Hi, I am new to this site and to this disease. I am 59 and my husband is 74. He was diagnosed with dementia in August of this year. He is a retired Army officer and is a very private person, so private that he took care of all the bills and we have separate accounts. I just got a General Power of Attorney on Friday. He has so much that he has hidden from me and I feel bad that I have to snoop to find out any information. I know he has 3 banks and found out we are 2 months late on everything from rent to trash bill. He doesn't realize we even have to pay bills. I am worried because I know he still has checkbooks hidden in his room somewhere. I hope there is someone who can help me. I work part time but am afraid to work full time because I don't want to leave him here too long by himself. I am open for suggestions. Thank you for listening.
Welcome maryann. I am 58 so we are sort of the same age. Don't feel bad that you have to snoop. If I had snooped earlier, I could have possibly prevented us from financial ruin. Others will be along soon with suggestions. You will really like this site. There is nothing you can't discuss and you will get a lot of support.
Welcome maryann. Sounds like you have your work cut out for you. It is good you have seperate accounts but you are going to have to try and find his papers when you can get him out of the house. Others here have more experience with this than I do and they will be along shortly to give you good advice.
Sending my welcome to you, maryann. This is a great place to ask questions, vent, scream-whatever! I'm sure others will be along who have been through the same as you to give their experience. You will get a lot of support here.
I am sorry to hear about your situation. This website has alot of good info on the main page on the left side. I would suggest you go back to the main page and take a look at some of the topics.
Do you know why he has 3 accounts and are you a co signer on all?
It seems that he has fallen off sharply given the August Diagnosis.
I found out the same thing when my wife was not paying the bills. I just made the money and she spent it. Except when she could not figure out the bill pay system on the comupter.
Anyway you have found the right spot, you will find alot of support here.
maryann welcome to our site-all here will understand your heartache. My husband crashed several years ago and like you I knew little about bill paying, insurance and the like. As end of year statements came in for taxes I was able to recreate our finances. With your POA you should be able to get the help you need from financial institutions once they know that YOU will be paying the bills. The greatest problem I had was the utilities. They were set up with my husband's SS# and I couldn't change them to my name without a fight. Same thing with credit card-he was the owner and I just a user. Don't try to fix everything at once. Ask us questions and someone will be here for you. Of course it helps if you have a cat.
Welcome, Maryann. So sorry you are going through this. You will find good information here and will learn much from all our experiences. Since you asked for suggestions, maybe you could sit down with your DH and try to reason with him regarding his accounts. Snooping is allowed....I do not know what stage of dementia he is in, but that would be a start. You will need to find out where everything is in order to help him. I know it is hard to come here and admit what is going on in your life. We are all your friends, you can count on that. Is he in early stages? Has he been started on medication?
Maryann, Hi & Welcome! I am so sorry that you must deal with this dreadful disease. I also am 59 years old, my husband is 58 with FTD. I have not had to deal with money issues... thankfully, I have always taken care of paying bill & etc. Getting POA was a good thing to do as soon as possible. Do not feel bad about snooping, you need to find out exactly what you are dealing with. As the others have said, you will find an enormous amount of help here. There are caregivings ifrom 30's to 80's here, with many different stages. There is always someone that has experienced whatever question you might have.
Dear Maryann--WOW! you really do have a big job all cut out for you, don't you. That POA will be a great help to you. And, you should be receiving statements from various institutions about now with year-end information for taxes. That will help. About the credit card, you might want to just pay it off and not use it any more. Open up on in your own name and just use that. Hopefully, that might help.
My prayers are with you. Keep us posted about your progress! And God bless you!
Welcome, Maryann, to a wonderful please for help, venting, reassurance, support. Snooping is encouraged and acceptable. See and eldercare attorney and make sure all legal angles are covered. I've been paying bills since my 72 yr old hsbd had a stroke when he was 48, BUT unbeknownst to me he got a bank account, credit card, post office box in later years and spent $ he didn't have. He NEVER saved anything, withdrew 403b's, etc., etc. I wanted to run. Now, we've had "the talk" about finances, responsibilities,etc., and he seems compliant and agreeable. It would be much easier if he'd thought about the future years ago. Well, I apologize for rambling; guess something hit a sore point:0
Maryann, welcome to the AD family! sorry you had to find us but glad you joined. lots of knowledge from troops in the trenches:) i would start with last yrs tax statements. he either does them himself or has a service. find out and get a copy it should have alot of info on it to snoop with. and yes tax season is coming so monitor the mail for tax statements from financial institutions. that will have acct numbers.if hes agreeable, sit down and have a hearttoheart about finances and how yall will manage that- i would close all his credit cards just to be safe and locate all additional checking acct and savings with all the checkbooks. its your life on the line here and many can testify how they mismanage money before you find out. you are already behind on pays so he is having issues with money matters-. they dont know what trouble they can cause financially til its too late. you will at some point probably need to use that power of atty at banks and credit cards if he is not readily agreeable to hand over the affairs to you. its hard but make the most of what you learn from us veterans" here and know that we will offer as much advice and knowledge that we can give. welcome, Divvi
I completely agree with Divvi. Might this not be your/his first marriage? Are there kids of his who can help you talk to him? What some of us have found most helpful in dealing with the financial matters is to say, here, this is what I have, in case something should happen to me. Now, what do you have? It helps if you can find someone you know who's died; you can make up a tale about how they left their family completely in the dark and you don't want that to happen to you (or to him). Do the same thing with wills. Once you know what there is, then try to get the limit on his credit card greatly reduced.. Creative fibbing is necessary. The money handling seems to be the first to go for a great many of our spouses, so keep us up to date and someone will come along who's had just that problem!
