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A carent’s cautionary tale about the Court of Protection
This is a cautionary tale about the importance of setting up a Lasting Power of Attorney and the potential consequences of not.
It is the real life story of my sister and I, describing the situation we have experienced with regard to our parents in the last few years.
Our parents were happily married and had a comfortable working life. They chose to retire early in order to spend more time with their family, travel extensively, play more golf, and work in their garden and allotment.
Our mum had a long history of depression, and in her sixties she became quite withdrawn and forgetful, vowing that she needed to ‘pull herself together’. The foreign holidays stopped, and our parents’ life became gradually more routine-based. My sister and I increasingly found that we were the ones calling them, and they rarely called us.
After the first lockdown period, late March to June 2020, we noticed a significant change in our mum’s behaviour and cognitive ability and managed to get a GP referral to the Memory Clinic. Following a series of memory tests and a CT scan, and appointments with Mental Health Trust staff, mum was diagnosed with ‘moderate stage’ Alzheimer’s disease in November 2020, aged 70 years. At this point mum started to fail to recognise dad as her husband, despite 48 years of marriage.
Neither parent had a will or Lasting Power of Attorney (LPA) in place. We were advised that mum’s dementia was just too advanced to be able to set these up but Dad got his will and LPA sorted in early 2021.
As our parents were financially stable and not entitled to any state benefits or care packages, dad was left to manage with mum on his own. He was in charge of the household chores, cooking, shopping and finances, and helping mum to get dressed. Our mum refused to acknowledge her diagnosis or allow us to arrange any form of support or domiciliary care (even when disguised as a ‘cleaner’). Dad gave up golf and the allotment as mum couldn’t be left alone at any time, and due to COVID rules it wasn’t easy for friends and family to visit and give him a break.
In June 2021, mum started to exhibit extreme out-of-character and violent behaviour. She was admitted to hospital, and following various assessments was admitted into a Residential care home as it was deemed that she could no longer remain at home with dad. Within hours of being in the care home there was further aggressive behaviour, mum was sectioned under the Mental Health Act and admitted to a community mental health hospital. Her mental health continued to decline and in August 2021 she was discharged into an Elderly Mentally Infirm (EMI) Nursing home bed on a permanent basis.
Following guidance from the Alzheimer’s Society, in late 2021 (and with dad’s full support) my sister and I applied to the Court of Protection (via solicitor) to become deputies for our mum, in order to make decisions and be able to legally manage her property and financial affairs in the absence of an LPA. This was a relatively costly affair, with fees in the hundreds of pounds. Five months later in May 2022 the court granted the deputyship to my sister and I, although we were not officially informed until August 2022. In the meantime, in April 2022, our dad died very suddenly of terminal cancer.
Before we could be officially appointed as deputies we had to purchase a security bond (insurance to protect mum’s finances), and pay a ‘new deputy’ assessment fee (£100), as well as a further £320 per year for annual supervision by the Office of the Public Guardian (OPG). Some of these fees can be deducted from mum’s estate.
As deputies we are expected to meet a set of 8 standards (covering visits and wellbeing, financial management and property management) and retain all records, letters, receipts, invoices, appointments and details of any significant decisions, providing evidence of this via an annual deputy report.
It took my sister and I a little while to get to grips with these quite onerous requirements. The OPG strongly suggested that we cease the £30 per month pocket money which our parents had given to their 2 grandchildren for years, or to escalate the decision to the court to decide (for a fee of nearly £400) We were also advised to stop mum’s small monthly donation to the British Heart Foundation, which she started after her granddaughter was born with a hole in the heart. as these were regular and not limited to ‘customary occasions’. These sound like small issues but they were traumatic for us.
We are expected to manage all of mum’s finances, however our personal experience was that the deputyship paperwork is not well recognised by high street banks, and it took many frustrating months to sort out her affairs even with the bank she had worked in and banked with for over 40 years.
So, our advice is to sort out a Lasting Power of Attorney for yourself, tell your friends, relatives and anyone who will listen. Don’t put it off. Please don’t end up in our situation – it’s traumatic, costly, time consuming and mentally draining. And all of this happens at a time when you are already grieving for the loss of the father or mother sitting in front of you who doesn’t even remember who you are.
