The downside of this is it effectively negates the purpose of granting one of your children PoA to act on your behalf if needed.
My father is relatively stable and living in an assisted living facility and I still sign for him under PoA at least a dozen times a month (mostly checks). The last time things were turbulent and he went from the hospital to a rehab hospital to skilled nursing to assisted living over the span of a few months I had to sign easily hundreds of times. If I needed even 1 sibling hundreds of miles away to sign everything I would have gone insane and my dad would have suffered for the massive inconvenience.
Personally I send my siblings periodic financial statements so they know what money has gone where. I’m not sure they even read them but they have the option.
Coming in here very late, but perhaps a new seeker will find this helpful.
After mom died, dad asked me to come back and help him with his paperwork and my reward would be that he would make me richer than if I followed my own career.
I did come back, not for that promise, but because I thought he needed help with the paperwork and emotional support that until her death, my mom had taken care of because dad was from the old country with very little formal education. He made a good businessman, but could not do the paperwork. I think he also may have had some sort of learning disability since he could not figure out how to read a map. But he was, I reiterate, good at business.
I also think he might have preferred to have his son by his side since sonny boy has an IQ in the top 1% of those who take that test. He said bitterly that sonny boy had gone his own way and I would be a rich woman. Based on his intelligence, sonny boy had gotten a first class education at many private schools, always being backed by his parents, getting tutors for the next school to bring him up to speed on that new school curriculum since he was never invited back to the prior school despite his high grades because of his behavior and attitude. But sonny boy had his own plan of swooping in at the last minute to gain power. To this end he went into therapy to find out why no woman would stay with him, found a truly ugly looking, mean-spirited but intelligent one who had already been married twice and, having learned how to posture in therapy, took this woman who had recently become an attorney specializing in his father’s field, to wife. Then he sat down and said that dad should give everything to his wife to manage since she is a professional and they would give me an allowance.
Dad, always intimidated by his son and not wanting to start an argument said…how do i know she is really a lawyer. He thought that would put it off. privately he cursed the two of them to me saying the boy needs 10 psychiatrists. She is a money-grubber and when he comes to his senses and divorces her, she will wind up with everything. Promise me you won’t give him anything until he gets out of this marriage. (I had not been told of the wedding, my father had chosen to break two ribs rather than attend.)
Dad thought he had looked out for me. He was frightened to look at his mortality so there was no talking to him about making better protection for me. I tried it mildly once or twice and received an answer…what are you talking about, he is your brother, he would never hurt you. This, I believe, was founded on how he treated his brother who stole repeatedly from the business that my dad had taken him into. Dad also knew he had, in addition to splitting things in the will, given me things outside of the will that he thought would be safe to make for my comfort since I did not have my brother’s smarts and could not earn the same way. I did not want to distress him by bringing up the subject of how that was not adequate protection against a brother who had physically beaten me all thru childhood and into my thirties. Sure enough, when dad began to decline, my brother rushed in. He announced his intention by saying that I was reveling in the position and he decided he would take it away from me and that he wanted to see me “in the gutter digging for meals from garbage cans”. This was not one angry rant. This was a concerted attack day by day for years and I began taping his phone conversions with me since he refused to visit preparing for his claim that I would not let him in. . I have 30 tapes full of his craziness. He said he would litigate over and over again and it would not cost him a thing because his wife was an attorney and that I was depending on the inheritance and he was determined to see it went to the lawyers so I would have a hard life because all I was doing for these years was mooching from HIS father and that they did not need the money since they had professions. He is smart, he was able to bring it about. He took me to court and accused me of brain washing his dad to give me everything that was not mentioned in the will. I had to hire an attorney to defend me who said that everyone in the court knew what he was doing but that he knew how to use the justice system well. After his initial attack where he accused me of violence, abuse, abandonment and theft and I was found innocent of it all, he made the next case…that HIS dad was losing mentality because I was overdosing him with meds. That too was proven unfounded, but the grinding of the court took big chunks of the estate liquidated to pay lawyers, including his wife. As I said, he is smart. He is in the public eye and some of you would know his name and work. I believe he is a sociopath. A cousin of mine who lived with us for a while when we were kids said I should try to go into some sort of thing like the witness protection program because my brother will never stop coming after me. All this was because I was a that stereotypical helpful child in the family. If you have a monster for a sibling like I do, I recommend with hindsight you ignore your family who refuse to recognize what their other child its like (dad blamed it on the girl but I think that are a perfect match) and get lost in the hills. The boy is probably proud of himself that he achieved this destruction of his sister because he had been trying to do it all of our lives. If you recognize a similar pattern, please get away from the circumstance even if it means living at the Y.
My mom did this and made me the person with the POA because my brother is a greedy, lazy jerk. I also have access to the bank accounts and safe deposit box. I’ve never accessed any of them, though I do see the balance on our shared account when I get the statement.
Although I live 1200 miles away, if need be I could a) be there on the next flight, and b) can work from her home if anything long-term needs to happen. So the nearest relative isn’t always the best.
Interestingly, the executor of her will is my dad – her EX. But they’ve been divorced for almost 40 years, and she and my stepmother are good friends.
I realize this is an older thread but thought I’d be worth a shot to ask my question for some of you really seem to really know the law.
My Dad and my stepmother went through a horrible divorce-accusations of everything she even had my Dad thrown in jail for a while while she cleared out the house (false charges but the err on side of females to be careful). She is a very mean & calculating materialistic woman.
So she had her attorney who was a former law partner with the judge put an order that my Dad had to make her the sole beneficiary of his will. This was done in a different state than my father lived when he tried to get it changed to his state-the judge in his state refused to go against judge in the other state.
He wants to divvy it up between us kids (and his live in gf) but feels his hands are tied.
How can a judge make you put a wife who you divorced (he is till alive) 5 years at this point ago as a beneficiary? This makes her benefit from my Dads death. Should my brother and I hire an attorney an get something in writing from my father now? What would that be?
What ca we do–this lady is the cruelest woman I don’t care if the money all goes to charity in fact I prefer that --she used my family long enough.
What should we do where do we go from here?
It’s threads like this that make me really happy to be an only child. And that I won’t be burying my dad (we cremate and it’s so much cheaper). 7000 for a funeral? Wow.
What does your Dad want to do? Your father as long as he is currently of sound mind, can change his will any time he wants and disavow any previous wills.