Elderly parents and finances…

The POA is only for when you are unable. And your daughter can't act contra to your interests.

My mum is having to deal with this with my nan after my grandad died, every day she was getting phone calls till she put her foot down. Now like magic my nan can drive, internet shop, cook & deal with bills!
Its not because they cant - its because they choose not too.

This interesting. I have PoA for both health and wealth in the safe “ready to go” if and when needed. But reading your post should it be put in place now? I’m a 70 year old widow. If I were to die tomorrow my daughter wouldn’t have access to funds for my funeral, house bills etc. if we put the PoA in place she’d have control of my finances.

While your dad is still alive get him to set up power if attorney for himself and your mum ( it sounds as if he will have more success convincing your mum). With you as the person who makes the decisions when they are unable.

That way you can ok the decisions on their behalf if they are unable to do so. That is not to say that you have to do the work yourself but it gives you the ability to ok proposals put forward by a 3rd party. There is a lot on gov.uk about how they work and how to set them up.

Tell her now, repeatedly, that you won't have the time to do it. She can either learn now, or pay someone.

You do have a choice, just as your brother who is too busy to help, has a choice. You are a single parent with three children, two of whom have additional needs and you work four days a week. I'm sure that you are much busier than your high-flying brother. Your kids are your main priority, not your selfish and lazy mother.

What would happen if you just said that you were too busy to help? Your kids should come first so take a massive step back and don't feel guilty.

Link here

https://www.gov.uk/power-of-attorney

Suggest that you get Power of Attorney for health & wealth in place for your DM now.
You can get it in place, ready to use when needed in the future.
I will post the link
POA for health
PoA for wealth
Easy to do follow instructions online

Also get her to make a will

Suggest that you get Power of Attorney for health & wealth in place for your DM now.
You can get it in place, ready to use when needed in the future.
I will post the link
POA for health
PoA for wealth
Easy to do follow instructions online

Also get her to make a will

Your description of your mother (especially this bit: I don’t think she has any cognitive problems but it’s a combination of laziness, anxiety and enjoying being looked after by my father.) sounds uncannily like mine! I was similarly worried about what would happen if dad went first. Sadly a few months ago the worst case scenario happened and my dad passed suddenly of a heart attack.
I am having to stay with my mother and deal with everything for her, the shock of dads death and her grief left her utterly overwhelmed.

I am slowly working through setting everything up to help her cope, giving her every bit of support and guidance possible to learn how to manage. She is however completely uninterested in doing this 😂She wants me and my sibling to step in and do everything that dad did for her. We did for a few months but now setting some boundaries. Example, she won't have online food deliveries and wants to go to posh supermarket miles away, I drive her to the nearest not so posh one & send her in on her own. Harsh but necessary for my sanity. We will not do cleaning or laundry, if she needs help she will have to get a cleaner etc.
I can only advise you to hope for the best but plan for the worst, familiarise yourself with how the house works, bills, bank accounts, passwords (we had none & made life very difficult) get wise about POA etc for when its needed. If possible I would also suggest funeral planning & payment in advance. This took up so much of our mental and emotional energy that we then struggled dealing with all the financial admin etc.

I empathise so strongly with your post, I wish you all the best with this difficult scenario. x

She's in her late 70s, so she isn't going to change now. You say you have POA for her, didn't you realise you might end up doing a lot of this type of work? I had POA for my mother and I disliked doing it but there was no one else available. I simplified it all as much as possible, and when she needed care I outsourced that immediately.

It's possible your mother may already have some cognitive impairment and is now unable to do these things whether she 'wants to' or not. It's easy to hide it when your partner is doing all the heavy lifting, but becomes very apparent when the partner is no longer there, as I found with the inlaws.

Buy your Dad a gym membership.
Buy your mum a gin subscription 🤪

If there is joint and separate POA then there is no reason it should be you sorting out finances. Once there is POA on the actual account- which is a huge PITA to arrange and seems to need in person visits to the finance institutions. However once that is in place there is no reason why another sibling couldn’t handle financial matters. In fact you could go along the “Oh Robert is so much better at numbers than me, I would feel much safer for you if he was in charge of your bills and so forth”. Use any golden child, gender cliches to your advantage here to force your other siblings to do some of the work.

Is everything in joint names (bills etc)? If everything is in your dad’s name it’d be worth getting it switched to joint names.

My mum always looked after their finances and had all the bills in her name so when she died suddenly, it was quite the job to unpick everything. She’d previously given me access to her bank account ‘just in case’ so I was able to download a list of direct debits before her account was frozen but I then had to contact all the companies and move everything into my dad’s name/account. It was a nightmare to do especially in the first few days after a sudden death, but I had to make sure all the utilities were paid etc.

One extra thought is to ask your dad if he will write out a list of all his accounts/passwords, any direct debits etc. It can be stored away safely but it makes life a lot easier when someone dies.

As for the entitlement, that’s a tough one. You have to decide what you’re willing and not willing to do and then just say that. There is of course the possibility that your mum dies first. We certainly didn’t expect our mum to die as she was actually my dad’s carer but she went before him.

^ illness aside, obviously.

I wouldn’t get involved. All of these people have agency and have made their choices. Those choices now have consequences. It’s not luck or bad luck, it’s an active decision to be helpless!

I do my dms finances. It would be a total mess otherwise. She tried for approx 10yrs, she just renewed the same house and contents insurance which soared to nearly 1k a Yr as she didn't shop around. She ticked every yes box on every insurance offer delivered through her door, she was paying for extra polices for lock protection, pest insurance, window insurance, drain insurance, every electric item was insured, even the 35 yr old tumble dryer... was costing her thousands a year. She had 2 polices with different companies for emergency home electric and plumbing call outs. But still called a local plumber if something went wrong.
It was a lot more trouble picking through this and cancelling them than it would have been to take over from the start.

I am the high flying non local sibling with a very busy job. However I deal with my elderly parent’s finances precisely because it can be done remotely whereas other things can’t be so closer sibling deals with those. So don’t let your siblings wiggle out in basis of distance.

The key difference though is my parent no longer has capacity to deal with the finances so someone has to do it. I would be deeply unimpressed at being expected to do because they were lazy and couldn’t be bothered to learn.

Perhaps a conversation with your siblings needs to be had to express your concerns and what will happen.

I'm in a similar position, DM isn't a queen, she always worked full time and contributed to the household in other ways but DF did all the finances and life admin and is now incapacitated. There is also a lot of anxiety around tech for her. Fortunately everything is on direct debit and Mum can pay occasional bills by cheque, Dad has kept his paper records in good order, so I'm just going to have to suck it up. I hadn't thought of a PA but I think they are going to be short on money as DF now needs extensive care.

Honestly, I think you have no chance of her suddenly becoming competent at the age of nearly 80. I’d save your breath on that one.

Finances can be dealt with remotely, so just because you’re local, doesn’t mean that becomes your job. You will have to be assertive with your siblings.

@Mermaidmummy06 I'm sorry but why do you have to? If she has capacity, why can't she be allowed to manage, and if she doesn't manage then the money will disappear and she'll go into a home if she can't look after herself.

Of course you can bow out. You don’t HAVE to help, but you may have the fallout to deal with

This sounds harsh but simply don’t do it. She’s doing herself no favours cognitively by refusing to learn basic adult skills.