No POA in place

[Horsemad]

DM had PD and is declining; she is currently cared for at home by her husband. She flat out refused to claim AA or to set up POA when I tried to broach the subject a while back.

What impact will not having POA in place have on her future?

Potentially quite dire ones.
Is she happy with strangers making decisions on her medical treatment and care needs in future?

Given she has an actively engaged husband and daughter, health wise probably not much. Any decision should be in her best interests and involve consultation with her family about what she would want if she could tell you.

Finances wise - depends how she is set up. Do they have joint accounts? Would her husband be able to pay the bills if she wasn't able to manage her finances?

It is unfortunately not the norm for people to get POA done for lots of reasons so she has that in common with the vast majority of people accessing health and social care.

They do have a joint account and Mum also has an account in her own name. Apart from that, I have no idea, as she's fiercely private about her finances.
I do know the house is tenants in common and wills are in place, as they both told me this years ago.

Her husband will be able to manage the bills alone if needs be.

Getting a deputyship takes much longer and is a more complex and expensive process than a POA. It will almost certainly only deal with her finances, not her care, though as a PP rightly says that's hopefully not going to be a huge issue.

I didn't know about deputyships, so will have a Google, thanks.

I am frustrated because I broached POA more than once with both of them but neither were interested...

Why aren't they interested? Do they not trust you, therefore why should you really help then with anything or is it more the fear of losing control then you could explain it would only come into affect when and if they couldn't make these decisions for themselves?

That's selfish of them to be honest. We have set up POA's for our children for the future and I'm still in my sixties! They didn't do it, we did. I don't want to be a burden when we get older.

I would have a long hard talk with them. Tell them how unfair it is to not have this set up for the future whilst they are able to agree to it. Tell them strangers will be responsible for them, as opposed to family.

Make sure you do the financial and health ones (there are two) if they do agree. Personally I would get it all set up ready and then talk to them. It is laborious and time consuming but it is online now,

The account in her own name will be tricky to access

I broached the subject with my parents. And they also seem very reluctant, and don't understand it's importance. I had a nightmare during covid with a much older friend, who was in hospital, then a care home and due to covid, unable to get to the back. He paid cash for everything. It was tricky and took 18 months to get him a back account with a debit card.

What is it, I wonder, that makes parents seem reluctant? Do they think the kids are going to access their bank accounts and run off with all the money?!

Ours has been set up about 5 years now, it hasn't been touched as we are thank god fine healthwise and haven't needed it. But I know from experience it's the sort of thing that is better done in prepartion or scrabbling around trying to do it when it's really needed.

OP... also I set it up for me to access DH, and DH to access me, as well as kids both of us. So we're covered for the future.

*it's the sort of thing that is better done in preparation as opposed to scrabbling around trying to do it when it's really needed.

I am currently in the process of obtaining Deputyship for my stepfather, through a solicitor. If your DM is able to make decisions at the moment, but is reluctant to arrange POA, then she certainly won’t agree to Deputyship. It’s for when a person has already been assessed as having lost capacity.
the situation with my DM and stepdad (SD) was this: mum was fine, SD diagnosed with Parkinson’s and Lewy Bodies dementia a few years ago. House owned as tenants in common, 80/20 split mum / SD. She controlled all finances. Joint account plus pensions going into their own accounts. No POA for either. Myself and siblings are beneficiaries of both their wills with me as executor for both.
DM died suddenly in February whilst SD was in hospital for respite after a fall. He’s now in full time care, under a DOLs order. Money in joint account which was used to pay bills etc can’t be touched as now solely in SDs name. House can’t be sold due to TIC trust. SD has no capacity - can’t communicate, cognition very poor etc. Local authority now deal with me in terms of his care funding, but the invoices are building up. All their utility bills are now with a debt collection agency. Once the house is sold, this will all be paid off, but the stress of getting to that point is enormous on me. Application for Deputyship and change of trustees which will enable me to sell the house is lengthy - so far it’s been 5 months, all the forms have been received by the Court of Protection and they’ve given us a provisional time of 6 months to completion.

We always thought it would be my SD who died first so didn’t pursue POA for him, how wrong we were!

My advice to you is, download the advice sheets from Age UK about POA, applying for AA etc. read them through with your mum. Tell her how hard it would be for you to carry out her wishes if she didn’t have POA completed. You don’t need a solicitor to do the POAs, I did my MILs online very easily - we completed it together on my laptop. Good luck!

My parents were the same. Then the worst happened - catastrophic stroke for one and dementia for the other. In practical terms it made little difference bc me and my sister were engaged and accepted by health professionals as having best interests of parents. The finances were another issue though!
As a result me and DH have sorted ours with our children's involvement

I'm not really sure how much capacity she would be deemed to have. I live 200 miles away, so don't see them often. StepFather says she has hallucinations, which I know is a side effect of PD medication. I've never seen evidence of that when I've been there.
When I call her she seems ok, lucid just a bit slow in her response sometimes.

