Parents refusing to get POA's

[smartiecake]

I'm just posting for any advice. Parents are 77 and 76. Dad has cancer and is receiving treatment. Mum has some mild cognitive issues, but would refuse to see a GP. We are very aware of alzheimers as mum's mum (nan) had this for a long time.

My sister and I have both spoken to them about getting POA. They refuse. Say while they are both alive it isn't needed. When there ìs only one of them they will do it then. However mum is much more tricky a character and undoubtedly would still refuse then. I do honestly think she thinks we will take her money, she doesn't understand POA and how it works, has never experienced it and she has some strange views. My dad on the other hand is much more amenable usually, however he is saying it's not needed.

I am beyond frustrated and sad about the whole situation and their beliefs, but obviously understand I have to accept it. However I am so worried that if we lose dad it may be too late then for us with mum to get POA sorted and I'm concerned that my sister and I will have a nightmare to deal with in the future.
If I can get dad on his own, do you have any advice on how I can encourage him to consider it. I think if I can convince him he will understand and talk to mum about it. I just don't know what to say to them, they are so frustrating and mum definitely has some issues we are concerned about and signs of cognitive decline. I just want to avoid any additional stress for my sister and I in the future. My mum thinks she will live for another 20 years with no health issues and never needing care. I hope she does, however I am realistic that she may need some support in the future, they both may need support.
Any advice on how to handle this situation gratefully received

Ask him to consider what would happen if they were in a car accident together?
They might need some bills to be paid while they were recovering.

Think of a story, ideally a true one, when younger people had something similar happen to both of them.

If your Dad is still resisting then ask him to do it to keep you happy and that you will sort out all the paperwork.

Do you think they could have given it to someone else?

I told the pil that we’d done them for ourselves in case one of us fell under a bus, and that my mum had had hers in place for years since she wrote her will, just left it to settle. It allowed them to see poa as something any sensible adult did, not just for old people whose kids think they are losing their marbles, and because it was me not DH it seemed to be less immediately rejected.

Ask him to consider what would happen if they were in a car accident together?
They might need some bills to be paid while they were recovering.

Yes, it's not just about losing mental capacity which might be what your mum particularly doesn't want to face up to.

We got ours set up a few years ago, before we were 60 - each others, with our young adult DD as a 'reserve'. Would your parents be more amenable to this -it saves them hassle at a point when they really don't need extra paperwork.

I know you know this, but there are two sorts of POA. One financial, the other medical. It is really annoying that they won't let you do both because both are geared up to ONLY invoke when they do not have the capacity to do it for themselves. It is difficult to get once your parent gets so far on with dementia or just life's illnesses that they cannot sign it for themselves. The process (of even getting it) in itself is exacting and quite difficult, even with "well" parents. My mum has alzheimers, and my sister and I got POA for medical care and financial before she was too bad, and that is fine. My dad (83), who looks after my mum is lucidly bright and physically fit, but he knows the times might be a-coming and has asked us to do the same for him. The main thing for me, and I would appeal to AL in the same situation is please get the medical thing sorted. My MIL (same age) had a severe stroke, and was unresponsive on entry to hospital and remained that way for 48 hours, chance of recovery was 0 to 5%, and even if a miracle appeared, she would be completely disabled (no sight, no movement). She had made it clear that if this happened she would not want to live and we had POA. I am not saying that the decision was easy, it wasn't - and I found some of it really difficult, they withdrew all the things that were keeping her alive, switched off the machines, and family sat around the bed in shifts until she died 5 days later, and we wished a thousand times for dignitas or more morphine or something, rather than what she was going through. Had we not had POA, we would not have even had the choice of that, to the detriment of her wishes. I would be pretty insistent, if I was you. Hope this helps, and I wish you love and luck xx

This question is asked a lot on Mumsnet and you could google my username and the issue - often called LPA, as it's Lasting Power of Attorney - to get my advice, but generally the point of it is, it doesn't kick in unless or until they need it. Without it, you are not the decision maker for their care once they get past a certain point, and they are not either - the State is. Their wellbeing could be in the hands of an arrogant consultant or social worker you've never met before.

