Overwhelmed & Exhausted By Power of Attorney Responsibilities

[AgitatedGoose]

Does anyone else really struggle with being a POA and the amount of time it takes up. I admit I slept walked into this when I agreed to do this for both my elderly parents. I’ve never had a close relationship with them and had a very difficult childhood. I’m also an only child and there was no one else to take on this burdensome task and I knew the problems it would cause if I’d said no. I really regret this now because of the time it’s taking up. I’m trying to manage a stressful job and I live 3-4 hours away from my parents. My Mum has Alzheimer’s and my step Dad is struggling to manage his bank account and organise repairs for the house. In the last week I’ve had to spend 3 hours registering the POA with the bank and now they’ve emailed me saying part of the document didn’t scan properly so now I’ve got to go back. I could scan the document myself and email it to them but apparently they have to do it. I’ve also spent about an hour sorting out the house insurance.
The worst thing about being a POA is that your expected to do all this work for free. I can only claim nominal expenses such as car parking and stationary. I also do free lance work as well as my contracted job which I’m having to reduce whilst I sort out the POA stuff. Consequently Im losing money which doesn’t seem fair particularly as a professional attorney is allowed to charge for their services.

Not in the slightest! The POA shouldn't be paying for anything up front with their own money. They get the POA access set up on the person's bank accounts, utilities etc and that's what pays for things.

As above - it can take a few months to get the LPA set up - very important to do it while the person has capacity - while I waited for it to come through, I contacted utilities etc and everyone was willing to put bills on hold (some even wrote them off) but that may have been because they were in a secure hospital

I think I’ve got online access to Halifax without being a customer.

Barclays are good. Dad refused to use direct debits because he liked to be in control of payments, and the staff at the local Barclays would make his payments to British Gas for him. (He was a great example of “living independently “ - fortunately a lot of his “independence” was outsourced to the rest of the town - he once had community support police officer carry his shopping home for him)

@AFriendlyVouce Just to emphasise - no, you shouldn’t pay anything yourself. A LPA gives you the authority to call on the donor’s funds as if you were the donor, and for the benefit of the donor. You should keep it separated from your own funds.

Just to say occasionally when buying toiletries or whatnots for DM I don’t have the correct card on me. I then pay with my own and transfer the money referencing the payment as such

@BetrayedAuntie · 09/01/2024 23:54

''Bloody hell Your poor parents''

Did you even bother to read & understand the OP's post?

Because someone who had an awful childhood should not be made to feel guilty for resenting having to care for people who did not care for her.

Back to you OP, I think it sounds like you should consider resigning your POA as this is likely to cause you constant stress and lost income from now on and you live too far away to be able to look after their needs.

I'm guessing HSBC are the shit bank.
They closed my DP account (we didn't actually notify them) within 4 weeks of their unexpected death despite me having POA.
Because they closed it without telling us all my DP's direct debits etc bounced and the bank 'closed' the account but held onto the money in the account so we can't even use that to pay the funeral bills etc.
Utter arseholes.

Being POA is a thankless task, much more do if you didn't have a good relationship with your DPs - I really feel for you. Will you inherit anything? If not I would just pass the job onto solicitors that your parents can pay for.

Same here
halifax a doddle
HSBC- 5 branch visits and numerous calls to get the LPA registered, cards issued and online banking- some of which was caused by the fact my mobile phone was already on an HSBC account- it cant be that hard? Each time I was told that it was sorted and nothing else was required. Finally spent 2 hours with a very helpful chap in Victoria branch who took the time to double check everything to find the error which was blocking everything and sort it out.

I have now removed their number on everything which means I have to do the online shop because Ocado insist on text verification (and they dont live in a mobile signal anyway so who knows what others living there do)

The threshold for attendance allowance is really low- it sounds like your father would qualify. Mine use it for extra cleaner hours - she visits twice a week which takes pressure off for 2 days

Just a warning for anyone who banks with Revolut - despite telling me several times that the POA was sorted, it turned out that they don't even have a procedure for dealing with POAs and most of the staff don't even know what they are. In the end they did pay some compensation.

