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

I sold it to mum by saying that it's like insurance. You hope never to use it but it's there just in case. Also used the scenario where she might be temporarily poorly in hospital and we could pay her bills etc until she was better. DH and I both have it with DC and each other as attorneys.

I have to be really careful when using the phonetic alphabet as when I say Y Yankee as I was trained to do decades ago I am prone to say Y wankee…

Sorry my last message went in the wrong chat but I hope it brings a smile .

Ok..

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

Just to reassure anyone frightened by this. In England, people absolutely can be transferred to a care home whilst the deputyship application is being processed. Social Services are paying for the care and we will pay them back once we’ve been granted deputyship and mum’s house is sold.

If they are worried about finances, it will cost an awful lot more if you need to get Deputyship through the Court of Protection due to lack of capacity. Who do they think will have control over their affairs in the interim? Unless they appoint each other through LPA, they cannot act on the other's behalf.

My experience is the polar opposite of Newspapertaxis. My experience is that the NHS will keep hauling people back from a natural death for an impossibly long time unless someone can put their foot down. I guess that cultures and units vary a good deal.

Perhaps that is the answer - if they won't give power of attorney, their wishes basically mean almost nothing. Whether they want to be treated to the nth degree, or whether they want to be able to die at a reasonable time, they will be at the mercy of doctors they have never met before and who don't know them.

Meanwhile without POA for finance, large chunks of their money will go to lawyers or will sit losing value, or will be needed to pay bills on a house they can't use and which is deteriorating in value by the day, but can't be sold for months on end. Thankfully my mum, though unable to think about being physically helpless, was very on the ball about finances and we have POA for that.

I don't think old folk should be pressurised into agreeing to POA if they don't want to

I’m sorry you went through this, but actually youre not completely correct. For someone who is in such a position of your MIL, the doctors would likely not resuscitate anyway. And even if you had POA that stated the person would want to be kept alive come what may, the docs can override this if its not in the patient’s best interest.

I accept that they may refuse and that's their right to do so. However I know my parents and my mum has some confusion, possible early dementia and we have strong family history of this. She can also be a very difficult person to deal with, she simply has no experience of LPA's and does not understand the principle or how they work. My dad has cancer, an aggressive one. I'm trying to make them understand the issues they may have to face for each other, even if they don't wish to make anything easier for my sister and I should those difficult circumstances arise.
Thanks everyone for the great advice, no I don't think they understand they need LPA's for each other so I'm going to start with that angle.

Yes I think that's fine provided they are also okay with their children not assisting them with finance, health and welfare if they lose capacity.

If my parent had needed to be pressurised into granting me power of attorney I would simply take step back if they lost the capacity to make their own decisions and would leave it to the State to step in

And ok with being placed wherever the state chose to place them in a care home. Possibly the cheapest option so that any assets last as long as possible.

They probably think it is fine because they are married. I was told this by my elderly MIL.

Ask him whether he would like his children to be making decisions in his best interests if he doesn't have the capacity to make decisions for himself, or whether he would prefer for the state to make those decisions on his behalf.

Well, LPA in Finance might have been enough, given that our mother was paying around £1K a week from her savings for 'care' at a care home which appeared to be under covert instructions to kill her off via fluid withdrawal, enforced by Surrey's so-called Safeguarding heads aka social services.

However, when we tried to use that leverage via our solicitors in Epsom, to whom we'd granted Deputyship to allow them to organise our mother's shares, the woman in charge of Safeguarding simply phoned up the solicitors on the quiet and bitched us up to them - following which our solicitors turned a bit chilly towards us. We only found out why after Mum's death, when we sent the solitiocrs a Subject Access Request. It didn't show up when we sent an SAR to the Council because the Safeguarding head did that Council trick of communicating via phone not email, to keep it 'off the books'.

This is the sort of thing you are up against.

You don’t need to wait until capacity goes for LPA Finance.

I wish people wouldn’t spout incorrect info. Health one is different but as long as the box is ticked on Finance one you can use it as soon as set up. I did for Mum and she never lost capacity.

This was a massive issue when I was trying to get my mum to arrange LPA for my dad. He had Huntington's disease and his mental decline was rapid.

She kept saying "We're married, we don't need it". It was an exhausting battle with her, as she's often wilfully ignorant and contrary.

I sorted my own LPA when I found out I was at risk of developing Huntington's. Luckily I haven't inherited it, but I'm still seriously glad that the right people have legal say over what happens to me should life take a turn for the worse.

Are your parents very organised? If so,tell them what happened to an elderly lady of my acquaintance. She was a secretary all her working life,very very organised and meticulous. After she was widowed,she lived alone with no close relatives nearby.
Her neighbours were great and used to have her around for coffee,take her to appointments ect,and her great niece used to come and see her as often as she could,but she lived 100 miles away and had health issues and her own family.
The lady ended up getting a diagnosis of dementia and after years of friends and neighbours looking out for her,was admitted to hospital and a home. There was no POA set up,so her next of kin had no say in anything that happened to her. Social services took control and her family were allowed to take one or two keepsakes from the rented house that their great aunt had occupied,but they were not allowed access to any paperwork whatsoever,not could they have any say in what happened to her.After the lady died,the family discovered that social services had never cancelled the rent on her house, neither had they cancelled the phone line. 5 years of rent and phone line being paid on a house that she wasn't occupying. Social services also lost her will and subsequently claimed that there never had been one. We all knew that there had been as she was so organised and friends had seen it ,she had it filed with all her other paperwork,which SS took away. Now her family are stuck in a limbo because they are unable to inherit anything as there is "no will".

Oh my goodness @Feckedupbundle That's shocking. No they are not very organised.
@Orangesandlemons77 they absolutely think as they are married they don't need it for each other. I'll be telling them they do! Maybe that fact will give them something to think about and hopefully make them realise they need to be sensible.

They particularly need it as they have separate finances.

I told my DM (who is tight) how much the alternatives would cost.

It's hard enough sorting things and now I tell people I won't help them unless they sort their paperwork to give me the tools.