Re the above post, it goes the opposite way too - if the NHS want to finish your parent off, they can do - euthanasia is meant to be illegal in this country, but is happens because basically the police just don't investigate it. We got Dad out of hospital because we had a hard copy of our LPA in Health and Welfare, things got very odd in the run up and the matron was an utter cow, we saw the warning signs and got him home, and he was okay.

The second time he was in Epsom General Hospital we weren't so lucky and within three days he was dead. He was 94, had a fair bit of dementia, repeated UTIs and tbf was nearing the end anyway but they got him.

It is about power and if they don't give it to you, someone else will have it - someone they've never met before.

Here's a letter I had about in in the Metro newspaper last year.

You could suggest to your Dad that if he died you Mum would be heartbroken and deeply grieving and it's not fair to expect her to deal with everything alone but if you and your sister had joint POA you could take a lot of the strain away from her. See what he says. You could point out your Mums cognitive functions are fading and grief might make it worse.

If you've explained the whole thing to them then they have every right not to set it up.

I would explain all the issues. The fact you won't be able to have a say in their health care should they both be in an accident. Won't be able to pay their care home fees should they need that. Do they want you to take that on? Or maybe they don't.

You could set your own up if you haven't.

Ultimately though it is quite a powerful legal document and if they don't want to do it they don't want to do it.

Yes, it will be difficult. I had to apply for guardianship for mum(Scotland) because she refused to do poa and my brother wanted nothing to do with it. I applied in March and I'm still waiting. Mum is stuck in a hospital bed and we can't move her to a care home until it's activated.

I have the same with my parents, though they are a good 10 years older than yours. They refuse to do either medical or financial LPA's.

All explanations have been given as to why this is important to do, but they still refuse. They are both intelligent and still have full capacity, but still a no.

We, as a family, have now had to accept that this is their decision and respect it as this is their choice.

I already have my own LPA in place as I don't want my children going through this.

For us the threat that social services would make all the decisions instead of us was enough to make them sign. They were deeply suspicious of what decision social services might make. In fact all our decisions aligned with social services but it would have been much harder to access their money to pay for care. They were suspicious of us still but it did make everything much easier in their final years. Can you persuade your Dad that it is a kindness to Mum? Has he noticed the decline?

We got some of their trusted neighbours on side too who witnessed them and were very jolly along types and supportive of it. They too took the line of better for your family than the state to make the decisions and were chatting about their plans to get some in place too. We did it ourselves in their living room rather than going to a solicitor to make it more low key an event for them.

@NewspaperTaxis that's a massively scaremongering post. Hospitals do not 'finish people off'. Generally, end of life care is a medical decision and no doctor can be required to go against what they believe is ethically the best treatment for a patient. If a doctor disagreed with an Attorney's decision and no agreement could be reached, they could ask the Court of Protection to make a decision which would be binding.

@smartiecake perhaps say "All the time you're able to decide what happens, it will just sit in a drawer. But we want to make sure that we're able to help if you didn't die but got so unwell that you couldn't make choices yourself. You can write down what you'd want to do in certain situations, so that we know exactly what to do."

@NewspaperTaxis post is a good way to go if they are already a bit suspicious. No matter how fit and well you are, there's always the chance a wayward bus driver takes you out and in that situation who do you want in control? Someone you know or an overstretched social worker?

so this might be useful :
My parents have LPAs for each other . Simultaneous to the preparation of those documents the forms were also completed so that when required my brother and I have LPAs for either of them or both of them as required.
Mum no longer has capacity to act on dad’s behalf and dad is contacting the solicitor today to invoke/ change his LPA to my brother and I.
Doing this seemed to appease any concerns about setting them up. If your mum has “memory issues” and your dad knows she’s unable to act on his behalf he can his LPA at anytime without your mum knowing.
All of our paperwork was done at a solicitor’s and with their recommendation.it was money very well spent.

