Lasting Powers of Attorney

[oddoneout]

Lat, if you haven't already come across this, it might be worth printing off and having to hand - or leaving with your parents? It seems like a pretty good clear summing up of the relevant info.

https://www.ageuk.org.uk/information-advice/money-legal/legal-issues/power-of-attorney/

Re the joint accounts the question to ask is whether cheques, withdrawal slips, transfer requests etc need one signature or both to action. Needing both signatures is not the norm for personal accounts these days, more used for things like charities and businesses.

[Lat-Literal]

Lat, if you haven't already come across this, it might be worth printing off and having to hand - or leaving with your parents? It seems like a pretty good clear summing up of the relevant info.

https://www.ageuk.org.uk/information-advice/money-legal/legal-issues/power-of-attorney/

Re the joint accounts the question to ask is whether cheques, withdrawal slips, transfer requests etc need one signature or both to action. Needing both signatures is not the norm for personal accounts these days, more used for things like charities and businesses.

Thank you very much oddoneout.

That is very kind of you.

I will check on the points you mention.

[Dave2002]

Sadly a great many people feel they have no option as they are given no or insufficient help in finding a workable legitimate solution - not helped by decreasing access to 'face to face' banking. Disembodied voices in a call centre reading from a script, or online information lacking the necessary detail are not the best options for someone already struggling to make sense of things. It also has to be said that in ordinary life many are casual about who they give their PIN to and so they just see it as a logical 'normal' thing for a struggling family member to do.
As you say the trust situation can be fluid, and it can be difficult to apply the same critical eye to matters as one might to a person not part of the family circle.

Part of my previous quote was to hint that even people who are part of the family circle may do unexpected and unwanted things. This is sad, but I think it's quite common.

Other less important irritations are subscriptions - for example to book clubs, which some older people for various reasons decide to take out, and which then are very hard to cancel. You get the "Am I talking to the account holder?"
"No" "Can I talk to the account holder please?" "No he's in a home" etc. stonewallng. Usual excuse - "I can't do anything without the express permission of the account holder ...."

Finally of course you get your punch line in - "You won't get it - he's dead!" Those are an irritation, and a major nuisance, but not normally much more than that.

[oddoneout]

Part of my previous quote was to hint that even people who are part of the family circle may do unexpected and unwanted things. This is sad, but I think it's quite common.

Other less important irritations are subscriptions - for example to book clubs, which some older people for various reasons decide to take out, and which then are very hard to cancel. You get the "Am I talking to the account holder?"
"No" "Can I talk to the account holder please?" "No he's in a home" etc. stonewallng. Usual excuse - "I can't do anything without the express permission of the account holder ...."

Finally of course you get your punch line in - "You won't get it - he's dead!" Those are an irritation, and a major nuisance, but not normally much more than that.

I picked up on that, but was suggesting that part of the reason is that we expect and assume family to 'behave' so don't pay as much attention to their activities in such situations.
One time when I was involved with the 'we can only deal with the accountholder' situation(despite me being attorney by that stage) I remarked to my sister that it was tempting to let the company do just that and see how far they got.....Fortunately,typing up a letter and getting her signature on it(eventually) broke the deadlock. The irony of course was that it was less 'legal' than the action they said they couldn't do for legal reasons....

[Lat-Literal]

Oh my God, I appreciate everyone's inputs which have been helpful but the combination of the "issue" of LPA and the illness of dementia has the impact of altering within ten days identities, ability for drive, verbal coherence and much more to the point of it being a threat to very life. It is just a question of who is winning to the death and who is failing. I have been given several all clears recently, with all the stresses that knife edge entails, and frankly I am shocked by that in itself. I suppose I should be on cloud nine. I am definitively not.

I sit here bemoaning my fate as an only child with two parents in their late eighties at war with each other and the heavy arm on me of an uncle who while right is pushing me into supposed strength as my parents visibly sink. And argue with each other or together against everyone else. That actually weakens me. I am supposed to sail off into the sunset and enjoy everything they have given while feeling guilty for being the ogre under someone else's duress who insists they get support. Well, I am. I'm going away with a mate to escape it.

I'm guessing the evil here is in none of us or even in the illness but for the second time in a decade the way that this Britain apparently "works" and is currently organised. Fraudsters galore, often desperate, so that every member of the public is turned into potentially suspicious and controlled. Financial institutions which having taken themselves into a crash are as inept and damaging to others as the politicians who chucked young people into WW1. I never trusted clowns unless I could be convinced that they had no idea what they were doing.

