Parents new “friend”

[Itllbealrightonthenight]

I feel uncomfortable about my parents new friend, let’s call her Tracey.
My parents are in their early 60’s, both retired and have plenty of friends and family around them. Almost overnight this Tracey has become part of their everyday lives. Tracey is 26 and according to her, has crappy parents which is why my parents have taken her under their wing. She drives to their house for dinner several nights a week, goes shopping with them, goes to the gym with Dad 3 times a week. I met Tracey for the first time recently and she was pleasant enough but dismissive of me and made no effort to get to know me. I made a conscious effort to get to know her and make her feel welcome - because my parents have grown close to her. But she wasn’t interested and actually made me feel like the stranger in the situation. To my shock she repeatedly called my parents Mum and Dad. That made me feel really uncomfortable around her and I’m suspicious of how quickly she has formed this deep bond with my parents. I can’t help but question her motives. My parents have accepted her life story as she tells it- a neglected child. But the reality is she’s 26, an adult and my parents don’t actually know her yet. She lives with her Dad who she says isn’t supportive. Her mother is elsewhere and she too doesn’t have a good relationship with her. Apparently.
Im suspicious about her intentions and also peed off that she and my parents have totally disrespected me by allowing her to call them Mum and Dad. They’ve known eachother for 6 months!
Thoughts?

Precious Tracey?

It should have read; Are you Tracey?

I would call Tracey out next time she calls your parents mum and dad. Point out they are not, it’s Mr & Mrs S to her or their first names, whatever the norm is, and make it clear you would appreciate she refrains from doing so again.

people will skirm, your choice if you do it in front of your parents or quickly whisk her aside.

i would also go to the police and ask them if they could run a check. Telll them your concerns. They might not be able to tell you much, but if something is there they can advise a plan. Might include them paying her a visit.

any chance of taking your mum aside and mentioning what you daughter said about the Will? She may feel uncomfortable if it’s true that your dad is talking such like.

I see you said they have family around them so shouldn’t feel lonely. Our youngest left home firstly for uni about 10 years ago, and then o/s for work about 6. My life is busy but there’s a hole there that I can’t seem to fill.

I have a young helper who is a couple of years older than my youngest, come in Fridays for 2 hours and enjoy her company immensely, but it doesn’t replace my offspring.

I’ve done stuff to help out my young friend where her mother and (what friends she has) have let her down. There’s nothing wrong with being kind, but there are boundaries…

I wish you luck.

How many more times? EVERYONE should set up a POA for themselves.
What if you suddenly became incapacitated? Do you think it couldn’t happen to you? Do you think your family would be able to make medical or financial decisions on your behalf without one?

Of course you can (and should). POA is an agreement made by you as to who you would trust to be in charge of your affairs in case you became unable to deal with them. If you suddenly had an accident or otherwise became incapacitated, would you want your family to be able to make decisions for you? Or the local authorities? Having a spouse or family does not mean they would automatically have those powers. And most times POA only kicks in once you have lost capacity. Once anyone begins to lose capacity it’s too late to set up POA.
I speak from experience, a relative of mine became incapacitated and I cannot imagine how much more difficult things would have been had we not already set up POA

Just to add: I don’t think POA would kick in in the example of this thread as the parents still have capacity. But generally there’s a lot of misunderstanding about POA and people need to realise how it works and how important it is

It can take a long time to get over a childhood of neglect. Is she a befriended from a local organisation or charity maybe?
You have a right to be concerned - you may want to gently ask where your DM and DF keep their financial info, will, I'd documents etc.
You could ring Age UK too for advice.
Is there anyway of registering your concerns about payments for large amounts suddenly starting on their bank accounts savings etc?
You might want to seek getting Power of Attorney for them?

Depends how it is set up and what options are chosen. The property and financial affairs LPA can kick in straight away.

It should have read have you read the full thread?

This is very odd are they wealthy? tell them to be careful and maybe invite yourself round to this woman’s place for a cuppa ask in front of your parents to see her reaction could you possibly accompany your dad to the gym keep turning up where she is and let her know without telling her your watching her kill her with kindness and hopefully she’ll get the message and bugger off