I remember reading that Martin Lewis did his LPA in his forties. We have just done ours (me early 60s, DH early 70s) with my very long term good friend as a back up.

Does your dad realise he won’t be able to take care of mum’s affairs unless she’s given him PoA?

MereDintofPandiculation no I don't think they under this at all. I really do need to explain LPA's in their most simplest way to them i think they will be horrified if they realise this. They also have completely seperate finances, nothing is joint and house is paid for.

Im in the same position with my parents and have found that the more I try to persuade them, the more resistant they are (which I wonder whether might be because they feel suspicious so any perceived keenness from me is just more grounds to suspect). So I have backed off completely. They will probably never do them so I have a lot of stress in store but I’m trying to avoid feeling stressed about it now.

So no helpful advice really but you have my sympathy.

There is a dementia feature in today's free Metro newspaper about LPA - mainly around Finance I think. It makes the useful point that if scammers can hit your parents' savings, you will struggle to intercede on their behalf if they have not granted you LPA in Finance.

If you are their 'go to' person in times of difficulty, they should be granting you LPA because otherwise you won't be able to assist. But it doesn't kick in until they actually need it - namely, they are incapacitated or temporarily out of it.

@Lougle I know what I'm talking about on this issue but tbf there is a media blackout on it, it's very odd. The killings at Gosport War Memorial Hospital via opiates happened, it was splashed over all the front pages in the summer of 2018, nobody has been prosecuted and the police will not usefully investigate. Euthanasia does go on, and it saves the Govt a fortune in pensions and prescriptions, and gives them a tasty bonus in inheritance tax.

Likewise there is a media blackout on social workers and so-called Safeguarding heads - I've had many stories in the press both national and local about my mother's poor care in care homes, but you learn that under no circumstances are social workers even alluded to let alone named or pictured, they are the equivalent of secret agents or spies, they have virtually no web presence, it is highly sinister. Over-stretched? I never found that, they had all the time in the world to play games with us and stitch us up.

In such instances, their trump card is 'Have you got LPA in Health and Welfare? No? Well, we are the decision makers, not you.' We had it in Finance, it wasn't enough.

"In such instances, their trump card is 'Have you got LPA in Health and Welfare? No? Well, we are the decision makers, not you.' We had it in Finance, it wasn't enough."

@NewspaperTaxis of course it wasn't enough. There's a reason why the two areas are discrete.

Unlikely but have they heard somehow that the responsibility of being named on a LPA can be a heavy duty sometimes and they do not wish to place that burden on you?

My mother refused to do a POA, she left me, her only child in a complete mess.
I took nearly a year to get guardianship.
In the meantime her house was haemorrhaging money, the home was needing to be paid, it was a living nightmare.

@LadyMacbethssweetArabianhand that brings back memories... The only silver lining is that you aren't paying care home fees while OPG sorts it out. We waited six or seven months pre-pandemic, so goodness knows what wait times are now... Things were complicated for us because my DF had a catastrophic accident in their house when DM was under section in a MH unit and he died in the hospital where she was staying. Eventually, DM move to a community hospital and it was with that address we filed for Guardianship. Eventually, we put pressure on the hospital that DM was a bed blocker and things started to move without the paperwork. So maybe consider asking SW to move her now if the situation is becoming untenable for all concerned. (We only did that once we had a care home place nailed down.)

OP, my DParents situation was so upsetting that I know of at least 20 people who subsequently got their POAs set up after hearing about them. Loads of my friends had 'the conversation' and cited our sad and sorry tale...

People (especially those selling their support to set up POA) talk as though everyone has a nightmare if you don't do POA. The reality is that most of them are never used and just go straight in the bin.

Not getting them is a gamble that you will retain capacity until death but actually most people do and so not having them doesn't automatically mean problems.

Not true. It can "kick in" immediately if they tick the right box.