Advice, as always, would be welcome.

[Lat-Literal]

I suppose actually, I should put some factual detail on this apart from emotion and any wordplay that makes me feel in control, hah-hah-hah. Not.

Which next I shall quite succinctly do with a loud Penelope Pitstop "Hayulp".

tba when I can - give me a few minutes.

(actually, this could take more than a few minutes, I can't even cope with it to put it into writing tbh)

[Lat-Literal]

To be honest I can't even bring myself to discuss this at this time. These sinister money-raking creeps who insist on telling us ten times a day of the illnesses they want to save. They can s-d off. They are absolutely evil. Worse than ISIS terrorists. I do not believe that any strategy should be to encourage people to live to over 85. It's cruel. If some do, every good luck to them. I am with them. But I'm getting out far younger than that because I have the temerity not to inflict myself on those younger. I would absolutely ban health policy charity adverts as the first thing I would do as Prime Minister. I'd also ban such charity events from sportis events retc They disgust me and they are promoted by thoroughly disgusting people.

Try to live to 200 if you wan't to - just inflict it one everyone else. And please, please, please, get out of your selfish, brutish, wallets and get real. It won't work anyway - with that overpopulation you know damned well that you will take down the world. (Hah, we're all living to a 100 while hardly knowing the fact and Africans are dying at 30 - no, no, no, clear off - and yes we can still celebrate those who march on to 85/90 odd as ok and even great but never, ever as part of a warped financial strategy. It is why 16 year olds knive each other.

I was kinda disappointed that having made my way there against the odds, Lindisfarne was full of people wearing red t-shirts in favour of blood cancer. I wanted a spiritual rather than a corporate experience, It ruined it for me. Had I talked to them, I would have been affected deeply emotionally. I am the sort of person who would have been driven to tears. But a significant part of that sadness is that I know they had been nobbled. Nobbled into wearing sad badges. Money at the root of it which will not ultimately help them. I find it disgusting.

I would have spoken with them empathetically, with emotion, with sadness, with offers of practical support but never, ever, ever while they were wearing those Wall Street t-shirts.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zw-5Syqmg4g

(At hashtag protect our youth which we are not doing in any shape or form - they are dying earlier - but at least the Western Empire continues to be omnipotent, white, black and yella)

[Lat-Literal]

Oh just arrived in my in-box - hooray, hooray, hooray.

If "The Devils" could be passed after some argument in 1971, then that is my guide,. I am for tackling this culture now in what should not be passed.

They haven't even begun to face my main criticisms yet which are based on personal upset. mockery of people with dementia and offensiveness:

Thank you for contacting us with your concerns about the British Heart Foundation. Please accept my apologies for the delay in getting back to you. The complaints we receive are very important, because they help us to build a picture of the types of issues that affect both consumers and businesses. Your complaint : I understand that you objected that the radio ad was offensive and that the repetition used could evoke fear. We’ve considered your complaint carefully and looked into all of the issues raised. On this occasion, our initial assessment suggests that the ad may not have broken the Advertising Rules. However, given the nature of the points you made, we’ve decided to put your concerns to the independent ASA Council for their opinion. The ASA Council is the panel that ultimately decides whether advertisements are in line with the advertising rules. This can sometimes take some time, so we appreciate your continued patience while your complaint is considered further. I will contact you again once Council have made a decision.

I'm just not having individuals - and society - brought down on the grounds that it is perverse to oppose out-of-control health bank-charities.

[Lat-Literal]

And I have just done my reply:

Dear ,

Thank you very much indeed for coming back to me withing the timescales with a considered and informative response. You will appreciate that my e-mail was written under extremely difficult personal circumstances for at least three people, given that one has dementia which has unforeseen impacts and another who does not but whose heart condition is severely tested in her marriage with the one who has that condition. In neither case, anecdotal, is there a crossover between the two diseases except in the considerable impacts on us all which I refer to without going into detail. I note that the advert, quote, might not contravene rules. I also note that is has been forwarded upwards for consideration on the grounds of an alleged inducing of fear. I think I would add the word "unnecessary" to the word "fear" given the limited, not hugely tested, research on which it is based. I doubt that it is really based in unequivocal factual evidence, just as a dessert which contains microbes is not necessarily the wonder cure it might originally claim to be.

