to expect DM, 70, to sort out her affairs

[10yellowbuckets]

Should possibly have put in elderly relatives, but posting here for traffic.

Usually have an excellent relationship with DM. Over the last 2 years or so its become increasingly strained as she refuses to sort out her affairs. She is an extremely fit, active and usually very sensible 70 yo with no health issues. Every time I suggest that she sorts out a PoA, her Will or her large 4 bedroomed house full of shit house full of very important stuff she responds with either ' 'I'm not planning to die any time soon' (which is ironic seeing as her DH died at 50) or 'its like you want me dead'. We've now had several huge arguments over this.

She knows her not-fit-for-purpose 25 year old will is going to cause a family shit storm, but won't change it (she says she won't be around to see the arguments) and she also knows that its going to take me (because DBs won't help) years to sort her house out which has stuff crammed in every cupboard, wardrobe, drawer and flat surface that you can pile anything.

Very occasionally she accepts help to clear out a cupboard, but next time we visit it will be full of something else.

I have a friend IRL who has a very similar problem, with no solutions. Does anyone have any suggestions or do I just have to accept that when she dies be that in 2 years or 30 that things will be horrible because she didn't want to sort it out when she was alive. AIBcompletelyU to keep bringing this up in the hope that my nagging will get her to do something?

My late SIL didn't plan to die at 62 either!

Fortunately my parents have wills because they feel that it's best to get this sort of thing sorted early, then you don't have to think about it again and you have the peace of mind of knowing that you have made your wishes clear.

They don't have POA's though. I kind of hope that they don't, because they would definitely try to make me responsible for them and I don't want to be. I presume you can refuse, but I don't want to have to. I don't want anything from them and I don't want to be forced into taking care of their interests.

In my husband's family we are currently dealing with the complicated problems which can arise from not having a POA and the repercussions will probably last for years. There is also a mislaid will and some really unpleasant dividing of possessions (poor relative has not actually died yet but is almost certainly aware of this going on). It's really tragic because they own nothing of any value and we really just need the will to be found so that their last wishes for their funeral can be followed exactly.

So much stress and division can be avoided by having the correct paperwork. It seems a shame not to do that for your loved ones.

I work in healthcare too. Not one single person I work with planned to get ill and to be incapacitated for decades on end while still being alive, or to break their hip and temporarily lose capacity for three weeks, or to have a stroke and have their business and livelihood nosedive while their family scrambles to visit them and get the legal ducks in a row to access the bank accounts, pay the bills and talk to the accountants. Life is what happens when you are making other plans.

YANBU she is being selfish to leave you to sort it all out. I can empathise, it took me 6 weeks to sort out my dm hoarding issues, and I had to leave my dh & ds to get on with their lives in another country while I filled bag after bag for charity shops and the bins! It was bloody awful and my dum is still alive. It’s not unreasonable to expect your dm to act in a reasonable way towards you.

To everyone saying she doesnt need a POA because she's still got plenty of time, you are spectacularly missing the point of POAs.

You set these up when you are in full control of your faculties. This is when you will make the best decisions about who you want to make decisions on your behalf when you no longer have capacity to make those decisions.

If you wait until you need POAs then you have left it too late.

It's not to do with 'planning on dying', it's the opposite, it's sorting things so you can forget it then and go on living. It means so much to the adult children who have to deal with the fall out if not done. Often it's all too much by the time it's obviously needed.

Bonfires!

My parent had a similarly filled house.

They had decided to move near to my brothers as neither could drive, no busses where they lived, DM had poor eyesight, DF thought he had liver cancer, but didn’t, but he did have COPD and had taken to his bed.

They’d bought one of those incinerator bins. I placed it at bottom of garden out of his sight and burnt loads. Old cassettes, junk, wood saved for special jobs 30 years ago, old carpets. The lot.

It still took a couple of removal trucks to move them.

But the satisfaction.

Very cathartic, I can thoroughly recommend long term bonfires.

Oh dear, oh dear. If you have the house of a hoarder to sort out, then 'removing anything you want to keep' can be a bit of a sick joke. You have to excavate cupboards and cupboards of stuff, to find the items. You can be scrabbling around for weeks trying to find important papers - like, did they have a Will, where was it kept? Which solicitor did they use, if any?

Do people not make Wills or get PoA because they think they will be tempting fate? It's something I don't understand myself, so am genuinely curious.

