The POA, the Probate and the Long Memory

This story begins with my parents’ affairs and the point at which Helen and I became joint attorneys under a Lasting Power of Attorney.

It was hardly an ordinary backdrop in which to be trying to manage the affairs of two elderly parents with dementia. We were in the middle of a pandemic. I was dealing with a fresh diagnosis of inoperable cancer. And, alongside all of that, I was increasingly concerned that my sister was acting unilaterally, secretively and, in my view, inappropriately in matters affecting our parents and their finances.

I began asking for access to Mum and Dad’s financial information. Not once, but repeatedly. During 2020 alone I made three or four requests by email, and I continued asking during 2021 and afterwards. I wanted to see the accounts, understand what was happening to their money and, as a joint attorney, participate in decisions affecting their financial affairs.

I did not get that access.

At one point, when I again asked for the information, the response I received from Helen was simply: “Get a solicitor.”

There were other things which increasingly troubled me: questions about the use of my parents’ credit card, payments made to Helen, money Helen had allegedly borrowed from Mum, and the way that money was subsequently described.

Then there were the care costs.

At one stage, Helen and I had identified £5,000 per month as a point at which we should stop and consider re-calibrating the care philosophy or its options. It was not a declaration that something had necessarily gone wrong. It was a point at which we had agreed that the scale of expenditure warranted us looking again at what we were doing and what alternatives might exist.

But the costs continued to rise.

Eventually I was looking at figures approaching £15,000 a month.

I remember my reaction very clearly:

“The price of an effing car every 4 weeks!”

By October 2022 I was formally asking for all the financial records covering the preceding two or three years: bank and Post Office accounts, investments, savings, pensions, benefits, care invoices and receipts, and information concerning what had already been supplied to solicitors.

I repeated those requests in November. I was still trying to obtain the underlying financial information. Helen disputed when she considered the Power of Attorney to have become operative and told me that she would show the accounts to the authorities, but not to me.

By then the matter had gone beyond an argument between siblings about how parents’ affairs should be managed. I had involved the Office of the Public Guardian and was asking that the financial history be properly examined.

Years later, with Mum’s death and her probate, Helen and I have found ourselves back in another joint fiduciary role, this time as joint executors.

And that is where the past meets the present.

I am not writing this to relitigate every disagreement we have ever had. I am writing it because the history matters. When I am now asked to enter another arrangement requiring me to trust the same person with joint responsibility for an estate, I need the financial history to be transparent, the records available, and the administration capable of being independently understood and reconciled.

That is the starting point for the story I am now trying to finish differently.