How is he withdrawing cash or sending money to people?

My parent has dementia but doesn’t know how to transfer money anywhere. They could be scammed with their credit card but there’s a limit, and I review the charges to check for fraud.

Anonymous wrote:My mom is 80, and my stepfather is 84. He's slowly losing his ability to remember and make decisions, and we've seen the impact in that he easily falls for telemarketing scams. He answers the phone and chats with people, and on three occasions, he has signed up for contracts from scammers and whatnot. They've had to change credit cards twice this year due to scams.

Is there some way that we can limit his ability to make financial decisions? Some sort of power of attorney or something, or would it take some court determination that he is not competent to make financial decisions? Sorry if I don't know the term of art but was just wondering what options might be out there.

Disable the phone in some way? It’s hard.

If it’s a landline phone, as a first step, maybe you could turn the ringer off; he might not notice. And that wouldn’t prevent an outgoing call if there was an emergency. And then surreptitiously have your mother monitor the caller ID, to make sure nothing important was missed.

Had an uncle in the early to mid stages of dementia who was insistent on driving and kept having fender-benders, including a hit and run; my aunt hid his keys but he kept coming up with spares, because he had lost them so many times and had duplicates made. She finally drained his battery by turning on everything while parked and then he accepted the car didn’t work and that was it for driving.

Sometimes you have to resort to desperate (and somewhat sneaky) measures to save someone from harm. It is hard sometimes to get someone declared incompetent, even with a POA in place, if a doctor refuses to sign off on it.

Is there a debit card that has a monthly cap on spending that you could use? I’m thinking of the ones they advertise for kids and teens. I think Greenlight is one of them. Perhaps your parents would agree to getting one of those, and when the money is gone each month, it’s gone. They can spend it on scams if they want to.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:^ This. Insist that your SF does not have any credit cards in his possession nor is he able to access them.

If he balks at that, get a pre-paid Visa card with limited funds on it that he can use for incidentals.

Also see if you can set phones to automatically go into voice mail and simply tell him he CANNOT answer the phone - let it go into voicemail.

If he balks at that, see if their community's law enforcement (police, sheriff, etc.) has an office that deals with elder financial fraud. Many of them do. Perhaps they can impress upon him that what he is doing is very, very dangerous.

What you are describing (cutting off his access to his own money, cutting off his ability to receive phone calls) can be perceived as elder abuse.
Unless/until the step dad is officially diagnosed and determined by a court to be mentally incompetent AND OP is assigned as his guardian, she has no right to do any of this and could get in a lot of trouble for even attempting it.

So what if it is?
Is some pig butcher going to manage to open a case?

What? Pig butcher?

Anonymous wrote:We convinced said individual that it was for their safety and to protect assets. Emphasized the convenience. The bank also invests money well so already paying for services. I’d recommend a trust.

You have either a very wise person or have extremely high charisma. This usually doesn't work.