How do bills get paid if you have a stroke

[alwayswantchocolate]

My father in law has dementia and was moved from a hospital stay into a nursing home last Thursday morning. My mother in law had a massive stroke on Thursday afternoon and is now in intensive care.

My husband (their son) has no power of attorney. Presumably the care home are going to be asking for their care fees, she has bills that have arrived in the post, etc.

What do we do with the bills? We can't afford to pay them and we can't access their money to do it on their behalf.

We realise we may need to get a solicitor to get a court order, but we're still waiting to find out about my mother in law's prognosis (perhaps she will be proven to have mental capacity by next week, perhaps she will never regain it), and we realise that the court process won't be quick.

Can we just ignore the bills??? Should we ring the various companies to say what's happened?

Totally out of our depth!

Yes, ring the companies to explain what has happened and meanwhile apply for POA or deputyship with your solicitor.

Are there any bills in particular you're concerned about? Are they on direct debit? Do your in-laws have regular income paid into their account which will cover those bills? It's not urgent yet but you do need to get cracking on the legal side.

She's clearly got some (undiagnosed) mental health issues and paperwork was strewn round her house. My husband bagged it up this morning and we're going to work through it tonight as we haven't a clue about her finances.

One bill is from John Lewis, no direct debit set up. There won't be anything financial set up with the care home yet as she collapsed the day FIL went in before she'd gone there.

She was supposed to be applying for some benefits, but she wouldn't share the details with DH at the time (we think she may not have understood herself) and so we don't know what those were, but I doubt she'd have got around to doing it as she's very disorganised.

We don't know much about her income, although she has a company pension and her and FIL will have old age pension - we don't know what that amounts to but hopefully there's a bank statement somewhere in the pile. I know she has some savings somewhere as they are liable to pay a proportion of FILs care home fee.

Such a mess!

PS Thank you for your reply!

Sorry you are going through this. Is there anyone at the adult social care team you can speak to about finances?
LPA took months to be granted.

There was an adult social worker involved due to FIL's hospital stay and dementia. My MIL largely ostracised the team by being rude and difficult but they might be prepared to speak to us ... good idea.