Catch 22 with elderly parents and POA

[charliehungerford]

My in-laws, 89 and 90, live independently at home a few hours away from me, they have been in their current home since the 1960’s. We organise home shopping, prescriptions etc and visit when we can. They are no longer able to keep on top of their finances, are pretty much housebound, can’t get to a bank unless we take them, don’t do tech, refuse to pay anything on line, won’t use cards. They have both become very confused over the past year and their short term memory is terrible. They don’t recall a conversation you had with them an hour ago.

They sorted POA ten years ago, they have POA for financial issues for each other, and then their three children are named, two of which live overseas. Problem is that the children (one of which is my husband) cannot act for them unless their POA’s for each other are revoked. They don’t understand why they need to be revoked, they don’t have capacity to instruct their solicitor to change it, but they don’t have capacity to act for each other in the event of something happening, such as needing to pay for carers etc. They have numerous bank accounts with significant funds but have no way of accessing them as they don’t understand how to without significant assistance, but as we cannot currently use the POA we are stuck.

they did the right thing setting up the POA but unfortunately they are trapped in an awful situation where they aren’t able to act for each other and no one can act for them.

Does anyone have any experience of this problem? Any advice on how to move forward would be appreciated.

Capacity assessments do need to be paid for and ime cost around £500 for an independent one of your GP won't do it

An attorney can disclaim their appointment so if each parent did this for each other, it allows the replacement attorneys to step up and act.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/disclaim-a-lasting-power-of-attorney

They refer you to the nhs clinic service which is contracted out here who do them
here. No need to pay

I understand that their GP doesn’t provide this service, but I heard that from a third party so will check myself.

At the moment They don’t want to engage with social services, they seem quite afraid of them getting involved. I think they think they’d be ‘put in a home’. We’ve explained it doesn’t work like that. They don’t need any more income. they probably have around £2k a month spare that is not being spent as well as significant savings (as in a few hundred thousand). They could pay for help if required but would be reluctant to do so. They would see it as wasting money. They are an ordinary working class couple who have been very frugal all their lives, hence the large amount of savings, it’s not going to change any time soon. We’ve always encouraged them to spend their capital but they won’t. Their kitchen is over 50 years old!

That’s very interesting. Thank you. I’ll look into this.

You don’t need to be engaged with Adult Social Care to apply for Attendance Allowance. Nor is it means tested.

Exactly. We claimed attendance allowance when I was nursing my husband through his terminal cancer. Macmillan suggested it, helped fill in the forms, and that was it.

Have you spoken to Age UK @charliehungerford ? Their helpline is excellent.

Thank you. I will look into it.

I’m at actually quite the opposite. You must be fully funding your care yourself to get it. If you’re technically being funded by the local authority while your house sells, but refunding when it’s sold, you can get a backdated payment.

One angle that might be helpful.

Spend some money so you dont need to go into a home.

Treat yourselves (and me) to a cleaner.

If there’s that much excess than may have the potential to agree to spend half on it on care home avoidance tactics.