But there is an even more important point. Obviously given my emotional reaction to the umpteen broadcasts of it, I could not necessarily work out why my reaction to it was so strong. A part of this is that I now claim it mocks people with dementia. I would ask that this point be brought before the panel too. Because I think, with courtesy, you might ask yourselves what that repetitive phrase was intended to convey. Whose voice was it supposed to be exactly other than that of the actress? It seems clear to me that it was supposed to indicate the voice of someone with dementia in the sort of way that a similarly stereotypical voice as once believed to be the voice of a gay or a black person would be outlawed. In other words, it is mocking someone with a mental condition by being in that stereotypical way. For information, there are actually more than one hundred strands of dementia so not all affect speech patterns in the way portrayed, nor indeed are many conditions of it linked to heart disease as implied.

The terrifying and deeply upsetting nature of this advert in its use of repetition which I suggested was almost a sort of torture technique - with no disrespect to Chinese people older people might well describe it as a verbal form of what used to casually be described as Chinese water torture : and see also American waterboarding - fits in well with modern ethics of which I am aware. The idea that you have to go out of your way to shock to effect money-saving health changes. I am very keen with this correspondence to set a precedent or at least a barrier in terms of that going too far. It must not, as I suggest is true in this case, cause undue alarm (I note that in legal terms the definition of assault is not being assaulted but having the feeling that one is so and this I contend gives precisely that feeling - it has done to me). Nor should any advertising be undertaken so controversially that it is insensitive to the welfare of some parts of society.

My final word here, for now, and I would like this also to be taken into account by the panel, is that I subsequently found a version of this advert on television. It was very much the same but the differences were noticeable. Behind it was the placing of soft, lush, strings. So there is a further question here. It is still not right but was it changed for television because of my e-mail or was it decided that a different approach should be taken for television irrespective of what I had to say? I think you might well look at that because it seems to me that decisions were made and they do involve elements of gamesmanship which are not necessarily approached as seriously as those of us who live with people with the very difficult decisions concerned.

My regards,

L-L

[Lat-Literal]

I have been made physically ill by this bloody society and this entire business of LPA is at the heart of it . As for my mind, I can't engage any longer with music, comedy, the countryside or anything else. Last Saturday, on day three of a break that I took only as a thank you to my mate and because he is having every bone broken in his foot and reset in the New Year, I had to pay £120 in an hour of high drama to return from Hastings via heavily flooded roads and aquaplaning. Some seventeen hours on with persistent hiccupping and choking, I was dialling 111 with the possibility that it could easily turn into 999. The latter didn't happen but my chest is appalling. I really question now whether I will see out the year.

Parents. Historically lovely. More than I could have asked - but they veer from relatively normal to mad (which almost everyone else in society these days is) - and this entire matter has driven a barrier between us. I do now know why I put up with the criticism of not getting involved with wider family for years. Nice enough, they are so poisoned by the money conscious zeitgeist they are scared stiff about having to pay out a couple of thousand of their millions for the sake of my Dad if he gets into a muddle. Hence the sudden "we are here for you" b-----s pushing on me to get the LPA sorted out. Father resists. Mother plays the middle ground. I take the flak. I've been played by m y parents as their pawn against external forces one too many times now. Now father changes his mind. He has read some tripe in a newspaper and believes in it more than anything I or his brother could have said. His brother his sorry I am ill but time is running out. Sorry - but everyone just get off of my back. You are killing me. Literally. Yoyu are old. Too old. Get out of my life. You don't appreciate my good intentions and have constantly rejected it. You are so full of your own self-importance you don't see it as a killer. End of them. End of me. End of everybody. Thank the system.

I hate you all.

I hate people for what they have done to me.

[Dave2002]

Hang in there. Something's really getting to you. Take time out and look after yourself. You won't be able to help anybody if you don't do that. We, and I hope you, seemed to enjoy your wanderings off around the south west. Maybe time to have another jaunt and get away from things.

[Anastasius]

If I could add a few points from personal experience ? My wife has PoA (financial) over her mothers' finances. She has the earlier version and has been told by the relevant Govt department to never let it out of her sight as trying to get a replacement is nigh on impossible. Later versions, not so much of a problem. So if you have a PoA then check it out.