I would have grave concerns here. She's clearly manipulative and I have no concerns calling it here because of the fact that she was dismissive of you and also I am concerned with the way she's happily calling them mum and dad in front of you and I really don't like the way she's doing things individually with your parents such as going to the Gym with your dad. I am not thinking that your dad would develop anything inappropriate with this woman, its actually the potential for this woman to use this time in some kind of trouble causing way in the future if she ends up arguing with one or both of your parents and this could be by making accusations of inappropriate behaviour either with your parents or by potentially passing this off to others as something more. I have yet to see this kind of overfamiliar behaviour with these dynamics not cause issues in someway and this is screaming alarm bells because it is clear she's at the very least taking advantage of your parents making them feel they are healing and helping a damaged young woman and the way she's dismissing you is part of the manipulation and she's aware that if you do react strongly she can play the part of the adoptive daughter being treated with suspicion and jealousy by the daughter who has been lucky enough to have these parents her whole life. Of course she will have answers prepared for why she wasn't welcoming to you and she will of course be extra manipulative with the "oh I thought I had the family I always wanted but your real daughter is making me feel in the way and has totally misinterpreted things as I wasn't being dismissive, I was nervous and worried she wouldn't be happy and look I was right '. I know it's hard but try not to rise to it and definitely don't end up raising all these concerns in front of this piece of work as I guarantee she will play the part of feeling rejected again and your parents will end up trying to make you see how she needs them and isn't being sly, they will likely act as though you're being selfish and jealous because they'll be hearing all the time how lucky you are and she wishes she had grown up with such wonderful parents. I know it will seem i am guessing a lot of this and could be wrong but I promise you that you'll witness these things because that's how these scenarios tend to play out. 26 year olds don't suddenly adopt new surrogate parents as she's a fully grown adult and I have friends 40 years older than me and I thibk of them as friends not as replacement or extra close relatives. She's not going to Last but I hope she doesn't do irreparable damage in the meantime xxxx

Going to the Gym with your dad is honestly really. really strange. Most bio daughters wouldn't go to the gym with their dads , not because of any sexist reasons or anything inappropriate , it's mostly because men and women normally have different training or working out needs and attending a gym together is more motivating and beneficial when the people are the Same sex fir eg 2 males spotting for each other on weights etc. I just can't see your Dad being spotted by the adoptive daughter etc. It just doesn't make sense tp go together 3 times a week on a regular basis. Fair enough if anyone thinks I'm being weird here but I don't get it at all!!! Xx

Do you put the same photo on social media then? I reverse imaged a photo of a microwave display from Mumsnet and the search brought up the photo from Mumsnet!

Your parents are early 60s and in good mental and physical health (I think it unlikely in the extreme that both of them have sudden onset and otherwise well disguised dementia at their ages) They aren't going to be activating POAs any time soon and nor should they.

They are adults, you are an adult and it sounds like you've always had a good relationship with them. Talk to them about your concerns, tell them that this stranger calling them Mum and Dad hurts you. I think a crucial thing is getting your daughter to talk to them about how uncomfortable she was made to feel by the inappropriate flirting. If they try to minimise, don't let them, because these are your feelings and you are entitled to share them.

@Blueflowers5 The OP can't seek POA. Her parents have to set it up. As I mentioned earlier I have mine in place. If her parents lacked capacity then she would need to apply through court for legal guardianship which she cannot do as they both have capacity.

We are in our early 60s and have POA set up. Makes sense as we head towards retirement. You never know what is round the corner. You can't set it up for someone else though.

She sounds v dodgy- the way she’s dismissive if you. And the will.

Please confront her and tell her you are going to have her investigated. That should be enough to scare her off

No, I tried with a clear picture I use for my email outlook/ work.

But I just tried my FB profile picture and nothing came up either

Do a Clare’s law check, she won’t know and all you need is her birthday and name. It’s a commmon misconception this is just for women in relationships.

I gave birth to my first child when my mum was 37. I was just 20 and had been married for 18 months when I had my first child and she had had me when she was almost 17.

Im now 66 and my eldest grandchild is 19. But my first would have been about 23 if they had survived.

Of course you are quite right. The intention of my post was not to suggest otherwise - I've held POA for my Mum for over 20 years. I was commenting on the frequent ageism that pops up on Mumsnet.

Oh FGS. All she's done thats remotely strange is refer to newish friends as "Mum & Dad".

The police will have to give up policing altogether soon. They'll be too busy processing requests for crime numbers for insurance and checking half the citizenry under Claire's bloom in' law.

You don't find "Dad" adding her to the will after knowing her 6 months and hitting on his 23 year old Grandchild past the point of comfort remotely strange? 🤔

That would work because it's the same photo. Reverse image search isn't doing an AI "looks a bit like" on the whole photo. Machine learning capabilities can find the exact match, but AI is only really capable of spotting products at the moment. So if you reverse image on a bottle of perfume it should do well, but not a human face. There are legal issues with facial recognition in AI for some purposes such as policing largely because AI is so bad at it that it needs banning rather than usage controls.