Wrongfully being accused by brother and wife

[ForJoyousDog]

I don't know what to do! My brother has POA for finances for my mother, which he has actioned and now deals with her banking. He and his wife are doing an audit of mum's spending since dad died in 2019. Mum became a recluse after his death, the mobility car had to be returned. I live 750 miles from mum, my brother 12 miles but to help mum I did her grocery shopping online using her debit card. This turned into birthday cards, gifts, hobby materials etc but everything with her authority to use her account and card. My brother and his wife have said that now my brother "has unrestricted access to mum's account and are working closely with the bank as there are suspicious payments that have come out of her account". I have done nothing wrong, certainly not used my mothers bank account as my own but the accusation has been going on since January, the messages I get are hateful, they are relishing trying to destroy me, my husband won't support me because he told me this would happen and he is angry as to how this makes him look. My mother has told my brother that I had authority to do any shopping etc using her card, but it is still going on. I'm not eating, sleeping and my relationship is suffering. What can I do to make this stop does anyone have any ideas please?

Surely the gifts for birthdays can be explained, as well as the shopping delivered to your mums?

Very sad, but really shocked by your ‘D’H’s reaction. Worried about how it makes him look, what a martyr! You deserve better!

So you used Mums card online? Not the physical card therefore no cash withdrawals?

You don't have POA

If you didn't keep the receipts and don't have a spreadsheet/list of where and why the money has been spent, then I think you are in some trouble

You can't spend on Mums card on her verbal say so. There is nothing to cover you. No proof that she asked you

However if you have receipts and details of what why and to whom.....then the spending is traceable , therefore explainable

If you don't have proof and you don't have POA, then I think your brother is correct to check on what you've been doing

Not a lawyer but as someone who had POA for my Mum I think you shouldn't have done this.
If my Mum needed something and I couldn't physically be with her I bought it and she sent me the money via telephone banking. Towards the end she couldn't leave the house easily to use a cash machine so either me or my brother withdrew cash from our accounts and then she (sometimes) sent the money.
We always refused to use her card unless she was present
As for your husband he should have your back but he DID warn you not to do this

To be fair, he warned her this would happen and he was right. We don’t know the context of why he thinks it makes him look bad. It may be to do with his profession.

Then he can report her.
So car since January he has done fuck all.

So OP can absolutly tell him to stop and cease all contact.
If he wants to go through formal channels they can contact OP.

So at the time your Mum had full capacity (and still does?) and noone had POA? I'd be more concerned about how your Mum is treated going forward with them holding POA. I'd say if SIL hasn't been great in the past, there is a risk that they would withhold funds from her for a decent quality of life to increase their inheritance.

Can you go through all your Amazon orders on the account and clarify who they were for, and get them to confirm if necessary- that would at least cover one part of the issue. Do you still have emails about the online food deliveries, that should show where they were delivered to?

Your mum can reverse this is she doesn’t want your brother to have POA over her finances, if she speaks to a solicitor and explains she wasn’t aware what the paperwork was they can revoke it.

If she wasn’t fully aware of what she was signing this is very dodgy, she can change it.

I think this is where the confusion lies

You think "used her card" means physically holding the card, going into a shop, entering the card in the machine and using the pin.

But what posters are saying is you "used the card" by having the details from your mum's card - the big long number and the Secuirty number on the back - and used the details from the card to make online purchases.

Its semantics really, but you did use your mums card to make purchases.

My advice is to stop using the card details to make purchases. Of you have bored down the long number and secuirty number, delete it.

Yes, I'd go through all your Amazon orders, note down single one of them in a list - what was bought, for whom, and why, and forward all the grocery shopping emails to your brother.

My brother used to forward every online supermarket shop confirmation email to me as soon as it arrived. And when either of us bought anything for mum we'd WhatsApp the full details to the other.
Every couple of months we'd check her account, not because we didn't trust each other, but because absolute transparency was key.

Although mum had capacity, sometimes she'd forget birthdays, on which case my brother and I would discuss it and arrive at an amount that we know she would have spent.

