How to help my mom with her finances - Power of Attorney

[Anonymous]

My mom is in her late 80s and my 3 siblings and I are looking for advice. My mom is on a very tight budget and has regularly been missing payments - whether it is rent, or credit cards, etc. We want to figure out where the spending is happening and asses her budget, where the money is going, and how we can help, but simply accessing her credit cards and bank accounts is tricky without 1 of us being ON the account as in a joint account and none of us want to take a chance with our own credit ratings. Is power of Attorney the way to go? If so - is this something that can be done with legalzoom. My mom lives in New Jersey, and I (the closest geographically child) live in DC.

Thanks for any help you can provide.

[Anonymous]

My mother's finances were all paper, no online accounts, when she asked me to start taking care of her bills. I set up online accounts in her name, i.e. pretended to be her, for her bank accounts and credit cards and utilities, all with her permission of course.

[Anonymous]

(OP here) I wonder if it would be as simple as getting my cell phone added to the variation system. When my mom and I tired this in the past - it just became to difficult for me to try and sign on because they'd text her a code, and then it just got to clunky.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:(OP here) I wonder if it would be as simple as getting my cell phone added to the variation system. When my mom and I tired this in the past - it just became to difficult for me to try and sign on because they'd text her a code, and then it just got to clunky.

I always used my cell phone number when registering her accounts online.

[Anonymous]

So I assume you aren't POA yet? Short term you can log in as her and make your phone the place to send codes, but you need to be POA sooner rather than later. Get the ball rolling. If she won't agree it becomes more work.

[Anonymous]

I think you and your siblings really need to look at having your mom live closer to one of you. It doesn't have to be WITH you in your house--but in an assisted living facility (or whatever meets her needs best) within close proximity.

[Anonymous]

does your mom want you to do this and is she competent? If so, it's pretty simple either for her to do the forms to give you POA or for you to go up there and switch all the accounts to your email address and phone number.

If she doesn't want you this involved or isn't competent enough to give you this authority, you'd have to go to court and get authority over her (different places call it different things, like guardianship, conservatorship, etc.).

[Anonymous]

Well even before I got poa we set up everything (or as much as possible) online with my cell and my brothers cell as secondary and we had her email password. Please checks. There are so many ways she could be getting scammed.

My mom was getting scammed out of thousands of dollars . Both magazine scams (she was paying hundreds a month for the same magazine all sold by horrible Florida based third party resellers; they would call and say “do you want to renew foreign affairs ?” And she would say yours and give out her Banerjee would not say that they were third party charging hundreds more on a monthly basis, etc). She was also taken advantage of by a very unscrupulous contractor who was getting her to spend thousand and thousands on poorly done or not done at all repairs renovations at ridiculous prices (50k to remove cottage cheese ceiling etc). Also disappeared when I came into the picture and turned out to have a fake name website etc .
Soon after she was officially diagnosed with dementia and I moved her near me after that.

Sorry for the rant-just a cautionary tale for everyone. Because it was mostly during Covid I wasn’t seeing my mom and she still sounded okay on the phone but the finances were the first sign.

[Anonymous]

Would your mother be willing to go to her bank with you and set up a trust account so that your name will also be on her checks (and account) and you can take over online and check payments? This step is especially helpful as time goes on and even after she passes because you have control of her account to pay off final bills, etc… My mother did this, and it was a huge help. My father did not (they were divorced) and things were exceedingly more complicated.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Would your mother be willing to go to her bank with you and set up a trust account so that your name will also be on her checks (and account) and you can take over online and check payments? This step is especially helpful as time goes on and even after she passes because you have control of her account to pay off final bills, etc… My mother did this, and it was a huge help. My father did not (they were divorced) and things were exceedingly more complicated.

NP here, can you elaborate on what this is? My mom wants to add me to her accounts but I am concerned about someone reaching her funds if I'm sued after a car accident or something.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:(OP here) I wonder if it would be as simple as getting my cell phone added to the variation system. When my mom and I tired this in the past - it just became to difficult for me to try and sign on because they'd text her a code, and then it just got to clunky.

I always used my cell phone number when registering her accounts online.

