My mother is in a supportive living facility and my brother and I are the responsible parties. We are responsible to use her funds to pay her bills. Now a friend of hers is on her bank account with her and she does not like how we are handling our mother's care. She convinced my mother to put a hold on her bank accounts and now we can't pay her bills. For several days I told my mother that she needed to release the hold so that we could pay her bills. It has been several days and the accounts are still on hold. I called senior services for help and explained the situation to them. They referred me to APS and I went through with it.
Did I do the right thing? I am deeply concerned that my name is on the lease agreement and yet I cannot access her account to pay her bills. This has caused me great stress and problems in my marriage!
Call APS but also have the home redo the paperwork so that MOM is the responsible party.
Do not assume responsibility. If you do so you ARE assuming responsbility. NO ONE CAN INVOLVE YOU in this woman's care against your wishes.
You should not be accessing her accounts. You should not be paying her bills. That is the work of her POA. Or State guardianship.
Stay out of it, or you are in it. It is a pretty easy equation. Stay out of it and tell your case worker that is your intentions. Period. End of sentence. This is not something you can go back and forth on. This is something you decide NOT to be involved in and stick to that with no discussion and no argument.
Wishing you the best. Turn off your phone.
You need to undo this asap.
I would also tell your mother that she’s on her own, she can figure it out going forward. This is a disgusting betrayal.
Is your mom incompetent?
This is a fine mess for sure.
When I first started caring for my DH Aunt, I had a few issues with her SIL. Because aunt was the one who always drove the SIL to do her shopping, SIL didn’t like it when aunt stopped driving. I would hear Aunt on the phone explaining that I didn’t think she should drive and getting pushback from the SIL. Thankfully she didn’t give in to her SIL.
Additionally the other issue is to get the friend off the bank account. To do this w/o the friends cooperation, your mother will have to open a new bank account and move her funds. The friend could have already cleaned her account out.
Do you feel the friend is a busybody or after your moms funds? It is a little late now, but as others have said, never sign or make yourself responsible for your mother’s care.
I doubt the facility will just take your name off, why would they? I hope they are locally owned and will work with you to get this unraveled. Let us know if APS is able to help.
Do you have immediate POA? I hope that is what you mean by responsibility to pay Moms bills from her accounts. If you have POA and Mom has Dementia you may be able to talk to the bank and have the accounts reopened. If it turns out you can set up knew accts, I would be careful. You may need to place Moms name on the acct for Medicaid reasons. If Medicaid will be needed in the next 5 yrs, it could look like u were trying to hide assets. I so hope you did not sign the lease.
Are you POA? Are you paying bills and keeping meticulous records as is your fiduciary duty?
I am uncertain how you were managing this. I am uncertain how the friend got put on this account.
Yes, this doesn't sound good. I hope you will have complete financial records ready for APS to go over. And your POA if you have one.
I think you did the right thing. But I fear you may need also to consult and elder law attorney, because something is wrong here and I can't make out what it might be. An attorney will help you iron this out.
See All Answers