't rescue my mom from how this situation will most likely end. But I'm

not sure if I'm obligated to warn the couple selling her this property--and

helping her to run it--that they're likely inviting something incredibly

disruptive into their lives and into a family business that is their legacy. At

the very least, my mom has been cycling through a pattern of launching headlong

into a living or job situation (in this case, both) and convincing herself that

all the people surrounding it are saviors who are immediately going to make her

life better; then, in some form or another, her mood shifts, she remembers that

she still is capable of negative emotions, and she re-casts everyone as

tormentors who suckered her into the situation under false pretenses and

violently pushes them away. Sometimes, this is really extreme--e.g., when she

lived with my uncle as a caretaker for his horses, which ended in her calling

the police and claiming that he waas abusing her and not allowing her to go to

the bathroom or access food--and sometimes they're not--e.g., most recently,

when she moved onto a friend's property in colorado and decided suddenly that

the employer at her temp job was evil and unethical because he yelled at an

employee, jumped ship and moved to michigan without a large police-scale

confrontation. I don't want this couple to get caught up in this cycle,

especially if they plan their lives around what would seem like a reasonable

assumption that the adult woman they're selling their property to is going to

responsibly assume the duties of the business and allow them to retire in peace.

Am I obligated to contact them? I haven't contacted those involved in her past

few living situations and have regretted it, but I know that at the end of the

day, I'm her child and all I can do is protect myself. If I have an opportunity

to protect these people, though, should I, even if it would make my own

relationship with my mother really complicated?