My mother has dementia and is in the process of running herself in to the ground financially. We are in the process of getting POA set up (Royal Mail lost our first set of documents so everything has been delayed by 6 months).
In the meantime my mother is drastically mismanaging her finances. Specific problems are
- she has set up dozens of charity direct debits, so is paying out £1500 a month on charities
- she signs up to telephone and online scams (we have blocked the landline, but think the calls must come through on her mobile or she is clicking on spam links on her email, also i think her bank details are out there now, so difficult to stop)
- she is withdrawing £30-50 a day in cash, but no idea how she is spending it. She seems to have lost her purse now as well, so perhaps that's where it's gone.
So far I have sat down with her and deleted as many direct debits as I can (40 or 50), but they send letters and she signs up to them again. I have two small children and a full time job and don't realistically have time to ring round them all and cancel directly. Also some of them don't look very legitimate.
As I say, we have set up some kind of call blocking on her phone. Also the bank has cancelled and replaced her card (about 5 times so far I think), but she continues to give her bank details out over the phone.
She now has no money left at all despite a very generous pension. I'm struggling to see what practical things I can do to help without the POA which is likely to take another 6 months to sort now.
TIA