Sort out your POA's first so that you're familiar with the procedure (it's not difficult but it's a bit time consuming) and mention it to her - stress that you're doing it now to relieve the pressure on whoever would need to sort out your stuff if something happened to you.
Then print off all the supporting info she'd need and see if she'll even read through it.
If she doesn't want to do it, you can't make her....

We lost Mum last year, have now done Dad's POAs (one for healthcare decisions, one for financial) and I'll be doing mine soon too (I'm 56 and, unlike some of you on this thread, I'm not able to tell the future so I have no idea how long I'll live)

The Will is a whole thread of its own, and its very difficult to talk about Wills without sounding grabby (which I'm not - read to the end). Her estate is worth quite a lot. She has jewellery worth less than £500. None of it is special, (some of it isn't even nice!) its just sentimental to me. She says silly things like 'obviously you will get my jewellery because you are my only daughter'. I try to point out that if she hasn't specified this in her Will I won't necessarily get her jewellery. And we both know that DB 1 and SIL will be into her house and have swiped anything they want PDQ. She has as much told me that she wants to cut me out of her will because 1.she has spent more time with me ....don't even ask me to explain that one, And 2. because she thinks I don't need it...(but DB1 with his 3 houses obviously does ). She won't rewrite her Will to specify that I can have her jewellery, because if she was going to rewrite her will she'd cut me out completely, and she doesn't want to tell me that.(Or perhaps she has rewritten it and hasn't told me!!) I don't need or want her money(and I certainly wouldn't contest anything), it just makes me very sad to think that her jewellery will almost certainly end up in the bin with SIL who doesn't even get on with DM and will have no sentimental attachment to it.

Watching a friend go through the chaos of trying to provide suitable care for 2 parents whose dementia suddenly worsened has been horrific. They kept on putting off POA then dementia struck and he's potentially going to lose his house (which was bought 3 ways but disentangling his 1/3 is a legal nightmare) to care costs.

My parents own property overseas that none of the children can inherit as not citizens of that country (DM is) and parents are divorced. If DM died tomorrow there is an international headache for us kids and potentially the sister that she hates might be the only one to inherit it (although she might not be eligible unless she returns to the country soon). We have raised this over the years and finally she's making steps but makes every excuse under the sun for not pushing harder. I don't care about the property, I just don't want the headache and neither do my siblings. Dad had a recent healthscare and has finally agreed to sort out his will... FML

For everyone saying it's money grabbing, I've just asked my mum to do a POA and her will at 71. Her will because I will be devastated when she dies and I don't want extra admin to deal with. POA because my MIL didn't do one. She has dementia, too severe now to do power of attorney but she doesn't want to admit that. Dragging her through court and making her face it would kill her. We can't put any support or provision in place because she says she doesn't need it & despite it being documented that she has severe dementia social services take her word. There have been several scary life threatening situations. We've been advised that they will act when it reaches the point they think she should go into a home and that they will choose the home - it could be miles away from anyone she knows based on cost. We get no say. Its awful and one stupid bit of paper would stop it.

Look at that link op I think you'll find it helpful. It says 40-70...si yes it should be done earlier than people think! I want to do my own having done my parents'.

We've had to deal with a similar situation, and will do again in the future.

DH's uncle lived alone and became ill in his 80's. He had an older brother (late 80's, living miles away, with only the odd phonecall contact) and DH - we live 200 miles away.
Eventually, he collapsed at home and was only found when DH couldn't get any reply on the phone, so called the police who broke in and an ambulance carted him off to hospital, where he died 2 weeks later.

After he died, DH spent weeks having to deal with death certificates, notifying the bank, council, energy suppliers etc, sorting out probate, the funeral etc. His uncle hadn't made any arrangements at all for what would happen when he died - no funeral plan, no will, and he didn't have enough in savings even to cover the funeral. We had to foot the bill, plus the bill from the police for securing the property after they'd broken in, the insurance excesses etc.

DH had always been much closer to his uncle than his.uncle's brother was, so it was only.natural that DH felt.responsible for sorting the affairs out, clearing his property out etc, but none of this had been formalised in a will and the estate was eventually divided up, according to the rules of dying intestate, meaning the other uncle got half of everything.

