Parents refuse to entertain the idea of POA, any advice?

[ceaddas]

My mother has dementia (type pending diagnosis) and my stepfather who is in his 80's has diabetes, limited mobility and other health conditions.

The family have broached wills/POA but my stepfather refuses to discuss it . My concern is if/when something happens to him, my mother will be entirely unable to cope and will not have capacity to sign a POA....what happens then? Any advice please?

Tried explaining, reasoning, logic but to no avail, he just gets cross and accusatory. Mum is open to it in the moment but would have no idea 2 mins later.

Hi, we have been in a similar position. My dad still won’t agree.
My mum (she has mixed dementia) agreed and we went through a provider who had a nurse who carried out a simple capacity assessment around the decision. Mum needed a lot of support to demonstrate she could make and understand the decisions but it all went through ok.
I chose the best time of day for her, made sure she’d had a drink before hand and a calm morning and then it went ahead on zoom.
We used the company because Mum did not have anyone who had known her for 2 years and could act as certificate provider.
Hope that helps a little. It’s so difficult.

Your mother can do a PoA without your stepfather doing one

not ideal but solves one half of the problem

Either can do POA seperately. Unfortunately we never managed to get either of my parents to agree, though dad did eventually agree to a will.
So, when my dad died in September 2025 and my mum was already in a care home with advanced dementia, we had to go down the deputyship route. It takes longer, costs more and requires a yearly statement to be made, but was the only option available to us.

l will be honest, gently explaining to elderly people who have their ears firmly shut doesnt work. So what if he starts to arguing.

I am sure you do a lot for them. Tell them that you are going to have to step back from supporting them and actually do it. I didnt have this issue. Both parents were fine for me to have POA for both of them. It meant they didnt need to 'worry' anymore about life admin.

My DF finances were in a right old mess. He never mentioned how complex they were. He just mentioned that they might be a little messy..I did think well how hard could it be to sort out. I remember going into many bank branches as he had bank accounts in almost every one.

Just be firm and stop letting your stepfather dicate what is going to happen.

You need to let them sink and learn that they need to accept help. DONT do anything for your stepfather. He can sort himself out. Prioritise your mum and what she needs

Thank you for your advice, it is all appreciated

We struggled with this but our remaining parent eventually saw the sense in it, it’s been such a help as she’s got frailer and needs lots of help.. I think something that helped was making it very clear that as long as she had capacity we wouldn’t be allowed to act without her say so, just that we could then help if she struggled with admin etc… And she has subsequently really struggled. I think it’s the horror at the thought of losing control that causes a lot of the stubbornness around this. You may already have tried this reasoning with your dad, and if still getting you nowhere I think the suggestion to step back for a while till the need sinks in is a good one.

Have you actually asked your stepfather what his queries are and talked him through them? I wonder if he just doesn't understand what it means?

But as pp said, your mum can do it separately. Appreciate but a straightforward situation.

Best wishes.

My dad died without POA, but because his and mum’s bank accounts and utilities etc were in joint names, this wasn’t a problem. My brother handled a lot of this stuff for her, with her permission. She had internet banking, which made it easier for him to just do stuff. (This may not be strictly within the banking rules, but what they don’t know doesn’t hurt them, and my brother is a scrupulously honest man who consulted her fully and always acted in her best interests).

When mum went into a care home, without POA, we had to apply for Deputyship in order to sell her house to pay the fees. It took about 4 months to be granted. Social Services paid the fees in the interim, and she died not long after the Deputyship came through, so as beneficiaries, we were then free to handle the house sale ourselves.

POA certainly does make life easier, but not having one is not the disaster that everyone assumes.

We have just started using POA in earnest for my DPs.

Up to now we have been getting by by getting DM/DF on the phone to tell people it is OK to speak to me, or me doing things online on their behalf. Apart from a 'trusted friends' access to their bank. This has been 'interesting' as DM hasn't had much energy for calls, and DF can't hear them properly anyway.

But this prevented me from doing anything when not at their location as two step authentication calls went to their landline and I can't get them on the phone if I am somewhere else. It also means I need to get DF to sign the Direct Debit mandate form for DM's nursing home.

With POA we can now sort whatever needs doing. So much easier for all involved and at current time pretty much essential.

My very elderly parents both refuse a POA. We have been over it many times with them. It doesn't matter what we say, they refuse. It doesn't make any difference explaining to them how much easier it would be to have one.
They both still have capability, though very frail, so there is nothing I can do.

I have had to step back with this and just allow them to get on with it. If they refuse, there is nothing you can do.

I have made sure that I already have POA's in place for myself as I want to make things as easy for my children as possible when the times comes that these are needed.

Luckily we convinced both PIL to do theirs by saying we had done ours and how glad we were it was all sorted (not married at the time) and acting a bit astonished that they hadn't sorted theirs.

But we could only get MIL to let us actually help with her finances etc under POA by consistently responding to problems and requests with "oh dear, what a shame you don't want to tell the bank we have POA, we'd be able to do that for you if you had. How are you going to sort it out?"

I am using POA for both my parents now, both still have mental capacity but DF is in a nursing home and can no longer say more than a few words or use a pen or keyboard and is happy to let me do it all. Mum on the other hand is really hard work, she never did any of their finances, doesn't do online banking had let Dad do it all for years and is totally out of her depth without him, everything I do is wrong but if I am not available when she's got into a panic/mess then that's not good enough either. If she had refused to let me have LPA I think I would have had to say, sorry, not going to help till you do LPA.