If you are working with someone you trust, a quicker solution for managing cash flow is to use the bank's quick switching service to transfer the old account to a new joint account at a different bank. This takes care of all the direct debits etc for you and also makes it easy for you to operate the account. I appreciate that this isn't a perfect solution and there are risks involved, but it can work well.

Spent a whole evening with Royal Bank of Scotland to try and register power of attorney.

2 hours online. Of course the final document didn’t work and wouldn’t send. Nowhere to attach requested documents and I tried EVERYTHING. It’s exhausting. Now I will have to go physically into the bank to register this. This is after spending months actually WITH my mother trying to sort it out with them on the phone. But their computer system was not working one time and another time they promised to ring my mother because she’s housebound and they didn’t. I live several hours away so that is another issue. Endless problems going on for months! Hopeless. Like OP, I wouldn’t mind if there was any payback for me or my mother had been a good mother. Hopefully this is the last time though dealing with this awful bank*.

But it is stressful dealing with all this and I’m fed up with it.

Yes, I do that too. Also Dad would never use a card on the internet, so I do online payments with my card then claim the money back. I don’t do online banking with his money, so every so often I transfer £200 to myself and spend from that, keeping very good records and all receipts!

But that’s different from being out of pocket yourself

@wallywotwot They closed my DP account (we didn't actually notify them) within 4 weeks of their unexpected death despite me having POA. POA becomes invalid on the death of the donor.

the bank 'closed' the account but held onto the money in the account so we can't even use that to pay the funeral bills etc. That’s the correct procedure. If the account holder has died, their money shouldn’t be released until the executor of their will has obtained probate. The one exception is that most banks will release funds for the funeral against an invoice from the funeral directors.

Spoke to RBS. Their POA form doesn’t work on all computers. He was apologetic. He said they are aware of this problem and are looking into it. PS. I have a perfectly normal, average HP windows laptop. So after wasting a whole evening and total frustration on that I now have to go into town and try and do it in person 🤐.

@pickledandpuzzled

It’s much easier when it’s all in your hands than when you are trying to rescue them constantly.

Indeed. We didn't get a POA organised in time before my MIL got dementia, and it's a nightmare as we have to involve her with things that she's not capable of. We have to take her to the bank to draw out cash, and of course, she can't remember what she's there for, so we have to keep going through it all, time and time again, until she's happy enough to sign the withdrawal slip. She wouldn't move with the times when she had capacity, so has no internet banking and most of her bank accounts are pass books! She refuses to close any of the accounts and move to a different bank (or different bank accounts) as she claims she understands all the different accounts she has for different things, but in reality, she's not got a clue!

Having a POA is a million times better than not having one! Yes, a pain to set up in the first place, but once you have it, you can exclude your parent(s) from everything to do with finances etc and just take it all over, which means a lot less ongoing hassle and stress of having to keep reminding them to do things, keep explaining what is happening etc.

My MIL will spend hours surrounded by bills and passbooks "trying to work it out" when we're not there, but she's incapable - she hasn't a clue. Literally, seconds after we've told her something or she reads a utility bill, she's forgotten.

Yes, a good reminder @user1497207191 . My own elderly mother is 86 and is mostly on the ball. But I can see her also struggling with some financial things now “the mess of papers” thing, and she can’t do the computer stuff, so that is a major limitation.

However she is also a bit suspicious of me 🙄 so only reluctantly lets me do financial things.

But it is as well to know that if her mental faculties took a sudden nosedive I could just take over everything more easily. However if at 86 if she’s fairly on the ball she might stay mentally fine for longer.

PS. I went into NatWest re. RBS and to be fair the procedure in person was fairly straightforward.

A cousin of mine had her child as POA after suffering a stroke. Her child gave up the position though had been doing a good enough job at it.
It is now a nightmare. The State Trustees charge an arm and a leg and make decisions that cousin is unhappy about. They are very inflexible.
Be careful what you wish for.

Seriously. You are not going to believe this.

Because RBS computer system didn’t work, (couldn’t give us a PIN number, couldn’t accept documents because of an issue they hadn’t resolved) - basically 5 months of young and froing, no exaggeration.