He and I had never been close, emotionally or geographically, but mum's care needs brought us together, and I wasn't about to let anything go wrong or risk the new relationship.

Speak to your mum about what's happening she can reverse pow of attorney if chooses. But you need to stop paying for things unless you have poa

Document every payment since January- where it's gone/what it's for.
Send that to your brother.

If you have bought things for yourself unless it's obviously a birthday gift or similar you should probably pay it back.

It's a real shame this is happening. I'm sorry for you OP but unfortunately this can frequently be the way financial abuse of older people happens. You should have kept records. Can you ask your brother for the list of bank transactions he's querying so you can provide explanations for each item as far as possible? Presumably you can find records of Tesco and other deliveries and where they were delivered to and tally some purchases to family birthdays etc.

I buy things for my Dad who's 94 and in a care home - eg. a new shaver and parts for his hearing aid paying for them myself and then pass the receipts to my sister who has POA. I think the whole family does it that way. The rest of us don't have his card details.

@ForJoyousDog Speak to your dm.
Poa when it’s in place can only be used if your dm hasn’t got capacity OR if she has capacity and allows it.
Your db has no right to go through your mum’s statements even with poa unless she agrees or lacks capacity.
Your dm can withdraw the poa if she has capacity.

Does your mother want them to take over her finances? She can revoke it by sending the Office of the Public Guardian a copy of the LPA and a written statement called a 'deed of revocation'.you can find the official wording needed online, it's a very short statement, and it doesn't need a solicitor.

I’m thinking the SIL is behind this.

Quite right.

Sounds like your brother is trying to sow the seed to have the right to cut you out of the inheritance

@ForJoyousDog
Whilst I agree with pp who think that something is up with B & SIL, I also think that this doesn’t take away from the fact that what you have (unknowingly) done may be classed as fraud. I’ve had a look on the Which? POA site and they have a live chat with an advisor button. I suggest you talk this all through with someone who really knows about this sort of thing - whilst everyone on here is well meaning, we are all telling you things from our own experience and I doubt if anyone is actually a lawyer.
Good luck

Mum has capacity but is allowing it. She has told him she knows the purchases made on her behalf and gave me authority to pay online on her behalf, but I know there is jealousy as my brother if talking to mum calls me her darling daughter, which is not fair as there was never any favouritism. He even asked me once to buy a sound bar and HDMI cable from Amazon for mum's tv using her debit card. I asked her for authority then.

Surely if all purchases have been online (amazon, supermarket plus one other retailer) all the details will be on OP's account and they can systematically go through each one. All of the supermarket deliveries will be to Op's mum's address, the amazon ones will be to various addresses but presumably all sent around Christmas or specifoc birthdays). The OP's mum will be able to verify what was agreed and ordered. Job done.

Also, brother and SIL sound hideous.

The crux here is has mum got capacity or not ?
Did POA start in January?
So purchases made before then you had mum's permission.
Have you made purchases since brother took POA?
Brother needs to phone the police if he thinks you have stolen from your mum. But if she had capacity you did it with her knowledge on her behalf.
People with capacity can give thousands away to young men over the internet and the police can't do anything about it.

Hmm. I would do an itemised list of all items.
But no offence OP, this reeks of pisstaking. Fair enough if it’s a weekly order to Sainsbury’s but all these gifts for all these people being delivered to your house and their addresses does raise concern. In particular you should not have used her card to buy stuff for you and your DH. If your mum was unwell and lacked capacity then people would understand why they didn’t get gifts. If I was your DB I’d not be impressed.

Surely the OP wouldn't want the added stress of being contacted formally, given how much stress she's under already from a perfectly reasonable request from the person with the PoA. The OP should have every purchase already accounted for or should get the paperwork together easily. Communication is key to resolving this informally and quickly.

You're in the wrong place for sensible advice on this. There are too many posters on MN who (without knowing the difference between arse and elbow) just want to judge harshly and say you've done something wrong over everything. They get a thrill from it. Take legal advice from a lawyer. Your brother sounds horrible.