Hi everyone,
We are new to the forums and this is our first post. From reading others experiences in other posts, we know that we're not alone in this all too common occurrence , however we would still really appreciate any advice from others that have gone through the same or have advice as to what our family can do to address this upsetting issue.
My elderly father still lives in his own home, following the death of our mother in the early 2000's.
He was diagnosed with vascular dementia last year but still has a level of capacity. Like a lot of others, he has moments of complete lucidity, but is becoming increasingly worse, despite medications.
My sister lived with dad, for just over a year, to 'look after him' following his being the victim of an accident in which he suffered a head injury.
Rightly or wrongly, my eldest sister and I are convinced this was the initial trigger for his condition, as there is no family history of dementia or Altzheimers.
Dad had been telling different members of his circle of family and friends for some time that he didn't know where his money was going and that he "didn't have enough money to pay for things."
For the longest time and knowing that he really had "plenty" of money in his main bank and ISA saving accounts, we just put it down to his dementia confusion and didn't even contemplate the real reason for his concerns.
My eldest sister and I feel so bad now for not taking him seriously before we did!
During a visit to see him recently, I was asked by him directly for my help with his money. He was upset and crying because he said his money was "going down and down" and he just couldn't understand why.
Apart from at my mum's funeral, that's the only other time I've seen my Dad cry. I was gutted to see him so distressed.
After a summarily look at his bank statements, I discovered that our sister has taken over £20,000 in cash machine withdrawals and his card had also been used to make purchases (via Paypal, ebay and some international transactions) over the internet in a 12 month period.
Our dad can't walk very far due to his fragility and he no longer drives. Our sister is the only person with access to his bank card.
We also discovered that she had transferred money from his ISA account into his current account. We can only summise that this was to gain access to more of his available 'cash'.
Mum and Dad had only ever used the ISA to save for their own funerals! It makes us sick to learn that our sister could stoop so low as to do this to dad.
We have yet to go through historic statements to discover if this has been going on for a much longer period. I'll update my post if/when we make any further discoveries.
After making these initial discoveries, I discussed things with my eldest sister and we decided to sit down with dad and tell him just what my other sister had been doing and also that we needed to cancel his card and set up internet banking, so that I could help him with his finances going forward.
He was fine with us doing that and was naturally upset that my other sister had taken the money without his knowledge of anything.
My dad is not even bothered about the money. Like he and my mum have always told us children, we can have any amount of money, because we are their kids. All we need to do is ask for help!
This is part of the reason why we are so surprised and upset as to why our sister has just been taking advantage of dad and helping herself to such a large amount of money!
Dad is a very proud man and doesn't want others knowing about what has happened. Moreover, he won't hear of us reporting our sister to the police. He says that that's his daughter and that he still loves her. He's since spoken to her and asked why she's done what she did and she's apologised "but didn't realise she'd taken so much". And with that, all seems to be forgiven with her.
She hasn't even had the decency to offer to repay any of the money!
Dad even gave her a large amount of money (£7000) around 2 months ago to 'start her own business' and he tells me that "she didn't go ahead with that business" but that "she hasn't given me any of the money back again".
You can imagine that my eldest sister and I are still very much agrieved , not about the money per se, but how our sister has gone about this. We really don't care about the money.
That might be hard for some of you to understand, but that's the truth.
We are just upset at how our flesh and blood could do that to her own father!
What can we do now to help protect our dad? Our sister still has access to his home and even has a set of keys. Dad still wants her to go see him.
We have made an initial approach to our local councils adult safeguarding team. Dad had a social worker already, as we had just begun the process to apply for direct payments to enable him to have care assistance once a day.
Dad is unwilling to give us POA as he feels like he'd be losing control of everything. What can we do in that regard? Is there something that his Dr can do to help with this? Do we have to wait until Dad no longer has capacity or is that going to be too late?
Please ask any questions you need to as I'm sure that there's things we will have left out here.
My sister and I look forward to reading your words of advice.
Thanks. David and Sheila.