So in the end I had to physically go into RBS/NatWest with the original power of attorney, to lodge that.

The following week ie today I got a text from RBS saying that a page had been missed and to return to the bank. So, I’ve returned to the bank and the same person who missed paged sent it again.

he returned the document to me, but I noticed that he had stamped the missing page with “this is a certified copy” and signed and dated it for NatWest bank. I said you can’t do that. He said it’s not a problem. I said this is an important original document, just like a Will. You cannot write over it or stamp it. What you should’ve done is taken a copy of the page and certify that. He shrugged his shoulders as if it wasn’t a problem and said I’ve never had this problem before. If you’ve got a problem, ring the government office. Completely nonplussed!

I asked to speak to the manager. She took me into her office. She then proceeded to ring a random local solicitor she found from Google to ask him what to do, this was in front of me. She was told to print out a statutory declaration form. She said she would put it in the post to me.

I left and on the bus I rang the government office that deals with per attorney. Twice. Number 27 in the queue. When I finally got to speak to someone, she was very nice, but she told me this original document now was completely null and void Can you believe it? It cost my mother £700 and lots of hassle to get this document done.

Tearing my hair out here. I started crying in Sainsbury’s at the end of the phone call. It’s taken five months to get this far with RBS/NatWest with incompetence at every single turn from their computer system to their in-house Staff.

Obviously I’m writing a letter of complaint. I want maximum compensation. Five months of waiting to try and resolve this and then they end up destroying the original document. Beggars belief. But it’s not the money it’s the extreme stress.

OmG @DoveGreys that is dreadful.
Feel your pain
Do the banks no longer train people? We had six visits to Santander to register a Guardianship but your hassles are off the scale. Hope you can find a route to escalate and get the compensation you deserve.
Op, hope you doing ok and things going better for you?

I’m hitting the wine and Bacardi. I just can’t cope. But you have to. The incompetence and nonchalance you are right @Mum5net was totally off the charts. A manager googling in front of you what to do and ringing a random solicitor from google for free advice (admired her chutzpah though). Though her advice and solution completely legally wrong. It’s just a form of stupidity and unprofessional that is completely beyond my ken.

An all inclusive holiday in the Mediterranean wouldn’t compensate for this s*. I’ve got to speak to my mother solicitors tomorrow as well, to doublecheck. As nobody it seems knows how to do their job in this country anymore - it seems so you have to continually cross check and cross reference.

I’ll stop ranting now sorry.

PS. 6 visits to Santander sounds pretty rubbish too though. We don’t complain enough.

Like the OP I don’t even get on with my mother (a narcissist) so it’s a double whammy.

I’m trying to tell myself “this too shall pass” like my imminent hangover! - and it will.

But I’m going to kick up a stink about this.

Basically destroying an original document and shrugging their shoulders!

PS. The government office told me that any institution should only demand a certified copy, it was totally unnecessary to demand an original document (though that’s what rbs/natwest did). If this helps anyone, hopefully. I’m just still in a state of gonamackedness - fancy destroying a legal document and telling you to deal with it “whatever” basically.

Your sympathies are misplaced. It's the OP who needs sympathy.

I can’t believe the stress you’ve gone through and it makes my dealings with the Nationwide easy compared to yours. I really hope you get a decent amount of compensation. I got a paltry £25 and wish I’d tried for more. For me it’s the time I’ve had to spend dealing with all this shit and the fact I didn’t have a good relationship with my parents makes it more of an uphill struggle.

6 visits to Santander = £25 compensation.

Thank you @AgitatedGoose and @Mum5net Appreciated. Sometimes it feels like me and Google against the world. It’s been totally exhausting but at least I have some kind of practical resolution on the horizon I think - I can apply for an Office copy at the Office of Public Guardian.

Hint: these are £35 and you can order as many of them as you like - the solicitor told me if you are going to need lots it saves hassle of getting “certified copies”. from solicitors, and not much more expensive. Anyway, I hope I don’t have to do a banking one for a while …