Is knowing your aged loved one’s business important? You check your father’s bank statement and there is a payment that you know nothing about, your father doesn’t know what it is for, your siblings don’t know what it is for and the bank can’t help you because you aren’t your father’s power of attorney. What do you do?
Recently a friend of mine has going through this and it isn’t easy to work it out. He has spent a quite a bit of time going through things to work out what it could be however as he isn’t the power of attorney the company won’t tell what it is. His father doesn’t remember and the siblings can’t help either.
His father is in his 90s and isn’t able to handle this enquiry himself.
First thing to do is get the power of attorney so he can find out what other things he doesn’t know about.
How can you manage your aged loved one’s business if you don’t know what is going on.
What payments need to be made?
What income?
Are you in a similar position?
Do you know what is going in your aged loved one’s business?
Yes there is a fine line between privacy and being of service to your family. However someone needs to know and there needs to be a back up.
I know what it is like – when our sister passed she was the only power of attorney and at a time that we should have been mourning our beautiful sister we were at the lawyers and banks trying to work make sure Dad was looked after.
At a time we should have been focused on grief we were worrying about other things.
I look back and realise that it would have been ok to let things be for a couple of weeks but Dad was obsessing and we didn’t know the answers to the questions he was asking.
It would have been easier if we had sorted out things when there were was no other stresses, when we were thinking straight and when grief didn’t affect us.
Take the time now to sort out “the business” side of things because believe me when “the emotional” side of things kicks in you aren’t thinking straight and it ends up being harder than it really is or needs to be.
Take the time now to work out “the financials”, “the business” and “the paperwork” plus don’t forget to have a back up power of attorney.
Some of the things I wish had happened during this time:
been more prepared
spend more time with Marilyn in her last few days
hadn’t focused on “the financials”
things had been different
My book Tough…Tough Times…Tough Decisions shares what we went through during this challenging time.
Knowing your aged loved one’s business is an important part of the caring journey.