We are new to the forums and this is our first post. From reading others experiences in other posts, we know that we're not alone in this all too common occurrence , however we would still really appreciate any advice from others that have gone through the same or have advice as to what our family can do to address this upsetting issue.
My elderly father still lives in his own home, following the death of our mother in the early 2000's.
He was diagnosed with vascular dementia last year but still has a level of capacity. Like a lot of others, he has moments of complete lucidity, but is becoming increasingly worse, despite medications.
My sister lived with dad, for just over a year, to 'look after him' following his being the victim of an accident in which he suffered a head injury.
Rightly or wrongly, my eldest sister and I are convinced this was the initial trigger for his condition, as there is no family history of dementia or Altzheimers.
Dad had been telling different members of his circle of family and friends for some time that he didn't know where his money was going and that he "didn't have enough money to pay for things."
For the longest time and knowing that he really had "plenty" of money in his main bank and ISA saving accounts, we just put it down to his dementia confusion and didn't even contemplate the real reason for his concerns.
My eldest sister and I feel so bad now for not taking him seriously before we did!
During a visit to see him recently, I was asked by him directly for my help with his money. He was upset and crying because he said his money was "going down and down" and he just couldn't understand why.
Apart from at my mum's funeral, that's the only other time I've seen my Dad cry. I was gutted to see him so distressed.
After a summarily look at his bank statements, I discovered that our sister has taken over £20,000 in cash machine withdrawals and his card had also been used to make purchases (via Paypal, ebay and some international transactions) over the internet in a 12 month period.
Our dad can't walk very far due to his fragility and he no longer drives. Our sister is the only person with access to his bank card.
We also discovered that she had transferred money from his ISA account into his current account. We can only summise that this was to gain access to more of his available 'cash'.
Mum and Dad had only ever used the ISA to save for their own funerals! It makes us sick to learn that our sister could stoop so low as to do this to dad.
We have yet to go through historic statements to discover if this has been going on for a much longer period. I'll update my post if/when we make any further discoveries.
After making these initial discoveries, I discussed things with my eldest sister and we decided to sit down with dad and tell him just what my other sister had been doing and also that we needed to cancel his card and set up internet banking, so that I could help him with his finances going forward.
He was fine with us doing that and was naturally upset that my other sister had taken the money without his knowledge of anything.
My dad is not even bothered about the money. Like he and my mum have always told us children, we can have any amount of money, because we are their kids. All we need to do is ask for help!
This is part of the reason why we are so surprised and upset as to why our sister has just been taking advantage of dad and helping herself to such a large amount of money!
Dad is a very proud man and doesn't want others knowing about what has happened. Moreover, he won't hear of us reporting our sister to the police. He says that that's his daughter and that he still loves her. He's since spoken to her and asked why she's done what she did and she's apologised "but didn't realise she'd taken so much". And with that, all seems to be forgiven with her.
She hasn't even had the decency to offer to repay any of the money!
Dad even gave her a large amount of money (£7000) around 2 months ago to 'start her own business' and he tells me that "she didn't go ahead with that business" but that "she hasn't given me any of the money back again".
You can imagine that my eldest sister and I are still very much agrieved , not about the money per se, but how our sister has gone about this. We really don't care about the money.
That might be hard for some of you to understand, but that's the truth.
We are just upset at how our flesh and blood could do that to her own father!
What can we do now to help protect our dad? Our sister still has access to his home and even has a set of keys. Dad still wants her to go see him.
We have made an initial approach to our local councils adult safeguarding team. Dad had a social worker already, as we had just begun the process to apply for direct payments to enable him to have care assistance once a day.
Dad is unwilling to give us POA as he feels like he'd be losing control of everything. What can we do in that regard? Is there something that his Dr can do to help with this? Do we have to wait until Dad no longer has capacity or is that going to be too late?
Please ask any questions you need to as I'm sure that there's things we will have left out here.
My sister and I look forward to reading your words of advice.
Thanks. David and Sheila.
