<p>My friend’s mother has some beginnings of dementia, but is still functional at most times and in many ways. My friend is worried that mom is giving away her money to charities because she is vulnerable to the asking and she forgets what she has already done.</p>
<p>How does one intervene when the person in question can hold it together much of the time, for example, perhaps at a meeting with a judge or attorney, she would be fine, yet might be giving away the funds she will need to provide care very soon?</p>
<p>The Dd has a POA which only is triggered by incompetency, would she have to go to court? Is there a procedure to do this which is kind to the mentally semi-competent person?</p>
<p>Have your friend make an effort to get a look at her checkbook. Does the mother have an accountant do her taxes? Your friend could offer to help get the paperwork ready for April, and can enlist the tax preparer’s help in evaluating the charitable giving. Also have her look at incoming bills to see if they are being paid on time - if not, she should offer to do the bill paying. From there, it’s not hard to gradually take over the financial chores.
I would then create a reminder sheet (in big print) listing her charities and the dates and amounts she donated. Ask her not to commit additional money (over the phone or whatever) without checking with the daughter first.
If charitable giving is important to her, but less so to the younger person, the latter may have to examine her own attitude towards it and come to a compromise. Being adamant about another’s money is a sure road to hard feelings and more secrecy on the part of the senior.</p>
<p>My folks were only too happy to turn over their bill-paying and financial management tasks to me and neither had dementia issues…my dad’s eyesight was simply failing and my mom had a chronic disease and was not in the mood to deal with it. They had debit and credit cards which they used for their cash, shopping, etc. but I had their checkbooks and could keep track of everything online and make sure their their bills were paid on time. They would usually agree to donate something to every caller too, but it was usually a fairly nominal amount unless it was a long-standing relationship (ie. church, college, etc.)…the organizations simply sent a bill for the donation and I paid it. I’m sure I could have simply reduced the amount upon payment if it were excessive.</p>
<p>I agree. If giving away money is her only real ‘incompetency’… it might not be a sign of dementia as much as a personal philosophy. I know middle-aged people who do this all the time. Sometimes people have a hard time saying no, sometimes people are very giving. Understandably, it is a concern for the children who want to make sure there will be enough money there for the parent’s future care but it can be a fine line to walk.</p>
<p>Offering to pay the bills might be a good way to approach this without stepping on Mom’s toes. Or maybe she could suggest to her mother that she needs to be on Mom’s checking account (in case of an emergency) and that way the daughter can get a better feel for what is going on. I have a friend going through this right now…legally, you have to prove someone is unable to understand and make rational decisions in order to have them declared incompetent. That’s not easy to do without some pretty solid proof.</p>
<p>I agree that there is a fine line when it comes to this sort of thing but it is better to be aware than to wait until it is too late. We had an older family member who was suffering from dementia (fairly mild at the time). He made a new “friend” and before we knew anything about it was writing her checks in excess of ten thousand dollars. When we caught on, the police were brought in but there was no way to prove that he hadn’t given the money in sound mind. </p>
<p>I would suggest talking to this person’s doctor. If I remember correctly, once the dementia gets to a certain point, the doctor can attest to that and help with the protocol of putting someone in charge of the person’s safety and assets.</p>
<p>^I’ve heard of several stories involving someone taking advantage of a senior citizen like that. Very scary…apparently there are people out there that prey on the elderly. Even if the mom is not at the point of having a level of dementia that would require that she have a guardian, it’s a great idea to try and monitor her financial activities and ‘friendships’…discreetly, of course.</p>
<p>Talk with one of her trusted family members and suggest that he/she may want to consider taking over the paying of the bills (and the managing of her checking account). You might also suggest that someone else pick up the mail for her and allow that person to sort through it and throw away all of the junk mail (including the typical requests for donations).</p>
<p>We do the above mentioned things for my MIL.</p>
<p>^^^
It was heartbreaking and infuriating at the same time to realize that our family member thought this person was a friend but was really being exploited for his checkbook. The monetary loss was one thing but to think that someone would take advantage of a kind, polite and generous old man made me crazy. We did get the satisfaction of calling her bluff when she showed up for her next “date”. As it turned out, her “date” was my husband who ran her out of town on a rail with her mangy tail between her legs. It was just too bad we didn’t have enough evidence to have her arrested.</p>
<p>With dementia it is very important to get the mother to her doctor and have a “baseline” established. This will be beneficial for future medical and financial dealings. It will require being authorized to receive mom/dads medical information.</p>
<p>I had a friend … her story, her husband’s grandmother was being taken care of by her “daughter” … found out, daughter was drugging her mother, stealing her checks, and of course using it on drugs and alcohol. They had to really work to untangle this …and finally did. Courts say they see it all the time, often the victimization is at the hands of a family member.</p>
