Hello everyone, I hope someone here may have information/experience/can share insight into how best to deal with the following situation. I’m sorry but it is a long tale…
Briefly; my MIL has been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s around a year ago but have recently suffered a decline, coupled with some medical issues. My husband and his brother are in the process of applying for a LPA.
Before she was diagnosed, it came to light that her finances were in a mess. My husband has helped sort it out for her and in the process paid c. £3k to various creditors. Her finances have been under control - she is on full pension credits, housing benefit etc. and lives in a local authority bungalow nearby. She only has a very small NHS pension as additional income.
At the time, my husband was given third-party mandate with her bank. He managed the accounts, making sure everything was ticking over and nothing untoward was happening.
Everything stabilised and in July he decided she had enough funds to pay us back. He spoke to her and she was happy with that. He foolishly decided to try and make a single payment. The bank’s online service rejected the transaction and it was flagged as fraud. A very rude lady then spoke to my husband and his mother, asking her questions such as “well, why weren’t you paying your debt to the vet?” and “why weren’t you paying the bailiffs?”, even though my husband explained the situation and diagnosis. This resulted in her accounts being frozen. She’s been told to go to the branch to ID herself and unfreeze her accounts. An attempt to do that was made in August but as she has no photo ID, we had to request various letters as proof of identity, and coupled with a hospital stay have only managed to go to the bank again today. The lady in the branch has tried her hardest to get various people on the phone to help but the bank refuses to unfreeze her accounts. They refuse to transfer money from her savings account, to her current account to cover her bills. It’s been referred to the special circumstances team to make a decision next week. These decisions are causing her financial hardship and it’s frankly unbelievable that under the guise of duty of care a financial institution can do that. We get they have to be cautious and act in her best interests, but if they looked at their records they could clearly see that nothing untoward was happening for a long time. Frankly, it’s Kafkaesque.
We’re at a loss with what to do and how to act. The LPA will take weeks to go through and even then we understand that the bank can refuse to accept it? We’ve resigned to the fact that we’ll never get back the money we paid, but we’d at least like to get her accounts up and running (and take all her money out of that damn bank and move it elsewhere!).
If anyone has any advice, please help!
Briefly; my MIL has been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s around a year ago but have recently suffered a decline, coupled with some medical issues. My husband and his brother are in the process of applying for a LPA.
Before she was diagnosed, it came to light that her finances were in a mess. My husband has helped sort it out for her and in the process paid c. £3k to various creditors. Her finances have been under control - she is on full pension credits, housing benefit etc. and lives in a local authority bungalow nearby. She only has a very small NHS pension as additional income.
At the time, my husband was given third-party mandate with her bank. He managed the accounts, making sure everything was ticking over and nothing untoward was happening.
Everything stabilised and in July he decided she had enough funds to pay us back. He spoke to her and she was happy with that. He foolishly decided to try and make a single payment. The bank’s online service rejected the transaction and it was flagged as fraud. A very rude lady then spoke to my husband and his mother, asking her questions such as “well, why weren’t you paying your debt to the vet?” and “why weren’t you paying the bailiffs?”, even though my husband explained the situation and diagnosis. This resulted in her accounts being frozen. She’s been told to go to the branch to ID herself and unfreeze her accounts. An attempt to do that was made in August but as she has no photo ID, we had to request various letters as proof of identity, and coupled with a hospital stay have only managed to go to the bank again today. The lady in the branch has tried her hardest to get various people on the phone to help but the bank refuses to unfreeze her accounts. They refuse to transfer money from her savings account, to her current account to cover her bills. It’s been referred to the special circumstances team to make a decision next week. These decisions are causing her financial hardship and it’s frankly unbelievable that under the guise of duty of care a financial institution can do that. We get they have to be cautious and act in her best interests, but if they looked at their records they could clearly see that nothing untoward was happening for a long time. Frankly, it’s Kafkaesque.
We’re at a loss with what to do and how to act. The LPA will take weeks to go through and even then we understand that the bank can refuse to accept it? We’ve resigned to the fact that we’ll never get back the money we paid, but we’d at least like to get her accounts up and running (and take all her money out of that damn bank and move it elsewhere!).
If anyone has any advice, please help!