+1

We used a lawyer to set up the will, healthcare POA, financial POA, and the trust.

Did she give healthcare POA to anyone in your family?

At this point, I'm making all the financial and medical decisions for my remaining parent, and it's because I have POA. I am even selling their house on their behalf.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Would your mother be willing to go to her bank with you and set up a trust account so that your name will also be on her checks (and account) and you can take over online and check payments? This step is especially helpful as time goes on and even after she passes because you have control of her account to pay off final bills, etc… My mother did this, and it was a huge help. My father did not (they were divorced) and things were exceedingly more complicated.

NP here, can you elaborate on what this is? My mom wants to add me to her accounts but I am concerned about someone reaching her funds if I'm sued after a car accident or something.

The PP you responded to, meant to say joint account, not trust account, I'm sure. Yeah, if it's a joint account then it's considered your money and could be reached in a lawsuit.

I'm the PP who took over his mother's paper finances and managed them online. Her checking account was joint with me, but that didn't make much difference while she was alive. These days, if you're authenticated as someone online then you might as well be them. So I had all the control I needed by acting as her online.

The joint checking account did make a difference when she died. It became an individual account owned by me. Her savings account wasn't joint, and it was frozen when she died. A POA expires when the principal dies, so just having a POA won't preserve your access to a parent's accounts once they die.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Would your mother be willing to go to her bank with you and set up a trust account so that your name will also be on her checks (and account) and you can take over online and check payments? This step is especially helpful as time goes on and even after she passes because you have control of her account to pay off final bills, etc… My mother did this, and it was a huge help. My father did not (they were divorced) and things were exceedingly more complicated.

NP here, can you elaborate on what this is? My mom wants to add me to her accounts but I am concerned about someone reaching her funds if I'm sued after a car accident or something.

The PP you responded to, meant to say joint account, not trust account, I'm sure. Yeah, if it's a joint account then it's considered your money and could be reached in a lawsuit.

I'm the PP who took over his mother's paper finances and managed them online. Her checking account was joint with me, but that didn't make much difference while she was alive. These days, if you're authenticated as someone online then you might as well be them. So I had all the control I needed by acting as her online.

The joint checking account did make a difference when she died. It became an individual account owned by me. Her savings account wasn't joint, and it was frozen when she died. A POA expires when the principal dies, so just having a POA won't preserve your access to a parent's accounts once they die.

PP here, this is extremely helpful, thank you. Is there a trust account of some kind I should look into?

I am about to get POA for both parents, and I am also the executor of their wills. But I am just really not sure if I should be a joint account holder on any accounts. I am worried about liability (someone reaching their money through me), confusion (they still want to handle their money independently), and taxes (I am not in their state, but may have to file if I "earn" interest income - it came up when I still had my own account back home).

[Anonymous]

I am about to get POA for both parents, and I am also the executor of their wills. But I am just really not sure if I should be a joint account holder on any accounts. I am worried about liability (someone reaching their money through me), confusion (they still want to handle their money independently), and taxes (I am not in their state, but may have to file if I "earn" interest income - it came up when I still had my own account back home).

My brother and are payable on death on one of my mom’s accounts and I am joint in the other. We did that even without poa. The goal is to have access to some money to pay estate fees etc. Can you look into POD? Checking account should not have interest or taxes. As for safety, the phone issue/verification is challenging but Bank of America allowed us to have multiple verification numbers so we could both access….now I do all my moms banking but it was helpful then . I liked it because we had multiple area of eyes and that’s how I caught ongoing fraud activity happening over a couple years (them dementia diagnosis and poa)….

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My mother's finances were all paper, no online accounts, when she asked me to start taking care of her bills. I set up online accounts in her name, i.e. pretended to be her, for her bank accounts and credit cards and utilities, all with her permission of course.

I’ve done the same with all of my mother’s accounts. I set up logins and passwords for the bank account, homeowners, medical, dental, etc. The cable, mortgage credit cards and insurances are on autopay through her bank account. I pay everything else individually. You have to make sure to provide your phone number/email so you get the security verification codes and not your mother. I do have power of attorney in case anyone asks.