Elderly parents and finances…

[itscomplicatedagain]

My parents are late 70’s and 85. In fairly good health and reasonably comfortable financially.

My main concern is how my mother will cope when my father dies.
She’s incredibly dependent on him to manage finances and things like central heating controls, driving, turning the TV on and off and other basic tasks as she finds it too complicated. I don’t think she has any cognitive problems but it’s a combination of laziness, anxiety and enjoying being looked after by my father. She has always been the queen in their relationship.

Their adult children including me, tiptoe around her as she can be volatile, and stubborn and always has been. She is a black and white thinker and incredibly lacking in self awareness.

She told me recently that she has no wish to learn anything about her finances but that I will have to sort it out for her when my father isn’t around.
My other siblings aren’t as local to them as me apart from a brother who has a high flying career and is and therefore ‘too busy’ to help- my mother’s words.

I’m a single parent with 3 children and two of them have additional needs and I work 4 days a week.
I feel resentful about her assumptions and frustrated by her refusal to take any responsibility. I feel I don’t have a choice but to step up when the time comes. How do others manage the resentment? I feel selfish but I do help them out with small tasks already and make an effort to see them at least twice a week. I also take them on holiday sometimes.

Suggest that you get Power of Attorney for health & wealth in place for your DM now.
You can get it in place, ready to use when needed in the future.
I will post the link
POA for health
PoA for wealth
Easy to do follow instructions online

Also get her to make a will

Suggest that you get Power of Attorney for health & wealth in place for your DM now.
You can get it in place, ready to use when needed in the future.
I will post the link
POA for health
PoA for wealth
Easy to do follow instructions online

Also get her to make a will

Link here

https://www.gov.uk/power-of-attorney

Thank you for all the advice and understanding. I feel less alone now and will try and get their finances in joint names for bills etc while they still have capacity.
Despite having siblings, as the eldest girl, the burden of this stuff seems to fall on me.

You do have a choice, just as your brother who is too busy to help, has a choice. You are a single parent with three children, two of whom have additional needs and you work four days a week. I'm sure that you are much busier than your high-flying brother. Your kids are your main priority, not your selfish and lazy mother.

What would happen if you just said that you were too busy to help? Your kids should come first so take a massive step back and don't feel guilty.

Tell her now, repeatedly, that you won't have the time to do it. She can either learn now, or pay someone.

While your dad is still alive get him to set up power if attorney for himself and your mum ( it sounds as if he will have more success convincing your mum). With you as the person who makes the decisions when they are unable.

That way you can ok the decisions on their behalf if they are unable to do so. That is not to say that you have to do the work yourself but it gives you the ability to ok proposals put forward by a 3rd party. There is a lot on gov.uk about how they work and how to set them up.

This interesting. I have PoA for both health and wealth in the safe “ready to go” if and when needed. But reading your post should it be put in place now? I’m a 70 year old widow. If I were to die tomorrow my daughter wouldn’t have access to funds for my funeral, house bills etc. if we put the PoA in place she’d have control of my finances.

My mum is having to deal with this with my nan after my grandad died, every day she was getting phone calls till she put her foot down. Now like magic my nan can drive, internet shop, cook & deal with bills!
Its not because they cant - its because they choose not too.

The POA is only for when you are unable. And your daughter can't act contra to your interests.

The finance POA can be used whenever you like, so if you have capacity but want help with your finances you can ask your daughter to register it with the banks so she can help you. If you don't currently need financial help then there is no point really. It's your choice. (The health POA can only be used when you have lost the capacity to make your own decisions.)

Please note - the financial POA will be of no help after your death with funeral arrangements and bills. When you die, the POA dies with you, and her access to your bank accounts will be shut off.

Thank you, this is really helpful.

You’re an adult, of course you have a choice. Make it clear that it won’t be happening and she needs to make alternative arrangements.

This could be a blessing in disguise.

By taking over finances, you would avoid the (inevitable) following:

1. phone calls about being locked out of accounts and forgotten passwords
2. finding out the hard way that 20k has been given in cash to a ne’er-do-well who’s chopped down all the trees in the garden
3. having to close out multiple bogus insurance products sold over the phone
4. ’emergencies’ because an ‘official’ looking letter has arrived which turns out to be a flyer for a kebab shop
5. searching for the council tax bill that’s been ‘filed’ in the fridge

My experience is that children still have to take over even if they haven’t been asked and by then everything’s a mess.

You could have a spreadsheet, set up the direct debits, go with your mum to get cash out once a week and that’s that.

This is not entirely true. Yes, the POA is shut off at death, but banks allow one further payout for a funeral on presentation of a death certificate and funeral invoice.

Yes of course, they will pay a funeral invoice.

But that is nothing to do with the POA. The bank released money for my grandmother's funeral and she had never done a POA.

This is pretty feeble isn’t it. My grandmother was similar when my grandfather died, but that was in 1976!

My mother (dead now, and would be 98 if she was still alive) was much more capable, so I think there’s little excuse for someone only in their late 70s.

One thing I did for my mother was write her a one-page guide on how to use the television and video recorder (it was a long time ago)!

You could do something similar for your mother: separate “how to” guides on central heating, television, and anything else needed. Better still, get your father to write them!

If he dies before her, transfer the money to her, put the heating to come twice a day, it's all automatic

Of there is money, life goes on. No money, that's the only issue

As the unmarried and childfree daughter I had no intention of being manipulated into being the default carer for my needy mother so I moved to another city. My sister was the golden princess when we were children. She had been promised 2/3 of the estate because she had "given" them grandchildren. My achievements in being the first family member to go to uni and earning a Ph.D were nothing in comparison. So I decided she could earn it by being the golden carer. Sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind (to yourself).

That's bewildering to read. How mum raised you with so much incompetence in her layer years....my grandma was helping my mother into my mother's 60!! Not the other way round

So what kind of mums your mothers were when they were raising you ? Doing exactly what in their own homes and lives?? Was your father the main parent as well

It's bewildering reading. My pil are both 80, both online, pay things together, we haven't any poa though they both have cancers , one of which invurable. He is a step fsther and came with his clothes in her house. Seeing how defensive finance wise mine ones are, I'm astonished reading about the opposite cases

If she can’t cope with life admin she will need to move into a residential home of some description, she might not need care but sounds like she wants to be waited on - she’ll obviously have to pay for this as it won’t be on medical grounds

We have ' jobs ' in our relationship also . I do all the washing , changing of beds , changing of towels in the bathrooms , clean the windows all stuff , arrange appointments like Drs & dentist , open mail , send it out etc.
He does the bins , read the meters , pays those sort of bills , and all the heavy jobs in the house etc.
Tbh we'd both be lost without the other , and that isn't a good thing .

I suspect that my late husband had ADHD . As well as lots of other things he was useless with money from when we first met as teenagers. I was in charge of finances and banking from when the children were tiny.
Sadly he died after a short illness when he was 57 and I was 54 . That was 18 years ago and I’m managing my own finances at 72. I think if I’d have died first he may have been bankrupt by now