Ever take over Elderly Parent's Finances?

[HighClass]

Any stories on what happened and how you, their adult child, were able to steer their finances.

Right now I am trying to get My Mom to let me "investigate" any Charity before she writes a check. She has agreed. She showed me a list of charities she wrote checks to recently-and I was floored-some sounded semi-fake.


She just recieved a calculator from an animal Rights group that sounds bogus and she could open her own card and notepad store with all the freebies she recieves!!

 

[3jsmommy]

Any stories on what happened and how you, their adult child, were able to steer their finances.

Right now I am trying to get My Mom to let me "investigate" any Charity before she writes a check. She has agreed. She showed me a list of charities she wrote checks to recently-and I was floored-some sounded semi-fake.


She just recieved a calculator from an animal Rights group that sounds bogus and she could open her own card and notepad store with all the freebies she recieves!!

My grandmother gets a lot of those freebies too, beacause of the donations she gives. I don't think she gives much, maybe a 5 or 10 dollar check sometimes. I would never (& I hope her children would never) try to control her giving to charities. My grandmother is very intelligent and unless I doubted her mental state, or she was in trouble financially, I say her money her choice!

 

[CPT Tripss]

There are a lot of scammers out there preying on Older Adults. Once you are on one list, you are on many.
It sounds like Mom is willing to cooperate - some tips.

Don't bother saying anything about the money she already sent to "charities." Doing that made Dad defensive and I had to regain his confidence.

Understand that she probably wants to help others. Work to set up a charity budget and then work with her to ID legitimate charities she will give to.

Ideally, you can get her to not donate to anyone based on a mail appeal. Unfortunately even "legitimate" charities send a lot of follow up guilt trip appeals. I still get requests for money from the "bell ringing," "tamborine shakers" from a donation I made after Hurricane Andrew! It's crazy what they spent in the past 17 years pitching me.


If she feels bad about keeping the "freebies," send them back to the "charity" in the return envelop (ONLY if it has return postage).

 

[SundancePass]

Yes, my brother and I absolutely took over my 90 year old Mom's finances 10 years ago when she wrote a check in her checkbook for $1,000.00 but the check was really for $10,000.00. I was balancing her checkbook and she was $9000.00 short. We spoke to my Mom, got durable POAs and Medical POAs and she hasn't seen any money other than her $500.00 per month allowance.

She had the beginnings of dementia at the time. There is a point where children have to step in and we took the leap.

Also, just for the person who said that he/she would never take over an elderly relatives finances - there are plenty of scam artists who will if you don't want to. My Mom spent a thousand dollars in one year after my Dad died because she was lonely and loved getting mail. We stopped all of that too.

Now everyone in the family sends her a Hallmark card once a month at least (she lived in an AL facility 5 mintues from my brother who sees her 3X a week) just so she can get mail. Of course, she no longer knows who is sending it but she loves the cards and has them all over her apartment.

Please don't let a Mom, Dad, Aunt, Uncle or grandparent "handle" their own finances if it doesn't make sense to you. It's another form of love to stop something that might hurt them in the end.

Getting down off of my soapbox now......

 

[tasha99]

I haven't ever had to do that, but I work for a lawyer who specializes in probate and elder law. I've seen lots, and my advice is never take over without seeing an attorney. It's worth a consultation to learn what you can and can't do, even if you aren't going so far as to appoint someone as conservator.

 

[momof1princess]

i had to take over my mother's finances 12 years ago when she had a stroke-she was only 46 at the time. i managed to pay off everyone she owed and she was totally debt free when she took her checkbook back 3 months after getting out of the hospital. now she's run up so much credit card debt, she's in the process of filing bankruptcy and we all have to help her pay her bills. i never should have given the checkbook back to her, but i would've had to go to court to prove her unfit, and i didn't have thousands of $ to spend on a lawyer.

 

[HighClass]

My grandmother gets a lot of those freebies too, beacause of the donations she gives. I don't think she gives much, maybe a 5 or 10 dollar check sometimes. I would never (& I hope her children would never) try to control her giving to charities. My grandmother is very intelligent and unless I doubted her mental state, or she was in trouble financially, I say her money her choice!

Well-Mom wrote a total of $250 in one month and she is on Social security.
Some of the "Charities" seem bogus (all mail solicitations) and that is why I want to investigate any in the future. She has agreed.

 

[bballmom56]

Yes, I did it for my mother after my dad passed away. He had done ALL the paperwork so she really wasn't the least bit familiar with any of it. However, she had worked at a bank 55 years earlier, so I guess she thought she would be able to do it. It was less than a month before we both realized she couldn't handle it and she gladly let me take it over.

 

[Disney Freak Numero Uno]

It's not just the charities you need to worry about. My father, in the beginning stages of Alzheimer's, was sold a $100,000 annuity from one of our biggest banks in the Northeast. When I complained to the "investment advisor" who sold it to him, she stated that she didn't see anything wrong with him. This is after speaking to him for 5 minutes.

 

[Pea-n-Me]

If she feels bad about keeping the "freebies," send them back to the "charity" in the return envelop (ONLY if it has return postage).

Mine does this too (I think she'll even add her own postage). She'll also call and "apologize to the girl" if she made a mistake, like she did last month with someone from Chase (ie probably a major call center). It's hard to get them to understand today's world.

I haven't taken over, but I keep an eye out for what's going on. Usually my mother will ask my advice or show me anything important, but sometimes things happen that I'm not aware of.

A few years ago she unknowingly ripped off two checks instead of one and sent (both of) them in as a payment. Someone at the bill center apparently got ahold of the second, blank check, and wrote out a check to himself and forged her signature. She was distraught when she saw her money was missing, and it took a while to figure out what happened. In order to get the money back from the bank, she had to press charges. She got the money back eventually, but she couldn't believe someone would do this to her.

 

[bballmom56]

LOL, speaking of the postage reminded me of an incident. Mom wanted to mail something and was out of stamps. So she told me she taped the coins to the envelope and put it out in her mailbox for the mail carrier to take when he delivered her mail. I said oh, mom they won't deliver it that way. It won't go through the postal meter. Guess what - they did! I don't know if they realized an elderly woman lived there (they probably did) and it was a more rural area, so maybe a little more likely to help someone out, but they did deliver it. I was very surprised!

 

[CPT Tripss]

LOL, speaking of the postage reminded me of an incident. Mom wanted to mail something and was out of stamps. So she told me she taped the coins to the envelope and put it out in her mailbox for the mail carrier to take when he delivered her mail. I said oh, mom they won't deliver it that way. It won't go through the postal meter. Guess what - they did! I don't know if they realized an elderly woman lived there (they probably did) and it was a more rural area, so maybe a little more likely to help someone out, but they did deliver it. I was very surprised!

USPS carriers are great people.