My mother is elderly and her cognitive skills are not what they once were. She has made some mistakes recently in paying bills and, more alarmingly, responded to an unsolicited offer of health insurance, thinking that she was renewing her existing policy. It took me a while to straighten that out. I’d like to have all her mail forwarded to me so I can review it, pay her bills, and handle any other business. Anything that she needs to see I would send to her myself. She is perfectly agreeable to this.
But I’m not sure it’s possible. We both live in the US, in different states. The USPS web site says you can forward mail temporarily (up to a year) or permanently, but in the latter case it seems they only forward for 18 months. There’s also a “premium forwarding” service, the purpose of which I can’t understand; it’s expensive but AFAICT the only difference from regular forwarding is they send you the mail in a weekly package rather than a piece at a time, and again it only lasts for a year.
Does anyone know of any way that I can have my mother’s mail permanently forwarded to me?
The purpose of mail forwarding is to help people who are moving. That’s why it’s temporary. A year is enough to get everyone up to speed on your new address.
The correct way to handle this situation is to get a power of attorney for your mother. Then you can change the billing addresses on her accounts to yours and deal with them.
I’m thinking your best bet is to either:
A) change her (billing) address to yours with the post office as well as doing the same with any bills. The actual forwarding will only last for so long, but you can contact the billers (credit cards, utilities, banks etc) and have them send the bill to your address. You may want to remind them, should it come up, that she’s still the responsible party, you’re simply changing the billing address (make sure not to change the service address for things like utilities).
B)All the same, but get a PO Box in her name. That takes you and your name totally out of the loop, you can stop and check it every few days and they’re pretty cheap.
As for things coming to her house, you may have to find a way to convince her to put any mail she gets in a box for you to look at, no matter how important it appears and/or keep renewing the forwarding address. You could also ask her doctors/nurses. Surely you’re not the first person to go through this. Like you alluded to, even if you do get everything sent to you, she’ll still get junk mail at her house and you don’t want her buying an aftermarket warranty on a car she hasn’t had in 10 years because the envelope says ‘3 and final notice’.
You’d think, but I’ve been in my house and still get mail for the people that used to live here. Luckily, it’s mostly junk mail so I toss it all.
I’m not sure how much of a hassle or cost getting POA is, but I’d imagine it’s faster, especially since she’s on board (and seems to be lucid most of the time) for her to call and take care of it or for him to set up an online account and do it there. I assume he’ll pay it online eventually anyways.
OTOH, it sounds like POA isn’t too much further down the road.
Also, not to get side tracked, but @ the OP, if you have siblings, make sure to start splitting costs and responsibilities now. Even if it’s just little things like ‘I’ve been paying all the bills, can you [whatever the next small thing that she needs]?’. I’ve seen it happen time after time after time where one sibling starts doing something small, like paying the bills, but since they’re there, they take the garbage out or cut the grass. It very quickly turns into them doing everything and resenting the other siblings for doing nothing, and it gets even worse at the end.
IOW, it’s great that you’re paying the bills, but when she needs, for example, something done around the house, don’t feel bad about calling up a brother or sister (assuming you have some) and asking them to take care of it. There’s only going to be more and more to do as time goes on.
Thanks everyone for the ideas so far. To clarify a couple of points, I do already have POA for my mom. I can start changing the address on her accounts. However this only solves part of the problem. I don’t even want junk mail going to her, given the fact that she recently responded to an unsolicited offer of health insurance. And I definitely want to handle her utility bills myself (see below). Unfortunately my only sibling passed away a couple of years ago and I’m the only family she has left. There are some family friends who help her now and then but I can’t impose on them to handle her mail every day.
Re utilities: an incident a few months ago would have been amusing if it hadn’t happened to my mom. One month she slightly overpaid a $30 utility bill. The next month she got a statement showing a credit. Thinking it was a bill, she paid it. The next month she got a statement showing twice as much credit. She paid that too. This went on until she got a statement showing a credit of about $500, at which point she finally realized something didn’t seem right and asked me about it.
Changing the addresses is the right way. Forwarding can’t be renewed indefinitely, USPS is onto that trick. Forwarding only applies to first class & magazines, so junk mail to her will keep coming even during a forwarding order.
You can sign her up for reduced junk mail at http://www.dmaconsumers.org/ This is a legit mailing industry service that most legit junk mailers abide by. It takes a couple months before the junk slows down. Also contact any and all credit cards and magazines she has to opt out of their “marketing affiliate” data sharing.
That will reduce the volume of crap she gets as much as possible. I did it years ago and I get only a couple of junk pieces a week. Not 10 a day like I used to.
After that your goal is to train her that 100% of mail is not her problem; her job is to empty the box now and again and send you anything that isn’t obvious junk mail like the weekly grocery store coupon flier.
This isn’t perfect, but it’s about the best you can do until she’s in a facility or living with you.
Oh boy, I sympathize. Fortunately, my brother and I both lived close enough to my mother to catch some of these things. But we still know that my mom allowed some knucklehead into her attic and sold some semi-valuable Lionel trains for peanuts. And I am fairly sure that one of her health aids stole a bag of silver dollars worth thousands of dollars that she had owned for decades.
You living distant makes all of this more complicated. If you don’t want to impose on friends and neighbors (and they might not actually mind stopping in once a week to look at her mail and chat), I believe there are professional elderly aids who will handle the mail and perhaps perform other necessary tasks. Check with her county office on aging.
Of course, having health aids from a professional service didn’t keep my mother’s silver dollars from disappearing. But I blame myself for not taking them and splitting them between my brother and I long before they were stolen.
Go into the utility’s website and set it up as paperless, then handle payments and such yourself online. You might also be able to set up a budget plan where the same amount is paid per month and adjusted annually based on actual use. She’d only get mailed late and shut-off notices.
It sounds like your mom’s time living alone safely is coming to an end; the good news is both of you will be far less anxious when she has an assisted environment.