After exercising her PoA, there was a whole diversity of competence shown by the various finance companies when it came to putting it into practice. Lloyds were fine. Santander were and still are the pits. They are so bad they really should have their licences revoked. My advice to anyone with an elderly relative is to close all their Santander accounts and move elsewhere otherwise should you be in the unfortunate position of having to exercise the PoA then you are in for a whole world of pain.

Having looked at the various bank accounts that had previously been 'outsourced' to her mothers' sister-in-law, my wife has a very strong suspicion that the accounts were milked. But that's another story.

Closely allied to PoA is the possibility downline of having to get probate in the event of death. My sister and I already had been exercising our PoA over our mothers' finances and so when she recently died, it was very easy to simply close down all her bank accounts and transfer the money into a separate interest bearing account prior to probate being granted (we're both executors). I was surprised by the ease of doing this as previously was under the impression that bank accounts were automatically frozen. Not so. It depends on each banks modus operandi.

As far as inheritance tax is concerned and you believe that a percentage of the IHT allowance can be transferred (in our case, our father pre-deceased our mother) then there are certain key pieces of information that you will need and might not have to hand nor find it easy to find in the event that both parents have died. Forewarned is forearmed. You will need this...

Parent A

Date of death
Date of marriage or civil partnership
Place of marriage or civil partnership
Copy of their will (if they left one)
Copy of Grant of representation (ie probate) or if not available copy of death certificate
Copy of any Deed of variation or other similar document executed to change the people who inherited the estate

Parent B

If parent B dies and you don't have the above then life gets tricky to get the double IHT allowance.




I hope that the above will help someone downline

[Lat-Literal]

1 of 5

Thank you for all of the kind contributions and my apologies for the fraught nature of previous posts. I would like via this website to express my appreciation to the police who provided excellent support to me on one evening the week before last and also to my GP for her support to me the following morning. When in panic one takes scissors and starts cutting off one's own hair, not knowing what the next thing might be, there is only one sensible action which is to run out of one's own home and into the street, however much one is bellowing out. In contrast with neighbourhood attitudes towards my parents, no one came to my rescue. Such are the ways of the emotionally ignorant, some of whom have had enough detail in the past so as not to be unaware of the facts or the dynamics. People, of course, have their own issues which I can frequently read and not for the first time I expect that my biggest problem in the eyes of some is to be single. A year of constant medical appointments and ailments have increasingly taken their toll. This has especially been difficult alongside the emotional and practical complexities of having parents who have significantly deteriorated in recent months. Of itself, the nature of that deterioration is not at all consistent so that on one day they can be visibly crumbling before one's eyes and the next day apparently as right as rain. An emotional rollercoaster which is very difficult to manage. I think it would be fair to say that I have had a breakdown of sorts and it was principally based on the idea of having LPAs which was turned into a battlefield in my brain. More shortly - or when I can face it.

[Wychwood]

Lat-Literal, although I am a relative newcomer to the Forum and infrequent poster, I would like to say how relieved I am to see you writing again, in spite of the distressing circumstances you describe. I'm sure there will be many here who will look forward to your further contributions when you feel the time is right.
With best wishes, Wychwood.

[Anastasius]

Dear Lat...I can only begin to empathise as I am in the fortunate position of having a sister to share (nay, do the lions' share). Our father died many years go and, to be honest, never really featured in our lives. He was a strange fish.

But our mother survived him for very many years. In June this year, she left the residential home where she had been living and, as her mobility and health were deteriorating, moved into a care home. I visited her in September this year and could see her decline. Most people think that old age is a gradual decline. It is not. The human body does not behave like that. It declines in plateau's and, because part of her raison d'etre to get out and about and meet people had gone due to her infirmity, the decline was obvious. In early October, my sister called me to say that she had dropped another plateau and I went down to visit her again. I was shocked to see the visible decline in her health in the three weeks and it was obvious that her life was coming to an end. She died Oct 29 and her funeral was only a few weeks back. It seems strange because although she was never that close to either of us, we both keep thinking 'Oh. must tell Mum about that'. She was 94.

My sister and I are not that close, if truth be told, but I do have the advantage of a loving wife to support me. But regardless of any friends you may or may not have in the 'real' world, rest assured that you have many friends in this virtual world that we inhabit.

All the best and hang in there.