This was the case with DH’s mom also (my parents both died young). She was also, in fact, relieved to tell the various “charity” phone people that… “You’ll have to talk to my son.”</p>
<p>My MIL was forgetting to pay some bills (the mail pile by her chair in the TV room was daunting) and then she’d double pay some when she finally got to “the pile” and didn’t realize she was paying both the initial bill and the Second Notice.</p>
<p>How does the mom feel about having her D take over billpaying etc.? That does not necessarily imply that she is incompetent… just that maybe she doesn’t enjoy the task or that her facility for financial details is not what it once was.</p>
<p>This could be a first step with more steps to be taken later.</p>
<p>Or, depending upon family dynamics, it might be a good time for the mom (with/without D) to sit down with an estate attorney and update estate plan and documents. PoAs that don’t require incompetency to be triggered might be in order. As well, if there are not yet Durable Medical POAs, living wills and all of those things (I’m no longer up on the terminology/distinctions among documents), this might be the time.</p>
<p>My BIL is joint on my FIL’s bank account. FIL still writes checks, but BIL is able to keep an eye on things via online access, plus BIL pops in to see FIL every few days and can keep an eye on the mail. We trust BIL implicitly and appreciate that he has the patience to deal with FIL, because DH could and will not do it.</p>
<p>We all learned this drill in dealing with my late MIL, who was seriously out of control with money.</p>
<p>The parent has been properly diagnosed with dementia? </p>
<p>Are they on any medications? </p>
<p>Has there been any medical interventions to extend the parent’s functioning in any way? Senior Daycare? Physical therapy? Anything to keep on top of things with the activities of daily living (aka ADLS)? </p>
<p>You friend needs to start having a good old fashioned plan of attack in order. Dementia or Alzheimer’s are not for the faint of heart but early intervention and guidance is key. So, if your friend’s parent has a formal diagnoses and is giving away money to charity, then they might want to get a full on POA in place both for the finances as well as the medical and everything else 100% of the way all across the board now. </p>
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<p>A doctor can have the parent declared mentally incompetent because of the dementia and then I reckon that POA would kick in, but laws vary on that from state to state. A very fair amount of folks with dementia or Alzheimer’s sometimes develop issues with money ‘handling’ and so that is a bit of a red flag for a thing or two sometimes. I would safely assume there have been other red flags as well because that is really just the nature and progression of the disease and not the actual person behind it, you know? </p>
<p>This will sound mean and I am sorry for being blunt but “semi competent” is not permanent when it comes to dementia or Alzheimer’s so your friend has to act quick on all this to just knock it out of the way in the here and now. A dutiful grown adult child and a kindly enough doctor and lawyer will be more than alright. The ‘gist’ of the whole process is not evil or anything like that by any means at all. It is actually a good safeguard towards what is to come and a very morally responsible thing to do is really all it is.</p>
<p>Sorry your friend is in this situation and I wish you the best of luck. I second the comments abouts about 1) seeing if your friend can “help” with the bills (if this doesn’t work “helping” clean up can help get clues about if everything is in order and 2) seeing a doctor for a baseline test. The other issue I’d raise is driving … so far with my Mom (who has Alzheimers) the one regret I have is that I was not more forceful about making her to stop driving; someone with any dimensia should not be driving.</p>
<p>Absolutely! That is my biggest regret too…the doctor only restricted my Dad’s license to daytime driving (due to macular degeneration). He told me repeatedly that he thought his night vision was better than daytime, and I told him that imo he shouldn’t be driving at all. I did not take away his keys/car though and several months later he turned in front of an oncoming vehicle and died as a result of his injuries. He told me in the ER that he never saw the other car at all…and this was a clear day and on a perfectly straight road near his home. I’m very thankful the young mother in the oncoming vehicle was not injured as I really couldn’t stand knowing someone else was affected due to my failure to listen to my own inner voice.</p>
<p>Good points, my friend is concerned about driving, too. I honestly am not clear if the Mom has been diagnosed with dementia or if she is simply getting there. My friend has been talking to me about it for a couple of years, concerns about her Mom’s memory mainly & forgetfulness. It is getting worse.</p>
<p>I am going to compile all of the above suggestions and see if I can’t spark some interest in talking to the doctor to get a baseline agreed upon. I know she has mentioned an estate attorney, so perhaps the framework is there and she merely needs to ask for help.</p>
<p>If it’s getting worse, then it won’t get better, and if there are issues with money, that’s a huge red flag that there are other problems as well, potential or actual. The friend needs to step in before something catastrophic happens. My brothers and I took Dad’s car keys away, not because he’d had a bad accident, but because we feared he would. My brother put it, "We don’t want the day to come where we say, ‘We should have done something six months ago.’ " Financial catastrophes can happen too, or accidents in the home; they can make unwise legal contracts, or fall prey to con artists – all kinds of things. There comes a point when they need help with running their lives.</p>
