How much to share with loved one

rckduran

Hi. I am new to this group, and I have recently realized my aunt is farther along with memory decline. She has been diagnosed with Mild Cognitive Impairment. She has allowed me to assist with a lot of her healthcare needs and some bills (like internet/phone). But she told me I absolutely could not do anything with her finances. Despite being a retired CFO, she cannot manage her money anymore. I am worried if I use the power of attorney (which I have) to do things on her accounts that she will revoke it. And that will not be good for her. Thoughts?

Quilting brings calm

Regarding your subject line- we’ve found that using the words dementia or Alzheimer’s is upsetting to them. Once they get upset, conversation is useless. As they get to a certain point, you can’t logically explain anything to them because they can’t process it. As a result, we tend to use words like ‘normal memory issues for your age’, etc.

Moving on to the body of your post. If you are discussing accounts that can stay on auto pilot such as conservative investments- you could leave them as is. With the caveat that you’d want to prevent her from unwise decisions. One way to do that is to misplace her phone number lists, password lists etc. Put things in airplane mode etc.

For checking accounts, I made sure that I kept the checkbooks( even to an account I didn’t have access to). My step-dad could never figure out how to use an ATM and his bank account was at a bank a long distance away( we moved them back to our home state). He was extremely paranoid and I finally had to give up getting him to pay bills out of ‘his’ account ( money he moved from the joint account the day we moved them). The deposits went into the joint account, which I had access to. So I paid the bills from there.

Mom was easy as she is very cooperative and hardly ever uses her debit/credit cards. The credit card has a $1700 limit so I feel relatively safe about that. She was thrilled to have me take over the accounts and the bills.

Since you have POA, you might call or visit the places and show them the POA. Get the prep work in place for later. Maybe discuss your concerns about making sure she doesn’t get scammed etc. They can’t prevent her from making decisions- but they can probably let you know what she is doing.

H1235

At minimum I think you need to see what is happening with her account. Is there some way for you to get online access? If she is not a person who does online banking already, I would just set things up and not tell her. That would allow you to see what she is doing. If things are really bad with large donations being made, bills not being paid etc. you can take more drastic steps. Would her doctor be willing to state she is not able to make financial decisions? This might help if it could be given to the lawyer. Would she notice if she just didn’t get the bills? You could call them all and do a change of address. Can you make it difficult for her to access any investment accounts? Taking away access to phone numbers. Good luck.

towhee

If she is still living alone, able to call or otherwise contact a lawyer, still able to carry through simple plans, and in the stage of the disease where she can get very angry and has bad judgement you do have a problem. A lawyer that she has used for a while might even do a house call. Is there anyone else she might appoint as power of attorney? And do you have a copy of the paperwork in your possession?

As a previous poster said, if she just has conservative investments, you could just leave them alone. Even if they are not appreciating like they should, so long as there is little actual loss, that's ok. On the other hand, if she is investing in bitcoin or day trading that is huge. Or if she is not paying taxes or insurance premiums. You absolutely need an overview and a way to monitor the accounts.

Perhaps if you gradually increase your involvement. See if she will let you help with the other bills. Ask if you can lock down her credit for her, because a friend of yours had credit cards taken out in her name. See if you can check her credit history for fraud. Ask if she will take the POA to the bank and make sure they will use it if necessary because so and so was unable to use her fathers POA. Ask if you can help with taxes. Make it all you need to know "just in case". Every older person knows someone who ended up in the hospital and could not handle things for awhile. Hopefully she will let you in a little more, and eventually she will deteriorate to the point she is not capable of calling that lawyer.

M1

Another caution: if you hold a general durable power of attorney, that may not suffice for many financial institutions. Most times they have their own proprietary POA forms that your aunt would have to sign to give you access to any investment accounts. If she will not agree to this, you may have to pursue guardianship.

rckduran

Thank you all for these thoughtful and helpful comments!