However, even if she IS deemed cognitively ok, she will not go for POA. I'm not sure why she just says 'Mmmm, I'll think about it'. 🙄

It is bloody exasperating because I can see the shit storm ahead and cannot do much to deal with it.

StepFather is in better shape, he takes BP medication but is much fitter than my Mum. He's doing the caring though & is getting knackered/frustrated with lack of sleep.
Any suggestions by me to get some additional help are dismissed.

@Soontobe60 my Mum & SF's set up sounds similar to your Mum's. Why can't the house be sold and the shares apportioned?

<sigh> I think I just have to wait for the crisis to happen & act accordingly then unfortunately. 🤨 I have no idea of the split for the house, nor what the will says. Completely in the dark... Oh it's gonna be fun, isn't it?!

@Soontobe60 Nightmare. Been through a less complicated version with DPs. The circumstances you are dealing with sound v stressful and time consuming. Hope the next stages go as smoothly as they can.
@faffadoodledo Broadly similar to what happened to us and so our POAs are all done,too.
Yes, OP, it is important but you cannot force them. We failed miserably. I would try to talk to them when they are with their friends and say you and your DH are considering doing yours and get a wider discussion going.

Cross posted with OP.
I guess OP all you could do in the circumstances is get little voice recordings done of their interpretation of who owns what. Obviously, not legally binding etc but a starting point for the big unravel that’s heading your way. Huge sympathy to you.

That's a good idea, @Mum5net thanks.

No LPA in Health and Welfare means that you are not the decision maker for their care at a later date when they are deemed to have lost mental capacity. Losing mental capacity is a vague area, it doesn't mean they've got to the point where they are muttering into their own beard about cabbages.

Not having LPA does not mean they retain control. It means they relinquish it and hand it over to the State. Any State body - hospital consultant, so-called Safeguarding heads, social workers and so on. Such State operatives are in power and you are battling on your parent's behalf with both hands tied behind your back. They will also make out that if they didn't grant you LPA perhaps it's because you're not trustworthy, if it becomes a power struggle.

State inc police can intervene and say, 'she goes in a care home' even if said care home is riddled with Covid. Not saying they will, saying they can. She could grant LPA to her husband, that might be a start I guess. You can have more than one attorney as a back up, that back up being you. Assuming our mother is in a fit state to grant this now.

Words like 'power' and 'attorney' are very off-putting for the elderly.

My mum has capacity, but lives in an extra care facility after a massive stroke. The LPA that she took out allows us to do stuff for her with her permission. So we have access to her online bank account and can pay her bills for her and generally fill in forms etc for her. The health element meant that we could change doctors surgeries on her behalf after the one she was with proved useless. And when she's admitted to hospital (which happens regularly) there's never any problem with us being able to talk with her doctors and get things from the horse's mouth.

Should she lose capacity for significant decisions, then it will be converted so that we can make decisions without her approval.

Having said that, my SIL didn't have an LPA for my MIL, who had dementia and went from hospital to a care home. But my SIL was still involved in all decisions and kept informed. And SIL did access her bank account (openly, always in her best interests, with my full knowledge, and the option for me to check the account if I wanted, in the absence of my late husband). I absolutely trusted them of course. My MIL was wonderful and much loved, and my SIL absolutely trustworthy.

FiL had POA for finance but not health. Which meant that when he ended up in hospital and dramatically lost both cognitive and physical capacity, he was discharged first into a remote hospital and then an even remoter care home without any consultation or input from relatives. Only after the 6 free weeks ended could those with POA for finances influence where he was placed. He was very close to death by then and it gas taken a couple of years for him to regain the physical and mental decline he experienced in that unsuitable care home where no-one could visit.

Without a POA in place, any state body can decide on ‘your best interests’ and do not have to take anything or anyone else into account. FiL thought ‘only money mattered’ and found out the hard way that this was far from being the case.

The issue too with not having a financial poa is that it impacts the person who isn't ill - for example, if you own a house with someone else and then become incapacitated, with no poa in place, nothing can be done about the property. It might be that the non-incapacitated person would better selling it and moving to a smaller property or one with a downstairs bedroom and bathroom so the incapacitated person can return home, but unless the incapacitated person has given someone poa, the other partner is stuck.

Whilst you can go to court to get poa once someone is incapacitated, it's time consuming and expensive, and of course the incapacitated person can't choose their attorneys or let them know their wishes. Perhaps point that out?

A will only applies on death, so doesn't help whilst the person is still alive but incapacitated.

Read what @cantkeepawayforever says - it's all that and then some. Local authority social services can and will decide what home your parent goes into, and for them, money is all that's important. In Surrey and elsewhere I'm sure, they don't give a damn about the elderly and have the power and inclination to get very very nasty indeed.