<p>BTW, another disaster waiting to happen with many seniors is mismanagement of medications. My father had trouble remembering how many times he’d taken his Vicodin in a given day, and on several occasions purposely took a double dose of his sleeping pills. When he was discharged from the hospital for one of those overdoses, I asked him to promise me he’d never again do that, and he refused. The very next day, we kids made the decision that it was time to get them out of their house, and within 6 weeks, they were in Assisted Living where the pills are dispensed by staff. </p>
<p>We dealt with this a year ago, and it’s tough to start that transition of “parenting your parents.” But the starting was the hardest part for us. A year later, the 'rents are comfortably settled in a facility close to me. They don’t own a car, don’t have the responsibilities of home-owning and housekeeping, and have a vibrant social life (another thing that happens is that they can get very isolated). I go to all of their important appointments with them, including doctors, because they really can no longer ask the pertinent questions, or remember what was said. </p>
<p>I’m on file as an authorized contact with their doctors, attorney, accountant, and insurance company – this has turned out to be reallly important, so I’d advise your friend to do that at the very least. Then she has the power to discuss the situation candidly with professionals, without Mom present.</p>
<p>When it happened to my mother, it was very difficult. Her dementia, due to hardening of the arteries, came and went. She could at times seem perfectly normal, and at other times would be anywhere from completely incoherent, in the past, or just bewildered. She lived alone, so there was no one there to see it at first. She might have a moment of “inattention” during a phone conversation but then we be fine before we hung up. It took her 3 times to pass her last driver’s test, and she had a couple of minor fender benders after having driven for over 60 years without ever having had one. Finally, when she started calling my brother at 2 a.m. saying that someone had come into the house and turned the TV on. (We think she turned it on and forgot.) Then she couldn’t figure out how to operate the remote control.</p>
<p>We tried to get helpers that would allow her to stay in her home, but she got more and more cantankerous and thought they were stealing from her and fired them. So we finally decided she needed to go to a nursing home. My sister and I took her to the dr for the initial entry visit. We stopped and got fast food to take home for lunch. As we pulled into the driveway, she said “Where are we?” I responded that we were home and going to have lunch on the deck. She said, “I look across the street and see the Davis’ house, but I don’t recognize anything here.” (She had lived in the same house for 40+ years.) That reassured my sister and I that we were doing the right thing.</p>
<p>In the nursing home, she had moments of lucidity, usually when friends came to visit and she would beg them to get her out of there, that we were imprisoning her and wouldn’t let her leave. Then didn’t see her when she asked my brother where dad was (he had been gone for 15 years), berated my sister (close to 60) for forcing her to care for “that baby that’s keeping her awake all night,” or when she couldn’t remember long enough to put on all her clothes. </p>
<p>We think it must have gone on for months (up to a year) before we became aware of it. The driving was an issue that we were unable to deal with. The doctor agreed she might have a problem, but it wasn’t serious enough for him to sign anything preventing her from getting a license. Toward the very end, my brother (who is a mechanic) disabled her car.</p>
<p>^^
Yes, the driving issue is extremely sticky. The scrapes and dents are a classic warning sign. When we were thinking about how to have this conversation with Dad, we finally decided that we’d try to lead him to make the decision himself. But in the end, like it or not, he wasn’t going to drive anymore. For the sake of himself, his passengers, and others on the road, he simply had to stop. I could not have lived with myself if, after I believed he was unsafe, he ended up killing someone. We didn’t expect him to like it – and he didn’t – but it had gotten to the point where it was non-negotiable. </p>
<p>Unfortunately, doctors may not be helpful here. Many of them are not willing to say unequivocally “You can no longer drive.” They don’t want to be the bad guy any more than the adult kids do. The DMV may or may not be helpful; check the specific state. One of my more cowardly ideas was to anonymously report Dad to the DMV in hopes that they’d require a driving test. Turns out you can’t do that in the state they lived in. </p>
<p>However, disabling the car, or literally removing the keys from the house, ARE approved techniques.</p>
<p>Oh yes…the medication problem! Luckily, we were close enough to set up their pills every week in pill boxes and someone always checked on them in the morning, after work, and before bedtime. After my dad died, we also had the lifeline thing installed so she could just push a button on her necklace and the company would call me immediately and could talk with her through a speaker. It was the best bill I ever paid! I received a call from a relative last night informing me that my 85 y.o. uncle is in the hospital, having fallen and laid on the floor for at least 10 hours until he managed to fish a phone over…I had told my cousin all about lifeline but apparently he didn’t heed my advice, which is frustrating as he’s an only child and the only relative that lives near my uncle.</p>