I want to thank everyone for all their wisdom. It helps me to know I am not alone in this. I will keep you posted as to how things go. Say a prayer for me.
Hi, Maryann, and welcome. I'll be 59 in a couple of months, and my husband is 77.
My husband had his own accounts and took care of "his" finances. He also took care of all things financial for the company I owned. I had no idea how badly his abilities to handle those were falling apart, for many months. We got our funding through Government agencies, and they have very strict requirements for tracking all income and outgo. Talk about your steep learning curve, trying to get up to speed on all of that, and fix everything before the next audit!
I assume your husband is being somewhat cooperative, since he let you have POA? If you can talk to your husband about some of these things, good. When I finally started taking over both the company and his personal finances, it was clearly a relief to my husband. He had really been struggling, and even though he has no insight into his problems, he knew at some level it was much better for me to take care of such things.
If your husband can't, or won't, give you the hidden checkbooks, then by all means, go looking for them. You really must, for his own good as well as yours. In all likelihood, it won't cause a problem, because he probably won't be able to remember where they were, anyway.
Or, preferably, close those accounts. Tell the banks there are checkbooks missing, but you don't know what the check numbers are ... that will inspire them to be helpful.
If you want to let him keep a credit card, then get it set up so you have access to the account via the internet. Use your name to do that, if your name is on the account, or set it up using his name, but be sure you are the only one with the password. This is important, because it's a good idea to check the account regularly, preferably daily. You want to catch any problems right away, so you can take care of them before they escalate. My husband was still surfing the internet, and he got caught in a few scams. The first three times, we trotted off to the bank within a day of the strange charge, and got the card number changed, and filled out the forms to get his money back. After the third time, the bank was beginning to lose patience... so my husband let me have his card, although he wasn't at all happy about it.
As far as changing accounts such as the utilities into your name ...
(1) Make sure you get the mail. Get to the mailbox first, if you can. If getting mail still matters to your husband, just give him anything that isn't really important. If you have problems getting the mail first, install a locked mailbox. (You can buy them online, or at stores like Home Depot. Be sure you ask your local post office which styles they'll accept.) Tell your husband there have been mail thefts in the neighborhood, if he needs an explanation.
(2) As long as you get the bills, you can pay them yourself and no one will care whose name the account might be in. (My father decided he wanted cable TV after he moved in with us, and set up an account. He died seven years ago. I've been paying the cable TV bill "for him" for all that time, figuring it was much easier to do that than cancel his account and start a new one in my name.)
(3) If you feel the need to transfer an account into your name, write a letter with the appropriate instructions. If your husband will sign it, well and good. (Mine will sign anything I put in front of him. I always explain what I'm doing and why. I'm not sure he really cares, though ... he knows, at some level, that he needs to have me take care of him.) If he won't sign it ... then you sign his name. Don't -- DON'T -- try the "I have POA" route. It will be an enormous hassle. (I had enormous problems trying to close accounts down as the executor of his estate when my father died. You'd think a death certificate would make it clear there was no benefit to keeping the account open, but no, it doesn't work that way.)
Sunshyne - I started to it but this is your thread. This is such very useful and complete information for anyone who is facing the finance problem, it should be in a topic all its own with an appropriate header. PLEASE copy and paste it into a new topic so it's easily found.
briegull, we've had a number of threads where people have offered terrific ideas about how to get a handle on finances ... how about if we see which threads those posts might be on, and either beef up the best of those? Or if the info is too scattered, then we could start a new one where we copy those posts and credit all the contributors.
Right now, though, I've got a husband who is getting restless, and wanting to do yardwork in a pouring rainstorm... <grin>
Hello Maryann, I am fairly new to this web-site, but you will find out, its the place to be..there is a lot of information here, you can ask whatever, and you will get help.. Good Luck..God Bless