It is illegal here for anyone to sign or create a contract with a person who does not have capacity to do so. That is the whole simple point.Dear Lawson,
"I don’t live in Europe but I don’t believe here you can be forced to pay ILLEGAL or falsely acquired debts, or re pay money that others have obtained illegally."
I think you slightly miss the point here, the scammers are not doing anything illegal BUT they are getting agreements out of our PWD to enter into a contract without them realizing it and then sending them the contract/agreement by post with the possibility to cancel by specific dates which in reality become very difficult for a PWD to do.
I'll give you an example. I wanted to call my sister, she was engaged, I looked up on my account BT.COM who was calling her. I saw that the number had been associated with "appliance scams", so I tried to call my sister again.
She was on for at least 8 mins before I finally got through to her, and told her. I asked her what he had wanted? On nothing, my address I think, nothing else I asked? No? A few days later, such an agreement arrived at my sisters, pre-warned, I had asked the trusted friends to keep their eyes open. They copied it to me. There was a number to cancel, I actually after a while managed to get through. I told them that as PoA I did not agree with setting up this agreement. The response was, "we recorded the conversation and our analysts gave the green light that my sister appeared of sound mind". My sister often used to sound quite lucid yet repetitive on the phone. I said, as PoA with responsibility for her I don't agree. Finally, I sent them a copy of a few pages of the PoA and only then did they back off. But in the meantime the Direct Debit had been set up but nothing yet taken, so I deleted it.
After that I just deleted the Direct Debit which popped up from another company, but since then things are very quiet.
So you see, they are doing nothing illegal, just ripping off the PWD in their vulnerable state. Yes, there is something in the UK called the Direct Debit Guarantee, but they are more skilled in fighting this than we are in fighting for our rights and trying to get money back, in the meantime another month passes, and another DD is paid out.
Re: Credit Cards, I have credit cards in the UK (since 55 years), Switzerland and Germany and never paid for any of them nor paid interest on outstanding amounts, since I always pay off my debts and never use them for "effectively borrowing money I don't have".
I'm sorry if what I have written makes your mind boggle as you put it, I have tried to simplify it to taking precautions about protecting against scam callers. Back in 2016, my sister had no sign of dementia, but in June this year when I was there I came across old records where someone had in fact sold her a 99 Pound yearly contract for a software to stop wait for it, scam callers! But she had read a warning in the Saga magazine about this and had tried to cancel it, she had scribbled on the back of the envelope all the calls she had made - not reachable etc... Finally, she could cancel it, since it would have worked for her anyway.
Over the past years I estimate my sister is about 3000 pounds light because of scammers, initially all small amounts, which increased as months went on. I fought a few, had minimal success, I spent 30 hrs one month in 2020 on International Phone Calls, Switzerland to the UK, fortunately I have a cheaper phone system I use. It was wearing me out. I wasn't sleeping well. I needed protection I could rely on. That is what I did.
Your hubby is lucky to have you near at hand to deal with the financial matters. Maybe in Australia, things are different, but the UK has one of the worst reputations worldwide, I believe in the case of scamming PWDs.
We have it here in Switzerland, I have, of course, full access to my phones and block and report any attempted scam, maybe I get 1 / month now not even that, it used to be much more. If I have time and am bored, I keep them busy for a while until they get fed up and move on, thus having protected someone else during this time, but usually I am brutal, block and report them.
The bottom line is what you take from the information I am putting out there. I have found myself in a way in a personal war zone against the scammers, and I have vowed to do all I can to make their lives more difficult. But now things are much easier for me with the strategy I have followed. I now for example have time to pass this information on.
In the meantime, the care of my sister has moved to a different phase, 24x7 1hr in the morning, 30 mins in the evening to make sure she gets up and eats 2x a day. I have an online Log of each visit. This I need to check sometimes in case there are worrying items. But at least all the finances are under control.
We had a huge Royal Commission a couple of years ago and the Banks and insurance companies were among the biggest scammers of all. They all used financial advisors who were happily signing up disabled people, PWD, minors, even dead people for certain products resulting in huge profits.
One enormous insurance company almost went broke and many companies and banks had to pay massive fines and compensation to their victims. And a few heads rolled.