My father is 81 and has has 2 strokes. He lives with his disabled grandson. My mother controlled all of the finances. Now that she has passed away I'm on his checkbook and I pay all his bills. He spent all of her life insurance money and now he has gotten a reverse mortgage behind my back and he's taken a lot of money out of ATM machines. He also has been scammed out of money. He will not allow any of his kids to be POA. I don't know what I should do. Should I just let him fall or because I'm on his checkbook take his money out and put it in another bank and cancel his Debit card. I was told I could get a paper saying I'm in charge of his finances and he can't do anything about it.
This account can be used as his budget account, decide on a monthly amount and spread out access by doing deposits every 3 or 4 days, see if you can set up an overdraft protection plan or do prepaid debit cards.
This is a tough situation , my dad has plowed through 20k in 3 months. The ombudsman told him he could do as he pleased, so here we are.
Hind sight - I would have gone to SSA and applied for representative payee, then he would not have had free access to any money. You do have to keep records and show how his money is spent, I would ask about the monthly mad money to be sure that would not end up being rejected in the accounting.
Please be knowledgeable about what is legal in your state, you don't want dad calling the police because you stole all his money, being able to do things is not the same as you should and can legally.
Best of luck getting him under financial control.
This is all serious stuff, but if Dad should need to be in a facility and you need to apply for Medicaid, you’ll need some sort of authority, not only to place him but also for the sake of the disabled grandson if your father has guardianship of him and there are no parents in the picture.
If there is family available to discuss this with, I’d suggest you do so. You’ll need help and support handling all this.