My own mum lives alone and is 84. She has a 4 bed detached house full of junk that should have been sorted when she moved into the house a few years ago, but wasn't. I am one of 4 siblings - we all live in different parts of the country, all have different family responsibilities of our own etc. I know she's written a will and taken advice so as to avoid as much inheritance tax liability as possible, but she has also said on several occasions that she doesn't care what the fall out will be when she does because she won't be around to see it - so, for example, on occasion she's gifted money to 3 of us but not the 4th, and told the 3 of us that it's down to us to make sure that the 4 th sibling gets that money after she's died.

No-one wants to have to think about dying but I do think it's selfish not to have some kind of arrangements in order as you get older, knowing that other people will have to deal with it all after you've gone.

"70 ffs! You are being totally unreasonable. 80 or 90 maybe. My retirement date is 67, I’m certainly not planning on dying three years later. Suggest you back off."

Who plans on dying? Did you miss the memo which explains you don't get to choose?

I think it is incredibly hard to get someone to sort out their affairs if they don't rally want to. I am very 'lucky' in that my parents (late 80s) are incredibly up front about everything, they have sorted POA, shown me their wills, shown me where they keep all the financial information, introduced me to their Financial Advisor and we have discussed funeral arrangements. My DM is also constantly de-cluttering so that I won't have too much to do - but we have a very pragmatic view about death and are able to have very matter of fact discussions about the practical side of 'what needs to be done' - not everyone is able to do this.

3times - we have just had to deal with the unexpected death of a relative in her late 60s - of course she didn't 'plan' on dying, but there was a huge amount that still needed to be sorted out - not easy when your only relatives are hundreds of miles away.

I do understand that thing so need to be sorted (I’m hoping my parents have maybe I need to check) but calling people’s possessions crap? They don’t want to part with these things right now as they mean something to them I imagine

Ok, so you say "She won't rewrite her Will to specify that I can have her jewellery, because if she was going to rewrite her will she'd cut me out completely, and she doesn't want to tell me that".

Well then, since you feel that 1-SiL will hot foot it to the house to get anything of value and 2-your mum doesn't (apparently) care enough about you that she would disinherit you, I'd probably wash my hands of the whole thing and leave it to SiL and DB to take care of. I know it's hard to swallow, but if they're going to get the main benefit by hook or by crook, then let them earn it.

But stop asking your mum. She isn't going to do anything so why bother to upset yourself by her answers.

70 is definitely not too young to be dealing with a PoA. Everyone on here should have a PoA. It governs what happens if/when someone is severely mentally or physically incapacitated. It allows those appointed to take the decisions that the person concerned are unable to do and can give them the monetary means to achieve this. Heart attack, stroke, cancer, car accident - none of these are dependent on being 80+. PoAs are tightly regulated, so they cannot be used fraudulently.
We have used ours to stipulate that we do not wish to be kept in a vegetative state.

My MIL is exactly the same - she has stuff crammed all over her house. She has 4 children (all grown up/married) and no will. However, it's her house, her stuff and her right to do exactly as she pleases with it. I think YABVVU.

In practical terms would a couple of small steps work?. Ie can you (invent if necessary) a reason/event/family anniversary why your DM has to go through the years of Cross Stitch magazine rather than you so you can digitise them? Could you also find a reason why you might need to borrow the jewellery? Out of interest has power of attorney for your DM been sorted? And do you know who the executor of the old will is?

I’m not sure what else you can try here. You can’t frogmarch her into a solicitors to write her will or sign a PoA.

I have had my will written, contents of flat sorted and a note of which firms everything is insured with, utility companies etc which I update each year. I just don’t want DD to have to deal with all this when I snuff it. My parents did the same and it made a horrible time easier. I can’t understand the head in the sand approach to something that is certain. It’s not something anyone enjoys thinking about or sorting out, but for family’s sake I feel it’s a sensible and considerate thing to do.

Having had to try very hard to get POA for my mil, I think it’s only sensible to get it while she’s still of sound mind. We got medical and financial POA which helped enormously when she became confused practically overnight and was then placed in a specialist dementia care home after a long spell in hospital.

I think it’s bloody stupid, short sighted and stubborn of her to refuse. Saying that, I wouldn’t ask her to clear out her shit precious belongings. We used a house clearance service. There was almost nothing the family wanted to keep.

I’ve told my own mother that I’ll be hiring house clearance when she goes. I don’t want a single thing from her house. I don’t have room for more stuff and none of it is my taste.

Unless she is ill, or at risk of being ill, it seems premature for a poa.