Good morning - happy (hopefully) Monday!
My dad is fiercely proud of his ability to manage his finances despite gradually losing the capacity to do this accurately and safely. My husband has POA for finance and so far has been able to act on dad's behalf, carrying out his wishes in his financial affairs, sometimes after literally hours talking him through various things which would have been second nature to dad a few years ago, but which now cause mild to serious confusion.Also for some years he has spent lots of money on mail scams so his judgement is very impaired (as we now stay with him F/T we have curbed this by vetting his mail and removing the obvious scam ones, although it felt very wrong and heavy-handed at first to treat dad like this)
My husband tries to do as dad asks as so far there's been nothing major and he's trying to choose his battles carefully - so it's things like Dad asking him to transfer money from one account to another, usually because dad says he'll need it to pay standing orders (he won't as there's always more than enough!) The bank know dad well and now know my husband and have seen how carefully and trustworthily he's been acting on dad's behalf - but the other day the customer liaison manager told my husband that the bank was concerned as on paper it looks as though they're not handling dad's money in dad's best interests, which by default also applies to my husband as POA. For example, he has far, far too much money in his current accounts earning no interest at all.The manager said that because they knew my husband was there to steer dad away from disaster they were happy to allow dad access to his accounts at the moment. To be honest, it would be much easier for us if this wasn't so and my husband could just get on with it without having to involve dad but OF COURSE we want to value dad's involvement and control as long as he's capable, albeit steered tactfully in the right direction by my husband. The other factor is that dad is obsessed with certain aspects of his life (see another post about publishing his memoirs!) one of which is finance. He waits for his bank statement every month and it becomes his daily reading matter, along with his cheque book stubs. If this was removed he would be lost and agitated beyond measure at the moment, it's bad enough if the statement is late arriving! (he's also still aware enough that we couldn't give him a new account with just a small amount to play with, as I've heard suggested on here as he would know and again there would huge upset at the moment.)
Because of the bank's comments I just wondered what would happen if they do step in and decide dad doesn't have capacity. In some ways this would be tons better than us having to say to dad that in our opinion he lacks it. I can't begin to imagine his reaction to that - and I promise you it wouldn't be a case of us being surprised at how well he takes it, although as he declines I'm sure we'll get to that place one day.
If you could run me through what would happen I'd be very grateful - I'm assuming they would freeze dad's own access to his money, cheque book etc and only allow my husband to carry out transactions, pay bills etc.
Also any personal experiences of this happening with someone like my Dad. Did you survive the storm?!!
Many thanks......
My dad is fiercely proud of his ability to manage his finances despite gradually losing the capacity to do this accurately and safely. My husband has POA for finance and so far has been able to act on dad's behalf, carrying out his wishes in his financial affairs, sometimes after literally hours talking him through various things which would have been second nature to dad a few years ago, but which now cause mild to serious confusion.Also for some years he has spent lots of money on mail scams so his judgement is very impaired (as we now stay with him F/T we have curbed this by vetting his mail and removing the obvious scam ones, although it felt very wrong and heavy-handed at first to treat dad like this)
My husband tries to do as dad asks as so far there's been nothing major and he's trying to choose his battles carefully - so it's things like Dad asking him to transfer money from one account to another, usually because dad says he'll need it to pay standing orders (he won't as there's always more than enough!) The bank know dad well and now know my husband and have seen how carefully and trustworthily he's been acting on dad's behalf - but the other day the customer liaison manager told my husband that the bank was concerned as on paper it looks as though they're not handling dad's money in dad's best interests, which by default also applies to my husband as POA. For example, he has far, far too much money in his current accounts earning no interest at all.The manager said that because they knew my husband was there to steer dad away from disaster they were happy to allow dad access to his accounts at the moment. To be honest, it would be much easier for us if this wasn't so and my husband could just get on with it without having to involve dad but OF COURSE we want to value dad's involvement and control as long as he's capable, albeit steered tactfully in the right direction by my husband. The other factor is that dad is obsessed with certain aspects of his life (see another post about publishing his memoirs!) one of which is finance. He waits for his bank statement every month and it becomes his daily reading matter, along with his cheque book stubs. If this was removed he would be lost and agitated beyond measure at the moment, it's bad enough if the statement is late arriving! (he's also still aware enough that we couldn't give him a new account with just a small amount to play with, as I've heard suggested on here as he would know and again there would huge upset at the moment.)
Because of the bank's comments I just wondered what would happen if they do step in and decide dad doesn't have capacity. In some ways this would be tons better than us having to say to dad that in our opinion he lacks it. I can't begin to imagine his reaction to that - and I promise you it wouldn't be a case of us being surprised at how well he takes it, although as he declines I'm sure we'll get to that place one day.
If you could run me through what would happen I'd be very grateful - I'm assuming they would freeze dad's own access to his money, cheque book etc and only allow my husband to carry out transactions, pay bills etc.
Also any personal experiences of this happening with someone like my Dad. Did you survive the storm?!!
Many thanks......